12/22/24
July 17, 2002
If you were Commissioner of all Sports for one day, what three changes would you make?: Brad Townshend of the Dallas Morning News asked this question to a whole host of sports-related people, some rich and famous, some not. Included are the answers from Jerry Tarkanian, Mark Cuban, former NFL commish Joe Foss, and many more. What do you think? What would you do?
posted by Ufez Jones to general at 03:53 PM - 10 comments
Alex Rodriguez says: • The first 5,000 kids who show up every day get in free. Well let's see. Let's give them cheap tickets. Say the cheapest in any park is $10. That's $50,000 per game, assuming no price breaks for buying a block. Times 162 games per year, that equals 8,100,000. Rodriguez makes $25M per year, lets lop off 40% for taxes, leaving him with a cool 15M. Minus the price of the tickets and we have a balance of $6.9M. So Rodriguez has it within his power to single handedly accomplish what he thinks is the most important improvement that can be made. I will join the A-Rod fan club if he does it. What I would do is apply Hockey's shorthanded play rule to football and basketball. Penalty and your team is down a man for a set period of time or downs. I would consolidate all the alphabet soup Boxing divisions into one unified, world-wide organization, to determine the true champion in every weight class. And I would have Congress (who gave baseball its anti-trust exemption in the first place) appoint the Commisioner of Baseball and charge him or her with considering the fan's interests when making decisions. Oh, one more. I would make every baseball player today research who Curt Flood is and write a short, one-page, double-spaced report about him that will be graded by me.
posted by vito90 at 04:16 PM on July 17, 2002
a-rod also says "fix the competitive balance in baseball." Of course he has it in his power to do that too. A-rod could put the Union on it's ear by offering to give a % of his income to the Expos.
posted by djacobs at 04:20 PM on July 17, 2002
I would limit the number of college sports scholarships a program could award each year to the same number of students who graduated the year before. It's an old proposal of Bobby Knight's, actually, adn I think it is just about the only thing which would return college sports to college students. If I had time after that, I'd eliminate the DH, and restore my daughter's school's Cross Country program.
posted by outside counsel at 05:28 PM on July 17, 2002
I asked this same question around the table tonight, and had one interesting reply. She said that after cutting all professional salaries in half, to make sure that coaches get paid more than the athletes to foster respect. An interesting take, I think. It would make things very different.
posted by rebeuthl at 10:28 PM on July 17, 2002
If I was commissioner of baseball I would: 1. Cut the number of teams. 2. Do away with the dh. 3. Do away with interleague play. 4. No fake grass. 5. Go back to day time playoffs and double headers during the season. 6. Quit trying to mold baseball into an mtv/wrestling/football type of sport and fall back on its own strengths. If I was the the NFL head I would do away with the end of year allstar game. Pointless and Godawful boring.
posted by justgary at 01:13 AM on July 18, 2002
I would change the nba draft so that college players were not elligible. If you wanted to put your name in the nba draft you have to either go straight from high school, or enter the ndbl. There would be no set amount of years you had to spend in the ndbl, so you could enter the draft when you were ready. PLUS if you go undrafted, you could return to the minors.
posted by corpse at 07:19 AM on July 18, 2002
Check that, college seniors would be allowed in the draft as well.
posted by corpse at 07:21 AM on July 18, 2002
1. Eliminate the DH from Baseball 2. Contraction: Dump Tampa Bay, Florida, Milwaukee (in honor of Bud), Detroit, Kansas City and Montreal. Re-intro the players into other teams via an expansion draft Then... 3. Playoff Baseball: Go back to two divisions per league and get rid of that damn wild card. And justgary, so in agreement w/you, get back to those day-time playoff games. Nothing like getting out of school to rush home and catch the LCS games. Baseball at it's current state is just getting out of hand.
posted by rosey8810 at 10:24 AM on July 18, 2002
Having read that, is Pat Summerall back on the bottle?
posted by yerfatma at 08:47 PM on July 18, 2002
My favorite answers actually came from Pro Golfer Justin Leonard. He said: • In college football, I would institute a playoff system involving eight teams. That leaves three games to decide the national champion. The games would be played at neutral sites during December, with the final game played on New Year's Day. • I would contract the major league baseball season to 100 games. I feel that 162 games is too long, and many times the division winners are decided well before the end of the season. • In the NBA, I would do away with the "star system" of officiating. I would clearly define what constitutes a foul, and apply that to all players at all times. Pragmatic and necessary. This should rile up some good comments.