Our Assistant Commissioners of Everything have already made their suggestions to fix baseball, the NFL and the NBA the last few days in This Space. (Although the biggest issue, the possibility of a baseball work stoppage in 2027, didn’t come up in Part I of our series. Maybe the readers who offered suggestions to improve the game figured those involved likely wouldn’t pay attention to labor relations advice anyway.)
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And so we have one more batch of ideas, from the readers who responded to my request from last month. The place to start Part III of this series probably should be the biggest pet peeve many fans seem to have, the opaque answer to what should be an obvious question: “Where can I see the game???”
Yup, streaming platforms might be the chosen vehicle for a certain demographic. Just not this one.
“All tv sports must be on regular networks,” David Jones wrote. “No more + or only streaming.”
Tim Bowman of Laguna Niguel elaborated, presumably speaking for many others: “Games and events should be only on network television or the dedicated channel available through providers. Being a fan of many sports, I would have to subscribe to at least four other streaming networks to see games or events. I missed some NBA playoffs and I can’t watch the NASCAR race today because they chose profit over fans.”
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An aside: It has been my feeling all along that the issue isn’t necessarily streamers showing games to a national audience, but their demand for exclusivity that shuts out the channels that regularly air a team’s games, whether cable or over-the-air. Thus, the question above, which doesn’t always have a concise answer.
Then again, the streamers who have reached agreements with the NFL adhere to that league’s insistence on making sure games are on over-the-air channels in the participating teams’ home markets. Why not do that for other sports as well?
Ask Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber how well that exclusivity has worked. MLS’ original deal with Apple TV took broadcast rights away from local outlets, and after viewership by all unoffficial accounts suffered, the league and streamer reworked their deal and opened the games up to all Apple TV subscribers, rather than just those who bought the MLS pass.
And the league is still missing out, because potential fans have to be exposed to the product.
Moving on, Cindy Curti proposed that the NHL should “return to three officials on the ice instead of four, one referee and two linesmen … Hockey players skate so fast nowadays that the officials often times get in the way.”
And, in response to the original impetus for the change to two refs and two linesmen, she proposes that the linesmen also be empowered to call penalties.
George Conlisk had his own suggestion for the NHL: “Penalty for fighting. First player to drop his gloves gets a 3 game suspension. Ten game suspension for 2nd fight of the season. NFL linemen beat each other up and very seldom does it start a fight. NHL players get hit and immediately they want to fight each other. I think the fights ruin the game.”
Somehow I have the feeling there would be a lot of resistance to that suggestion within the sport, even though fighting is nowhere near as prevalent in the NHL as it once was.
The other penalty that exists in hockey, and maybe doesn’t get used enough, is the embellishment call for taking a dive. Curtis Hacker of Sherman Oaks noted that embellishment could be used in the NBA and soccer as well – and in fact, VAR helped reverse a call in the current World Cup, when a yellow card for a foul was changed to a yellow card for diving.
But back to hockey: “Unfortunately it’s not called often enough,” he wrote, and “there is more (and) more of it happening. And if I were the NHL Commissioner, I’d add more teeth to it by making it a double minor instead of just 2 minutes. That would put a stop to it fast.”
ALSO READ: Readers react: How they’d change Major League Baseball
Conlisk also has some ideas for college sports, although the way things are going any changes would be challenged in court anyway.
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“Realign schools geographically so areas can take some pride in West, North, East or South,” he wrote, and I can’t think of anyone that couldn’t get behind that. The major conference maps are insane … but Fox and ESPN like ’em, so there we are.
“Also cut down on … transfers,” he added. “Some athletes change school every year for (four) years. So why should fans/alumni get attached to any player? Allow two years of transfer. If the athlete doesn’t know where he wants to go after the (second) transfer then let him start paying for his own tuition.”
(Then again, if that athlete – and maybe it’s a “she” instead of “he” – can swing a big enough NIL deal, that’s probably not that big an issue.)
Les Birken of Northridge wrote that if he were in charge of college football scheduling, “I would mandate that no game start after 6:00 PM local time. And If I had control over NCAA basketball schedules, no game would start after 8:00 PM local time.”
And he didn’t say it but I will: It would also be nice if fans knew the starting time of a game more than 10 days before it takes place. That’s my pet peeve.
Marc Levine would have multiple national champions in Division I. “I’d break up the (Football Bowl Subdivision) into 3 subgroups,” he wrote, which isn’t that far from our own Super League concept, though he would group the Big Ten, SEC and maybe the ACC as full conferences in the top tier, followed by a secondary tier (“Pac-12, Mountain West, Big 12, etc.) and the group of conferences that make up the Football Championship Subdivision (previously known as Division I-AA).
With that setup, he said, you wouldn’t have, say, an undefeated Hawaii team served up on a platter to someone like Georgia in a first-round CFP matchup. “In my example,” he wrote, “Hawaii can stay in the secondary group and play for that championship rather than get exposed against a supergroup team.”
He didn’t mention promotion and relegation. That’s our concept.
Some other suggestions:
Rob Hutchinson would decree that “NO sport … from peewee to pro … may allow a team without a WINNING record to go to a playoff!” He also wrote that with athletes and skills having evolved sufficiently, the basketball rim should be raised, and tennis racquets “should have limits on materials/strings so they can’t be served/hit beyond a reasonable speed…same for bats, pickleball paddles, golf clubs, etc.”
From John Frink of Laguna Niguel: “My wish for all sports Is keep all politics out of sports. Fans watch games to escape everyday life, not to listen to political statements. Keep sports about sports!”
Jeff Teal of Los Alamitos has issues with the noise levels of televised games, and particularly instances when the crowd noise overwhelms the voices of those calling the game: “I usually watch programs and games with volume at 22-30 setting,” he wrote, “but often the crowd noise is overwhelming the commentators and if I want to understand what they’re saying, I have to turn the volume up to 45-70 … The only broadcasts that have gotten it right are Dodger games on SportsnetLA, NHL playoffs and NCAA beach volleyball on ESPN.”
Ray Allebaugh of Seal Beach shares my gripe about giveaway nights and not having enough for everyone on hand. He recalled a Ducks’ game earlier this year where the PA guy plugged a future giveaway promotion. “Then the announcer said ‘limited to the first 5,000 in attendance.’ The guy beside me stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled ‘cheap (so-and-sos)!!’ Which is, of course, the correct answer.”
Oh, and as for replay reviews, I’ve long believed that if you can’t find conclusive evidence to overturn a call in a minute, there’s no sense going any longer. Stephen Peeler of Laguna Niguel would cut that in half, for all replays in all sports: “If it can’t be determined in 30 seconds then it clearly is not ‘clear, indisputable, and obvious video evidence’ (MLB); or ‘incontrovertible visual evidence’ (NFL); or ‘convincing beyond all doubt; (NCAA); or ‘visual evidence must show the original call was incorrect’ (NBA).”
Glenn Olsen of Riverside would go further, and he’s getting the next-to-last word here:
“If I were the commissioner of all sports, there would be no challenges of any official rulings. Games are played by humans subject to human error. Play the game on the field. If machines are going to judge the play, maybe they should also do the playing. AI could play entire seasons in a matter of seconds thereby saving the cost of building stadiums, keeping drunk patrons off the road and trimming outrageous cable bills.”
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Uh, AI isn’t going to write the stories too, right?