I got up early this morning to watch a soccer game. Like super early. Well, kind of. 6:00 is early to get up and watch a game isn't it? Over the past couple of years, I have started to take an interest in soccer. The reason I was up so early is because the team that I have started to root for, Tottenham Hotspurs, was playing against their rivals, Arsenal. The North London derby is their big rivalry game. I don't know how I came to like them, I just watched a handful of games and liked the style of play and that's how it came to be. Living here in the states, you just kind of pick a team and go for it I suppose. As I was watching the game, I thought of a few things that would make the four major sports better here in the states.
A running clock is a great thing. You know that each half is going to be about forty five minutes. I say about because there is always stoppage time, but it's only ever between one and five minutes. Including half time, you know that the game will be over in two hours. Now take a look at sports here in the states. You have football games that go for three and a half hours. Baseball is about three hours. Same goes for hockey. I'm not sure about basketball because I don't watch it. I'll guess three hours again. And with the exception of hockey, the pace of play is slow. Hockey is always moving, and the rest of the sports have periods of slow to no action. Obviously there is no clock in baseball, but they have been toying with a pitch clock as well as keeping batters in the batter's box to speed things along. I love baseball, so I don't notice the slow pace, but apparently that is a common complaint. The games are no longer than football games. A running clock in the slower sports like football and basketball would be great. I know that there are substitutions, but you can do that without stopping play. Look at hockey. Line changes happen on the fly and basketball could do that. There's enough time in between plays in football where guys can run off the field. Maybe at a certain point in the game, if the score differential is so large, you just don't stop the clock.
A great example of a running clock scenario: I just stopped on ESPN and West Virginia and Baylor are playing right now. There's 1:06 left in the game, West Virginia is up by 12. They have stopped play to review if the ball went out of bounds and who touched it last. This game is already over. Teams can't score twelve points in a minute. Let the clock run, if a team is up by fifteen or more with five minutes left in the game. Baylor is continually fouling West Virginia players so they have to shoot free throws and Baylor will get the ball back. Another option is if a team is down by fifteen and continually fouls the other team to get the ball back, the team that is winning gets to keep the ball after shooting the free throws. The game has now ended and that last 1:06 of play time lasted about six minutes. It shouldn't take that long. That is the glory of the running clock.
Relegation is wonderful. Instead of having every team at the same level, you have two leagues and two championships. Although, would it be a good thing to be the best of the worse league? I'm not sure, but at least you've won something? You have division one which has the best teams and division two which has teams that are not as good. At the end of each year, the worst teams from the top division are relegated to the lesser division and the best of the worst are transferred up. Make sense? That's the basic concept of it. I think that one thing that it would help is teams wouldn't tank as often. You see teams tanking to get higher draft picks, but if you are trying not to get relegated to the lower division, you would have something to play for. The teams that are in the lower division would then get higher draft picks and could continue to develop their team and talent. All the while, the top teams could continue to win and keep their fans happy. Think about how boring it is to watch the best teams continue to beat up on the worst teams because they are in the same division. Now, imagine if just the best of the best of your favorite sport played each other more each year. The competition would be better. The games would be more exciting. It's not really fun to watch a weekend baseball series when a team playing for the playoffs goes up against a team that was out of contention at the end of July. Relegation would make games more meaningful throughout the course of the season, not just once or twice because the team in second place comes into town against the top team and it's the last series of the regular season. Professional athletes are egotistical, and I doubt anyone would want to be relegated to a lesser league.
Those are just two thoughts I had while watching the game today. It would add some intrigue to our favorite sports. The sports that have hit a rut and from time to time, as much as we love them, can bore us. I don't even watch basketball and even I know that the Golden State Warriors have a 98% chance of winning the NBA championship. We all know that in the NFL, the Super Bowl is going to come down to about three or four teams. Baseball is the same. The Royals, the Nationals, the Giants are all safe bets when it comes to the World Series. Hockey is a little bit more of a crap shoot, but you can't go wrong thinking the Blackhawks, Capitals, or Rangers have the best chance of winning the Stanley Cup. I know that pace of play is a big topic among fans of sports right now, but one could make an argument that talent and competition are an even bigger topic that should be explored. Another topic for another day is contracting teams to make the sport better. But that's a whole other post.
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