This is Part 3 of a multi-part story that explains the nature of stadium drama in the United States of America from a pro-sports but liberal perspective. This will likely end up with 4 parts unless more solutions I have not yet thought or heard of are proposed in comments that I feel I must address (in a proper post, not in just a comment reply). Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here.
We like sports, and we want to have sports in our cities. We don’t like bad stadium deals that end up giving billionaires even more money. We’re afraid that attempts to force good stadium deals will result in teams finding a large city somewhere else that will give them a bad-deal stadium that will make the billionaires their money and our city gets left without a team. What can we do about this?
Today we are going to discuss a few different ideas for changing how sports works in the United States. I should first put this very important disclaimer here: None of these ideas, even if I declare them good, are obtainable with any sort of ease. Inertia is a powerful force, and billionaires see little reason to change the current system. Additionally, conservatives and libertarians will likely go nuts at any attempt to legislate any of these solutions, and some international sports organizations have been known to punish countries that “interfere” with how the sport works in their country. On the other hand, no ideas mentioned here (at least in my original plans) are mutually exclusive, and we can thus desire all of them if we like the implementations.
I will discuss two topics today: stadium standards legislation, and moving US sports to a Europe-style club system. The final piece of this series will discuss the most useful and complete idea: engaging in community-owned teams (a.k.a. the “Green Bay Packers” model). Okay, that might give the game away as to what I will be preferring. But I do feel other options should be looked at first, and that’s our goal today.
Stadium Standards Legislation. The first idea is the simplest. Write minimum standards for stadium deals, that give communities at least a certain percentage of control, revenue, etc. into federal law (or perhaps into league rules). The reason to do this is that a threat to move is less valid if you get the same deal everywhere else. This is arguably the easiest to accomplish, as all we have to do is pass something through both Houses of Congress… oh, right.
But even if we do this, this one has some pitfalls. One is that this legislation can easily be perverted to force bad stadium deals onto cities as well. Another is that owners might decide to quit owning teams and overall quality of the sport will go down, etc. A third is more and more teams might start moving outside the US – this will only work a few, as there are only a handful of valid Canadian options, and every other country provides substantial barriers to teams in US leagues moving. Doing this by league rules might work, but the leagues are also controlled by these billionaires and have no reason to pass this, plus league rules can always be evaded with sufficient money and power, so I would expect a lot of exceptions to quickly crop up and for it to ultimately not be useful.
Conclusion: Stadium standards legislation looks feasible at first glance, but in actuality isn’t likely to be very effective.
European-style club-model sports. Let me explain what this is. We saw a brief taste of this in Part 1 when I gave hints as to the workings of the Barclay’s Premier League. I’ll stick with the English Football (soccer) Association to provide the example for how this works. You can assume it works similarly in most of the world for soccer and other sports (though US sports are not completely unique in not doing this), even if actual mechanics may be slightly different. (For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to “forget” the fact that the Premier League and a few lower leagues contain Welsh clubs, even though there’s also a Welsh League One. It’s not necessary to the point and will just confuse the issue.)
There are 20 teams in the Premier League. Every year, the worst three teams in the standings are kicked out of the league and replaced by the top three teams in the English Football Championship for the next season (specifically, the top two teams, and the winner of a playoff bracket held between teams 3-6). The three teams kicked out then join the English Football Championship for the next season. In the EFC, the top three teams (as mentioned above) leave to join the Premier League. The bottom three teams as kicked out and join the English Football League One. The top 3 teams in the Football League One (by similar determination) replace the relegated teams in the EFC, and so on down the line. Eventually the leagues start to split into regional zones as you proceed into the semi-pro and amateur ranks. (Yes, amateur clubs can become professional and vice-versa). The top four levels are considered fully professional, then it’s murkier once you get past the Football League Two.
This is used throughout all sports more or less in Europe, but most famous in soccer. I’m going to have to take each of our five major team sports separately here, because the mechanics of each sport are so different. In general, the benefit to doing this, is that it allows every city to come up with their own teams. Threats to move are much mitigated when cities already have teams they support. The downside is that this does tend to result in inequalities within the clubs if not managed carefully. (Remember how the BPL has had the same 4 teams win the league 22 of the last 23 years, though this year might make it 22 of 24.)
First, I will make a point: All five sports in the US currently use a draft. You cannot use a draft in this system. No top pick wants to automatically go to a lower division club, and if you don’t include those clubs they will never have a chance to get decent. This must be taken into consideration. Adopting this model thus implies removing the draft.
Soccer: Absolutely should be doing this. MLS needs to get a promotion-relegation system going. Encourage teams to play better in a way everywhere else in the world is. You lose the draft, but it’s not like there are big stars coming out of college often anyway that other teams are made substantially better by. There is competitive balance in MLS, but it’s at the cost of being terrible in international competition, for instance the awful record of MLS teams in the CONCACAF Champions League. The draft can easily be axed entirely and clubs can get more freedom to sign who they need. A lot of signings in MLS are international and avoid this process. Get every city a team that has a chance of promotion and get the system rolling out its promotions and relegations. I’d start going to games here in San Diego, even if they weren’t MLS, if they had a chance of becoming MLS.
Football: This is likely not to work well in football, sadly. Why? Quarterbacks. There already are not enough legitimate quarterbacks in the NFL that are capable of leading their team through the playoffs, and it’s evident that while a quarterback is not a sufficient condition for victory, it is a necessary one in the vast, vast majority of cases in today’s game. Lower division teams will not have quality quarterbacks and will just result in a lot of poor-quality football that no one cares about, and teams without quarterbacks that get promoted to NFL-Premier are unlikely to stay long unless they get lucky with one they sign. It’s likely to consistently draw worse than the college game. (While we could discuss the problems with the college game, that’s a separate post, as are some other compelling issues in sports that I may get to eventually, and even fixing it or reducing its scope is unlikely to help here.) Plus, the NFL Draft and its strict salary controls make it the most competitive league in the world. It is the easiest to go from last-to-first in and first-to-last in. Promotion and relegation would destroy this. This would cause far more harm than good in football.
Baseball: This also isn’t going to work in baseball. Baseball has more competitive imbalance than football, in that it’s harder to go from last-to-first. Conversely, however, winning individual games is easier. The worst teams still win 60 games most years, and the best still lose 60. Because of this, while the talent gap is there, it’s not extreme, and a promotion system might make it more extreme. That’s not the real reason, however. The real reason is our delicate pitching arms. Currently, a pitcher works his way through the minor league system. Minor league coaches are under control of the major league club and are aware they are building the young pitcher’s arm to become an effective major league pitcher. Thus, they will not overuse the pitcher, and they will do what they need to do to strengthen all of their arms. But if a minor league club had full control over their pitchers, and especially if they were involved in a promotion or relegation fight, they’re going to stretch their pitchers far beyond what they should. A lot of young arms can get overtaxed and ruined, and pitching quality at all levels will quickly degrade. I am not sure if European baseball is using a promotion system (I have not been able to get confirmation from anyone in Europe on this point) but if it is, it should stop doing so, again for this reason right here. Baseball can’t do this, at all.
Basketball: You might expect me to say this won’t work, because the draft is important, etc. I’m actually going to say this model WILL work in basketball, however. We already have extreme differences in good and bad teams (look at Golden State (7 losses in 70 games) and Philadelphia (9 wins in 71 games)), this is unlikely to be made worse by promotion, and in fact might help on the bottom end as teams like Philadelphia will try to tank less as they’ll need to win to stay up, not lose to get a better shot in the draft lottery. Actually, the whole concept of “draft lottery” illustrates the issue – the NBA acknowledges that the team with the fewest wins might not actually be the team in need of the first pick. Doing away with the draft entirely, letting teams sign who they will, while keeping the salary cap intact, might be a better option, and once that’s done, you can then instigate promotion and relegation with relative ease. I would cut the NBA proper to 28 clubs – 4 divisions of 7 – and have a lower level that, while it may start with just a handful (the 2 bottom teams of the “current” NBA, a few expansion teams, and the D-League teams which would become independent – it’s not like the D-League is that useful anyway, and loans can be used to handle stashing players if necessary), eventually grows into a much larger system of 28 itself, and we can continue growing. I would, however, not propose that amateur clubs be invited into the pyramid like in Europe. Keep it all professional, but let every major city in the US and Canada that wants one have a professional basketball team within this system. (Disclaimer: I don’t actually watch nearly as much basketball as these other sports. I may have something wrong here. But it’s how I see things.)
Hockey: Hockey is interesting. It has a minor league system like baseball, and that helps build ice stamina, passing accuracy, and other key skills, but I’m not convinced that you can’t get this going independent as well. There’s certainly not a compelling interest that needs to be protected like development of pitching arms. On the other hand, there seems to be a pretty nice competitive balance in the NHL that might be disturbed if you remove the draft and start having teams not play against top competition. (At the time of writing, every team has at least 26 wins/63 points in 72 matches played.) I would have to say that it “might” work here. More workable than baseball or football, more difficult to work than soccer or basketball, and I’m overall not sure.
Conclusion: You can and that this point probably should use the club model in soccer and basketball. You may or may not be able to use it in hockey. You cannot use it in baseball or football without doing severe damage to the sport.
Overall, these ideas have their benefits, and have their drawbacks. Each sport is a little different in how they act, and thus must be a little different in how they are handled with solutions. Soccer doesn’t really have the huge stadium problem, as for now they seem to be content either sharing stadiums or playing in smaller, less expensive places. The club model is a likely effective solution for basketball. The stadium standards solution might help for football and baseball, but it might not.
Next in this series: I will talk about having the communities themselves organize and own the teams, and how they fit in and out of these other solutions. I may also discuss a possible solution mentioned in this article’s comments.