Years back, some NBA teams with bad records clearly weren’t trying very hard to win. It was obvious that some teams were deliberately losing in order to get the top draft pick. As a result, the NBA adopted a lottery system, so that SEVERAL of the worst teams in the league would have a chance at getting the top draft pick, and there’d be no incentive to lose games at the end of the season.
I had never heard many people calling for the NFL to institute a similar lottery system… until this year. THIS year, for no particular reason, MANY reporters and commentators are calling for a lottery to prevent football teams from tanking.
Now, I have no strong objections to a lottery system. I just don’t see why the calls for a lottery have gotten so loud THIS year. When I look around, I DON’T see any teams deliberately losing. I DON’T see any bad teams that aren’t trying to win!
The woeful Miami Dolphins tried hard to beat the Jets, the Broncos and the Giants, and right this moment, they’re beating the KC Chiefs.
The awful St. Louis Rams are definitely TRYING to win, and they DID beat the Saints just last week.
The dreadful Cardinals played very hard last week and almost beat the Ravens.
The Colts have looked horrible, true enough. But Owner Irsay is on record as saying he wants and expects Peyton Manning will start again this season… just the OPPOSITE of what he’d want if he were trying to get Andrew Luck!
So, why is THIS the season that so many people see a need to stop teams from tanking? This year, bad teams are plainly trying hard to win.
Who’s been calling for the lottery system? There’s been a lot of talk about Suck for Luck, but I have yet to see anyone accuse teams of purposefully throwing games.
The only problem is that if you did the NBA draft order based strictly on won/loss record, you would make a mockery of competitive balance for the worst 5 or 6 teams in the league. The reward of a potential superstar would be so great that teams would have virtually no motivation to win games once it was clear they were out of the running. At least with the current system, teams would only have a 25% chance at best to get the top pick, so completely tanking has its downsides.
In the NBA, one player can make an immediate impact the next season. He 20% of the starting team, and a good pick can change a woeful franchise into a contender over the summer.
In the NFL, one player is 4.54% of the starting team (ignoring special teams). Far less likely to cause that sort of turnaround. Even a #1 QB often can’t turn a team around, since so many other positions need to be filled. Even if the Dolphins get Lack, it would take time for him to succeed, and other problems with the other positions (no matter how good the QB, a bad offensive line will turn him into a bust) mean they probably won’t suddenly become a playoff club next year.
Because of this, the incentive to tank is far greater for the NBA than the NFL.
It’s also a lot easier to tank games in the other sports. When a player clangs a shot or commits a turnover, is he doing it on purpose? Over 82/162 games it’s much harder to tell, and 4-5 games difference can be just enough. Even if the players are playing to win the coach can finagle the lineups on orders from management, something the Penguins allegedly did to get Mario Lemieux.
In 16 nationally televised games with every move analyzed it would be difficult to toss games away without also tossing your career away. Each play in the NFL has much more impact than in the NBA, NHL or MLB.
The player contracts in other sports are far more guaranteed than in the NFL, so tanking NFL games basically means a whole bunch of your teammates are going to get shitcanned.
Fully agree with Dale, it is ESPN making noise and nothing else.
I think a lot of it is hype; the Dolphins sure as hell didn’t play like they were trying to throw a game today. But there might be two arguments why tanking could happen or might even make sense:
–Andrew Luck, the Stanford quarterback who almost certainly will be drafted first overall, is the closest thing to a can’t miss prospect since Peyton Manning in 1998. He has both the physical attributes scouts look for and he’s also rated high in “intangibles”.
–Until recently you could win a Super Bowl with a mediocre quarterback (think Trent Dilfer or Jeff Hostettler) who didn’t make mistakes. Passing is so emphasized these days that teams think they need a high draft pick so they can get a franchise quarterback.
And Eli Manning’s 2007 season wasn’t exactly the stuff of legend either. He was above average, but the only reason the Giants were able to hold it together in the playoffs is because he stopped throwing so many INTs.
Frankly, before this CBA the first pick was practically a curse. Some crappy, poorly run team gets the top pick who is as likely as not going to be a bust/mediocre player, then has to spend the entire offseason negotiating for this completely unproven player to get 10% of next year’s team salary.
With football, Sucking for Luck is not really much of a story. At most you’ll get a GM trading a player or two, or a coach giving the backup QB a few starts, which they likely would have done in a god-awful season anyway.