Sporting News
Interesting article on sports that has implications to broader ideas. Schoenfield argues that a "cap" on spending in sports isn't all its cracked up to be. Using baseball as an example he compares MLB to the NFL and the NBA to get an idea of how competitive the various leagues are. Going in you would assume that MLB would be the least competitive because there is such a drastic gap between the rich and poor teams. His quick study shows otherwise. Now this is not a deep study with rigorous protocols, but it is an interesting thesis with some equally interesting preliminary results. The gist of it is that the messing with the market doesn't make things better. In business, the difference between any two companies is the quality of management across all levels. Makes sense that the same applies in sports.
Rather than fantasy sports, I like to dabble in fantasy league ownership. If you want to improve the game do the following. One, set a minimum number of wins a team has to have to qualify for revenue sharing. Two, only pay players for wins. Pay them a lot, but only give them a check if their team wins. Three, dump the draft. The last one is huge as I love the draft. But every league would be better if it didn't exist. Finally, and I know no league has control over this, but pay college athletes. With all of the above, games would be more competitive, exciting, and entertaining.
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Hello gentlemen, its been a long time but the Unknown blogger has this one wrong. Applying strict business principals to professional sports ignores the importance of the league itself. Businesses in most sectors would like to shut down competitors and don't have an interest in seeing a fair fight. Teams do. A big market team doesn't look to take over small market teams, it looks to beat them on the field a good percentage of the time. Rewarding failure with the draft is a key element in this, as is revenue sharing. Paying players for wins would give the successful teams an even bigger advantage.
In terms of increasing the level of play, contraction is the best option. It removes those that can't compete and pares away the least talented players but it wouldn't make sense from a business standpoint. The Yankees are better off subsidizing the Royals than eliminating them.
Joementum
Schoenfield's column presents an argument similar to baseball writer Jayson Stark's, and it's persuasive. It's another of baseball's many image problems brought on by its visibility: The Royals stink 162 times a year; the Arizona Cardinals only stink 16.
I'm not sure what would improve baseball's image, and it's been 25 years since I've cared, but the NFL would have been well served long ago by a franchise agreement with teeth enough to chew up and spit out of the league the Paul Browns and Bill Bidwells who pay and play to win every decade or so on a whim.
How would dumping the draft improve the games?
In order to create more competitive leagues, you need competitive owners. Allowing owners to profit by having lousy teams hurts the game. It doesn't neccessarily destroy it, but it does hurt it. The beauty of not having competing leagues is that there is no marker for how good things can be, but that's another story. the draft only adds to the problem. If teams had to compete for players. By awarding the "best" players to the worst teams you add revenue to the bad teams, again rewarding them for not trying. Also, you rob the fans of, potentially, four years of what that player could be by forcing him onto a lousy team. I would much rather see a star tail-back running behind a great line, than a suffering behind a lousy line playing for an owner who won't spend the money to surround him with talent. The system rewards non-effort, or more directly, it rewards those teams that have figured out that it is more profitable to lose. If you look at team profits, the most profitable are routinely the worst. MCL, you can't escape business principles. You get that deep down, only you've missapplied them. My plan doesn't bring business to the NFL, it acknowleges that its allready there. By making it costly to lose, you create an environment where everyone tries to win. If an owner drives down the value of his team by losing, someone will offer to buy it from them with a plan to gain profitability.
Note that I didn't say dump revenue sharing what I said was require that a team win some certain number of games before they qualify for revenue sharing. Again, don't reward losing. Force owners to try. And reward those small market teams that do try.
By the way, paying players per win is irrelevant to market size. If you're going to pay a player $12mm per year, instead pay him $1mm per win. If you win 12 games he gest $12mm but you also get higher attendance, play-off revenue, higher concession and parking revenue, etc. I guarantee you you won't see players tanking games to make a point. You won't see players so happy after losing. You won't see players ducking out of bounds as much. And you won't see losing teams getting as many quality players to dupe fans.
M3K has it right. Bidwell, who only issues one set of training clothes to players, is bad for the leauge.
College athletes are paid. I'd say a college education has some monetary value. I guess the argument would be should they be paid even more. I say no. Keep college athletics for collegiates. If someone has no desire to be educated, then there should be alternate leagues (semi-pro perhaps) for them. Just like there should be more trade programs for high school kids uninterested in higher learning, there should be athletic alternatives as well.
Who is trying to lose? I think you could make an argument against the Bengals up until a few years ago but are there any NFL franchises that aren't looking to win? Now baseball, the sport of free markets, actually has franchises that deliberatly avoid signing expsensive players in order to make money while remaining uncompetitive but that can be solved by linking revenue sharing to player salary caps. i.e. If you want your revenue money, pay x percent of it on player salaries.
To MCL: Who's trying to lose? You are gauging by how you’re handling this debate. The list of NFL teams who haven’t signed any, or very few, significant free agents is long. Cruise the W/L column over the last 10 years and you can find teams that “deliberately avoid signing expensive players in order to make money while remaining uncompetitive.” Niners and Saints jump to mind. Same with the NBA. Cap or no cap, some teams stay bad. The question is “why?” While we both agree on revenue sharing (but you refuse to acknowledge this), your plan creates an easy calculation on how much you have to spend to get the revenue sharing. Spend that much, or not much more, and collect your pie, accumulate the difference. There is no incentive to win, or put a winning team on the field. Link revenue sharing to wins and the calculation is harder as there’s no exact spending line. You know you have to win x games to qualify for revenue sharing, so you build a team to exceed that. This puts the emphasis on winning where it should be.
To SM: Its simple economics. If the players are creating more value than the cost of a scholarship, they should be paid accordingly, the market will set that value. I know you’re a free market fan, so this concept is right up your alley. As far as “keep college athletics for collegiates” that’s wonderfully naïve. Nothing about big time college sports is about college. The demands placed on players all but guarantees that they don’t have time for normal class loads. A big time program’s play book rivals a pro play book. With practice, gym time, and “informal” sessions, and longer seasons means there is not much time to seek higher learning, even if a student wanted to. These student-athletes are creating enormous revenue for colleges, and face the pressure that goes with that. Colleges get revenue from every aspect of the players. Pay them, its only fair. If colleges paid the players there would be a greater chance that players would stay in school, which is good for college sports. It also allows players who don’t make it in the pros to have some asset base established for their future. Its more real world. A business major can earn money while an undergraduate, why not an athlete who is directly responsible for the revenue? The quaint notion of the humble athlete squeezing in there competitions between biology class and physics is a Rockwell painting.
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