The Commissioner Of Sports Gets A Promotion

Earlier this week on Monday Night Football, Chris Berman asked both presidential candidates what they would do first in the sports world if they were elected president. Both predictably took pretty easy, populist choices. John McCain said he would get rid of performance enhancing drugs (a novel idea!) and Barack Obama said he would institute a playoff system in Division IA, thus eliminating the bowl championship system.

This got me thinking what I would do for sports if I was elected President. Earlier this year I wrote a column as the World's Commissioner of Sports and have re-posted that below. I still hold that these things would make sports better and in fact, at least one of them (instant replay in baseball) has been instituted in real-life. One thing I realize about that list, and about the new additions I will be adding to it now, is that I tend to be pretty anti-business. That is to say, many of the suggestions I make are to fight off the intrusion of money into the purity of the sports. So without further ado, as President of the United States of Sports, I hereby enact the following Constitution and Bill of Sports into law:

Article I: The NBA preseason will begin January 1. Teams may play as many preseason games as they wish. The regular season shall begin the day after the Super Bowl, and the opening game each year will be a rematch of the previous year's NBA finals. The regular season will consist of 30 games, and the playoff make-up will change slightly- the top eight teams from each conference, seeded by record, home court given to the team with the better record. There is no bonus invitation or home-court given to division winners.

The reasons for this change are many. For one, despite its current renaissance, the NBA still blows. The season is three to five games old and it is already clear which teams will make the playoffs. They will also tread water until February, when they will start jockeying for playoff position. To combat the utter boredom that is the first three months of the season, they will be eliminated. This will make the regular season games far more important and therefore they will be far more interesting. Currently only the fourth quarter seems to be relevant, but if they only have thirty games to get in and get home court, that intensity will be ramped up from the opening tip.

Article II: Any reporter or commentator who argues that Major League Baseball is out of touch and is a dieing sport shall be fined $500 for each incident, with the money going the the charity of his or her choice.

This past World Series was the lowest rated ever. This past NBA Finals was one of the highest rated ever. And only in that perfect storm of ratings did the NBA Finals out-rate the World Series. That had not happened previously since the ultra-popular Michael Jordan's Bulls were in the NBA Finals. The team with the lowest attendance in the Major League baseball in 2008 was the Florida Marlins, with 16,688 per game over 81 games. A full one-third of the NBA could not get that many people at only 41 games in 2007.

Article III: All divisions of college football shall have 16-team playoffs to determine their champion. In the case of Division IA, the first round will be played at the higher seeded team's home field. The quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game will be called "Bowls" and may keep their corporate sponsorships. The National Championship game and semifinals will rotate annually among the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. The names FCS and BCS will be eliminated and replaced once again with IAA and IA, respectively.

The major pro-BCS argument is that a playoff would generate less interest and less money than the Bowls do, and it would be bad for the student-athletes because they'd miss more class with a playoff system. Currently, there are five major divisions in college football (BCS, FCS, II III, NAIA), all but the BCS has a playoff with no negative consequences. Also, by allowing the playoff games to be called Bowls, the games keep their sponsorships and keep making money hand over fist. And if anyone really thinks that a college football playoff would not generate interest, they shall be deported. As for the argument that this only allows 16-teams to compete in postseason and eliminates many current sponsorship deals, any school not part of the tourney can play in any other postseason tournament (think NIT) or unaffiliated bowl of their choosing. This system allows for a far more fair way of choosing a champion and eliminates the problem of a team like USC this year losing once in September and being out of the running for a title despite clearly being among the top 5 (if not top 2) in the country. It also allows for smaller conferences to be represented in the field.

Article IV: The NFL and College Basketball can keep doing what they're doing.

Article V: Major League Baseball shall eliminate Interleague play and thus shorten the season by 15 games and approximately two-and-a-half weeks. The World Series shall continue to be played at the home stadiums of the two teams involved, but the All Star game shall not determine home field advantage, it will alternate every other year between Leagues. In addition to the replay rules listed below by the Commissioner of Sports, if both managers agree before the game, managers shall have one challenge per game on any play. They shall receive another after successful challenges. Post season games shall begin no later than 7 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Interleague play does provide a level of intrigue to the season, but it is inherently unfair. For instance, as part of the Interleague system, teams play local/natural rivals every season as well as one other full division. So if a team has a local/natural that is good every year, they will automatically play a harder schedule than teams in their own division that have weaker local/natural rivals. For instance, the N.L. East and A.L. east play one another next season. So the Mets play their rivals, the Yankees once and then they play the entire A.L. East as well. The Nationals play the entire A.L. East and then play the Orioles.

Additionally, eliminating Interleague fixes the problem of the season running too long. There has been debate about how the 2008 World Series was ruined by bad weather and the World Series should therefore be played at a more temperate, neutral venue. The fact that there was a rain-suspension for the first time in the 105-year history of the event does not mean the event is flawed; it means it rained this year. However, next season the World Series will potentially in the second week of November. This invites the weather to cause more problems (especially for fans) and also hurts the hallowed tradition of October being synonymous with the World Series.

A second baseman for a fourth place team having a bad inning in July should obviously not determine something as significant as the home field advantage for the World Series. Considering how advanced our television technology has gotten, it seems silly that it cannot be used to determine the correctness of calls on the field. When the managers exchange line-up cards before a game, they should also decide whether they will be allowed their challenge that day.

No doubt, there will be an Article VI and as both President and Commissioner of the United States of Sports, I hereby claim the to amend this Constitution at any time.

Baseball Celebrates Interleague, And No One Notices

Major League Baseball's first interleague series blew by without really making any particularly interesting news. I think the honeymoon is over for Interleague and the fans. I am sure ticket sales were solid in most series (LA vs. LA, NY vs. NY for instance), but in general, did anyone really care?

When the Mets and Yankees used to play and ESPN would cover it, leading up to the game we were seemingly bombarded with commercials, animations during other games, etc. for weeks. I didn't see any ads for Sunday night's game besides their normal Sunday Night Baseball teasers.

When the Mets and Yankees used to play, the games carried all kinds of weight with them. The teams seemed to hate one another. Roger Clemens used to throw things at people all the time. It was big news!

Last night we went to a sports bar-ish restaurant and where there is one giant tv screen (that can be split into four different channels) with two large TVs on either side and then a few more big TVs scattered around the walls. The big screen was split up and the Mets-Yankees game was on one small portion of it. The other three were NASCAR, ESPN News, and the NFL network and the other two large TVs had ESPN News and the NASCAR.

That's right, the Steelers-Browns game from Week 10 got as much attention at a sports bar as the live Mets-Yankees game. This brought me to three conclusions:

1- Interleague is no longer any different for the casual fan than any other baseball game is. And for the devoted fan, is it really any different either? Was I more interested in this game than a Mets-Braves or Mets-Phillies game? Perhaps a bit, but it is just not as timeless and interesting as it once seemed.

2- The ratings of the 2000 World Series were some of the lowest for a World Series of all time. No one cared about New York playing New York despite that it was one of the more intrigue-filled Series in a long time. If that was the case, then the ratings were last night for a regular season game featuring two teams that were a combined 1-game under .500 must have been horrible.

3- The NFL Network is totally and completely wrong in their argument with the cable companies. NFL Network wants to be given a spot in the basic cable line-ups so they get wider distribution (thus they can sell commercials for much more money). Cable companies say it is a specialty-channel and won't get the wide-spread audience that basic cable channels typically get, so they want to add it to their sports packages (thus shrinking distribution and making commercials less valuable). I am a huge sports fan. I love the NFL. I would basically watch any team play any team on Sundays in the fall and winter. However, besides the eight live NFL games that the network carries, there is absolutely nothing that that channel airs that even I want to watch. They want NFL Network to go on basic cable, which would raise cable rates by the price of a cup of coffee (as the NFL network likes to say). If I don't think it is worth it to pay more for "24 hours per year of live NFL football and about 8,736 hours of filler," then do you think a non-sports/NFL fan would be willing to pay?

The Mets vs. Yankees and the NFL were not the only sporting events this weekend that no one cares about until they mean something.

-The NBA has finally gotten to the Conference Finals (once the Spurs finish off the Hornets tonight) so NBA games will be interesting even in the first quarter now. Isn't it funny that after all the BS of the last seven months, we ended up with the four teams that it was always going to be? This is further proof that the NBA season should be two months long, with only four teams from each Conference making the playoffs.

-The NHL has reached the Stanley Cup...well almost. Detroit roared out to a 3-0 lead but Dallas is now scaring the hell out of them. Dallas now plays at home in game six with a chance to tie it up. Note: when looking for NHL coverage on ESPN.com, even though they are in the most important two weeks of the season, the NHL is listed 10th behind women's basketball, NASCAR, racing (not sure what the different is there), college football (which will start in six months) and general college sports. Ouch.

- Big Brown won the Preakness and made NBC very, very happy because now someone will watch the Belmont in two weeks. No Triple Crown winner since 1978 and now horse racing (in perhaps its darkest hour) may Crown a champion. Never mind that Big Brown is widely considered one of the worst champs racing against easily the worst field in history.

Finally, can we all agree that baseball needs instant replay in the instances of home runs and foul balls? It is a good thing that the Yankees bullpen sucks as bad as it does or I would likely have strangled someone if that Delgado home run-blown call had come back to hurt the Mets.