That’s true. The players ask for something like the ability to smoke marijuana and fewer preseason games, the NFL counters with a longer regular season, then the haggling begins. The reality might end up with none of these changes happening after the negotiations.
Except he already did something: scrap Selig’s ill-advised attempt at making the ASG meaningful.
I always liked that the All-Star Game actually had a purpose. I found that clever. I was disappointed when it stopped.
I don’t think the NFL really wants a longer season but it’s a bargaining chip. They have the perfect season length, starting right after Labor Day when everyone’s back from vacation and ending in early February, when everyone is ready to give up their no alcohol and healthy food resolutions for a day for the Super Bowl. At 16 games, each game means a lot except for the absolute worst teams. Adding more games which feature a 4th string QB won’t keep the interest going.
There’s just such an imbalance in the NBA that it makes the regular season a slog along with the first round of the playoffs.
any other major league sport in any country have 2 sets of rules depending on where the game is played? DH rule.
I am all in favor of such changes. After all, the NASCAR playoffs went off without a single solitary glitch.
Short, cynical answer…they aren’t. It’s just noise that someone floated in order to keep the clicks coming and to stay in the news during the winter doldrums of sport.
The NFL wants to go to 17 weeks (unclear if it’s adding 16 more total games or if it’s just adding a second bye week to goose the TV revenue) simply to make more money. It’s not a big structural change. They also will never further expand the playoffs, the NFL playoffs are near-universally considered a perfect balance.
The NBA isn’t going to add a mid-season tournament either. It’s just food for the bloggers. Many will concede that 82 games is too many, but no one is signing up for a pay cut. Adding a tournament doesn’t really do anything to replace the ticket revenue and it doesn’t fix tanking.
The MLB is just doing a bit of “me too” action. They saw the NBA getting a bunch of free press and decided the spring meetings were the time to float a crazy idea to the media. There’s a very small chance that they’ll add more playoff teams, but I highly doubt it. The flagging interest in baseball has way more to do with the bloated number of games, pace of play and the horrible umpiring at the plate than it does the postseason format. The only meaningful change you’ll see out of the MLB will be robot umps and DHs in the National League (which is when I exit baseball, stage right, for good).
He got a (probably undeserved, but who knows what evil lurks… etc., etc.) “bullshit” for suggesting/inferring/implying that in-game solutions would be within an order of magnitude as effective in speeding up the game as curtailing excess broadcast advertising.
The NBA’s solution to disinterest would be simple, just shorten the season to 40-60 games. But they don’t want to lose the money.
Yeah – cut the regular-season income from ticket sales and TV contracts by 25-50%? It’s never going to happen.
Don’t the NBA playoffs already run for 6-8 months? Cutting back the regular season is but a bagatelle.
The All Star Game used to be very meaningful before interleague play and rampant free agency. As I kid, I couldn’t wait for the All Star Game and was excited for the entire week before. You got to see players, fighting for league pride, face each other who would never face each other in their entire careers.
Now it is an MTV clown show.
But I think that is just keeping with modern society. For better or worse, the owners decided years ago that having two distinct league where the champions meet in the World Series (or later a modest two division winners playing each other first) was just too boring for people and have tinkered with almost every aspect of the game. I want baseball back not more of the same.
Interleague play makes sense because there is no good reason why fans should not be able to see all the teams and big name players. That doesn’t happen in any other US sport. With so many people living in a place other than where their favorite team is located they should be able to see their fave team in person . Most National league teams love it when the Red Sox and Yankees come to town since it boosts ticket sales.
Basketball is definitely driven by stars. You see it from youth basketball all the way through the NBA. In youth leagues, you can almost predict who is going to win games depending on who has the most dominant player. AFAICT, this holds true all the way through high school. In college it is harder to come by overwhelming dominance. Even harder in the NBA. But it is still very star driven.
Football is also driven by stars. At the youth level, a single dominant running back can carry a mediocre team to championship after championship. A fantastic quarterback paired with a few decent receivers can really light it up. As they get older, you need more competence from everyone but it is still driven by stars.
This sort of thing is true of most sports. Having the best forward in soccer means you probably win a lot of games, same with hockey.
Baseball is really the only sport where having the best player in the world does not even guarantee a winning season (see the Angels). OTOH, you can cobble together a consistent playoff team from the right combination of odds and ends (see Oakland A’s).
I don’t know that the baseball season is too long. If you have a good team, every game will earn you money and have reasonably high attendance/viewership (see Dodgers). On the flip side, Football has very few games but if your team is unpopular, you are not making much money from each game (see Redskins).
Having 162 games makes baseball games a lot more accessible. Almost anyone can afford to go to a handful of games over the summer. This is not true of Football, at least not around here.
I am not a packers fan but I love their structure. They are largely owned by their fan base and that allows a tiny city like Green Bay to have a credible professional sports team.
I think that every MLB proposal should be titled, “Let’s Stop Talking About the Astros Cheating.” Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer tweeted to the MLB commissioner “No idea who made this new . . . proposal, but Rob is responsible for releasing it, so I’ll direct this to you, Rob Manfred. Your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball. You are a joke.”
In fact, they’re entirely owned by their fan base. There are currently about 360,000 shareholders (I’m one of them 
), owning a total of just over 5 million shares. Team bylaws prohibit any one person from owning more than a 4% stake in the corporation, and I’m not sure that any one person even has that big of an ownership stake – if anyone does, it’s probably a descendent of one of the people who participated in the early stock sales (1923, 1938, 1950). Also, one effectively can’t sell one’s shares (which makes it even more difficult for anyone to amass a lot of shares) – you can pass them on to a descendent, but the team holds the first right to buy any shares that shareholders might want to sell.
I mean, if you look at a list of the greatest baseball players of all time, a truly shocking number of them either never won a World Series, or won it just once. Here’s the best hitters ever as ranked by WAR, a rough metric but as you can see there really are all time greats, and how often they won a series (Babe Ruth’s pitching WAR aren’t counted here or he would be first)
- Barry Bonds - Never
- Babe Ruth - 7
- Willie Mays - 1
- Ty Cobb - Never
- Hank Aaron - 1
- Tris Speaker - 3
- Honus Wagner - 1
- Stan Musial - 3
- Rogers Hornsby - 1
- Eddie Collins - 4
- Ted Williams - Never
- A-Rod - 1
- Lou Gehrig - 6
- Rickey Henderson - 2
- The Mick - 7
- Mel Ott - 1
- Nap LaJoie - Never
- Frank Robinson - 2
- Mike Schmidt - 1
- Joe Morgan - 2
I have never heard anyone seriously suggest Willie Mays wasn’t as great a player as Jack Morris because he won the World Series fewer times, or that Ty Cobb wasn’t a great player at all, but in any other major sport this would be a significant part of the argument.
I mean, the seasons are clearly not too long for the leagues. Baseball’s season has been this long for SIXTY YEARS. Prior to that it was just a bit shorter, 154 games instead of 162, dating back to the days when Teddy Roosevelt was President. If there was some business reason the season should be shorter they’d have done it by now, and surely the same as true of other leagues? The NHL has been playuing 80+ games a year for a long time now and it was as long as 70 going back to 1950. Basketball’s current season length dated back over half a centry and wasn’t much shorter for many years prior to that.
So when people say they’re too long, too long for whom? Apparently not for the leagues or the players, since they seem fine with it. They may be too long for individual fans - but people who don’t wanna watch, won’t. And some people seem to be fine with it.
I think it’s the expanded playoffs in all sports that makes the regular season seem so long. Plus, with expansion, you have more teams that are just playing out the season and shutting guys down early.
Baseball now flirts with November. Hockey in June? And yes, the NBA plays all those games just to let everyone in the playoffs and then those go on forever including obvious mismatches.
Speaking of long seasons I was surprised that junior hockey teams in Canada (which is for 16-20 year olds) play 60 games per season. Almost all NHL players from Canada play junior hockey before the NHL. Some Euro and American players play there too.
There’s a bit of a contradiction between your first sentence and your last. Expanded playoffs simply means more shots at glory. Back in the day, two out of 16 teams made MLB’s playoffs; now it’s 10 out of 30.
The percentage of teams that have basically given up is NOT any higher than it used to be. There really aren’t that many sports franchises that have clearly just decided not to try anymore or who seem totally unable to accomplish anything; a team might tank it for a few years, but it makes perfect sense to accept going 62-100 a few times if it means you have a chance to win later than going 79-83 every year in perpetuity. But sports have always had a few teams that were perennial disasters. No baseball team today is as totally hopeless as the Phillies once were. The Orioles look so, so bad, but hell, they made the playoffs in 2016.