Commish For A Day: How Would You Improve Your Favorite Sport

[Young Drachma]

Rather than clog the baseball thread up with my wild ideas about improving baseball's pace through some wild experiment similar to Twenty20 cricket, I was wondering what other ways folks had ideas to 'improve' your favorite sport.

Obviously, the basketball thing where people want to add a 4 point line or make the court wider comes up semi-often. Football, of course, is at a crossroads too.

Volleyball is a sport that's dramatically changed its scoring rules and even added a position in the last few decades, improving the sport to watch.

Anyway, what sorts of things do you kick around when watching [insert sport here].

[Hammer]

Let them smash the QB/WRs again. Let them earn their money. Don't like the risks, don't play the game.

[ISiddiqui]

Soccer (I guess FIFA or IFAB Commish for a day?): I'd include 2 more Assistant Referees - behind each goal line. They specifically are looking at penalties. And strongly encourage VAR (I like how Germany does it) and goal line tech if the FAs can afford it.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by Hammer

Let them smash the QB/WRs again. Let them earn their money. Don't like the risks, don't play the game.

I agree. And, taking it a step further, let them use any growth hormones or stimulants they want. Lets make football what it really is, a gladiator sport.
Also, make rosters bigger. 53 active would be great. How about 60?

In the Phillipine semi-pro basketball leagues they have a 4 point spot on the floor.

Time for Robotic unpires in baseball. And make the roster 30 players instead of 25.

Hockey should make penalties less for fighting. I was watching a show on netflix about the fighters in hockey. They were comaring our leagues to the euro leagues where fighting is banned. The conclusion was there are a lot more cheap shots in the euro leagues. Plus guys like Hull and Gretzky said the ice opened up for them when they had a protector. makes the game more fun.

[Young Drachma]

The 4-point line could be coming to the NBA. Here’s where to put it.

[Neuqua]

Reduce the NBA season by 10 or so games.

[ColtCrazy]

I really like a couple of the CFL rules and think it would make field position more important in the NFL. All punts must be returned (with 5 yard cushion to receive). Must run punts out of the end zone.
I would let defenses get after the receivers a bit more too. The game needs to go back to being more balanced pass/run. Way too soft right now.

NBA needs to clean up its fouling. No more touch fouls or blocking fouls where the offensive player is initiating contact.

[lungs]

Football:
-Allow forward motion at the snap.
-Allow multiple players in motion at the snap.
-Allow contact on WR (but not holding) beyond five yards.
-No Active/Inactive players, all on roster are eligible to play. While we're at it, let's make the practice squad eligible too.
-If the kickoff goes through the uprights, the receiving team starts at the one yard line.
-Kickoff through end zone but missing uprights is treated as a kickoff out of bounds.

Baseball
-DH in NL
- Expand rosters to 26
- Allow minor league taxi squads or raise roster limits. No more silly DL games.
-Pitch clock.
-Three timeouts per game for meetings that do not involve a pitching change. Timeouts are for both catcher meetings and pitching coach meetings.
-Batter must keep one foot in the box.
- Computerized balls and strikes. Still have a guy standing back there calling them though.
- Eliminate divisions completely.

[Izulde]

Set the draft entry to 20 years old or 3 years of college.

Give the 8th seed in the playoffs the #8 and 9 picks in pre-lottery seeding (worst record gets the 8th pick). Equalize the percentages of picks 1-14 for getting #1 overall.

Drop the current restrictions on the supermax contract, and add a new one that limits teams to using one supermax every three years. If they trade a supermax player away in Year 1 or 2, oh well, they have to wait for Year 3 before they can use it again.

Revise the revenue sharing agreement to ensure all 30 teams at least break even.

The game itself is fine, IMO. It's the tanking and profitability issues that most need addressing.

[larrymcg421]

NBA

*Make the lottery odds start from the middle and expand outwards. the best odds go to the #8 seeds, then to the #7 seeds/1st to miss playoffs, and continue going outwards until the worst odds go to the Champion and the team with the worst record.

*Anyone who complains about rigging gets punched.

MLB

*Get rid of the DH.

*Anyone who complains about bunting to break up a no hitter gets punched.

NFL

*I'd go the opposite as many people here and say the league needs to find ways to make the sport safer, not more dangerous.

*Make the extra point even further back to encourage more 2 pt conversion attempts.

*Anyone who uses rings to determine how great a player is gets punched.

College Football

*16 Team Playoff with conference champions as automatic qualifiers and the rest of the spots filled by wildcards.

*Get rid of one year transfer rule.

*FSU fans get punched.

[Young Drachma]

For the uninitiated, Twenty20 cricket is a short form of cricket. T20 modifications applied to baseball would be a 5 inning game. What if you could limit baseball by pitches? So a manager has a number of pitches he can use. It'd be too radical for existing baseball, but I'd be intrigued as to how it'd alter things.

Or my other wild idea, where there's only one inning, but you take all 27 of your outs and then the other team bats, knowing what they need to get to win and takes their 27 outs too or until they walk you off. (B27)

It'd be a fundamental shift of the way the game gets played and I'm not convinced the latter way would be faster than a 5 inning game. (My logic: 5 inning games are considered official in a rainout situation, so why play all 9 at all?)

Tactically, it'd change the entire way the game gets played. But I'd be super curious to see it experimented with.

The last alternative format could be the Finnish baseball modification that happened in the 90s. Prior to the mid-90s, finnish baseball (Pesapallo) played a 9 inning game. But now, the game is split into two mini-games of 4 innings. If both teams split that, the 9th inning is a tiebreaker.

If you're still tied, there's a tiebreaker that happens where a runner gets placed on third and a batter hits and there are 5 pairs of those. I know international baseball already does a version of this for extra innings.

But the rules of Pesäpallo are very different than regular baseball, save for the whole "9 players/bat & ball/bases thing.

[thesloppy]

NBA:

First team to 100 wins. Seems like a simple fix to the broken end-game foul fest.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Or my other wild idea, where there's only one inning, but you take all 27 of your outs and then the other team bats, knowing what they need to get to win and takes their 27 outs too or until they walk you off. (B27)

I don't at all want to see baseball make this change, but I sure as hell want to see this implemented somewhere. It would get crazy in a hurry.

[ISiddiqui]

Well that's basically what cricket is.

[Vince, Pt. II]

I should probably watch cricket at some point. It's always intrigued me.

[jbergey22]

Id allow bumping the WRs all over the field until the ball is in the air in the NFL. I would also reduce offensive penalties by half because they many of them are too questionable and they ruin drives. I would also max out defensive pass interference at 15 yards again because they are too questionable at times to become 40 yard penalties.

I would increase the height of the basket in the NBA to 11 feet because they are just too great of athletes for 10 foot baskets. Id move the 3 point line out a couple of feet so it isnt used as much as it currently is.

Not much Id do different in baseball other than have a 3rd party(unbias) test the balls and make the umps pass certain tests each year to keep their license.

[pbot]

Originally Posted by lungs

-Batter must keep one foot in the box.

Also batter can adjust batting gloves prior to stepping into the box before the first pitch of an at bat, and that's it. You're hitting a baseball, not performing open heart surgery. No need to readjust between pitches.

[Maple Leafs]

I have a handful of suggestions.

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

I should probably watch cricket at some point. It's always intrigued me.

Only watch T20 though. Test Cricket is boring AF.

[CrimsonFox]

I would stop televising games for all sports.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by Neuqua

Reduce the NBA season by 10 or so games.

Yep, that's the only thing I'd change to be honest. The lottery is probably the other thing that needs a look, but I'd lean more towards not changing it or introducing something like a team that finishes in the top 6 lottery odds consecutive years has their chances slashed dramatically following that.

[corbes]

A round of golf should be 12 holes, not 18.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Well that's basically what cricket is.

Yes, it takes the "single inning" from T20 cricket, but it's still playing baseball rules. If it were only two bases, if home runs were worth 6 runs, if ground rule doubles were worth 4 runs and pitchers had to hand off the ball every 6 pitches, then yeah...it'd be cricket.

Not to mention the bat difference and the circular field difference.

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

I should probably watch cricket at some point. It's always intrigued me.

Originally Posted by BYU 14

Only watch T20 though. Test Cricket is boring AF.

Seconded. Indian Premier League is franchise T20 cricket. The top players make big money, too. The games have been streamed in the past via Youtube, but you can seriously search for IPL T20 on youtube and see tons of highlights.

There are playoffs and everything. The semantics are cricket can be annoying - there are way too many runs, ties are possible and there are things like "net run rate" that sound like an accounting exam and not a sport, but...just WATCHING it is a lot of fun especially in the late part of a game.

T20 is about as long as a baseball game, which was the incentive to shorten it from ODI (50 over test cricket). (Not even talking about the 5 day test cricket is of course is the slog of all slogs.)

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by corbes

A round of golf should be 12 holes, not 18.

12 seems like an arbitrary number to stop at. Why not just halve it like most par 3 courses?

[JonInMiddleGA]

First actual workable thing that came to mind was the elimination of the so-called targeting rule in CFB. I'd also do .... something ... to tweak the use of replay.

Watch an old broadcast of a game from the 70s or 80s, then watch a game from 2017. The pace of play, the very feel of what you're seeing, is completely different.

[corbes]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

12 seems like an arbitrary number to stop at. Why not just halve it like most par 3 courses?

St. Andrews was 12 holes until the mid-1800s (and 12 holes was more or less the historical standard) when renovations there created 18 holes.

[molson]

NBA:

Impost the lottery "wheel" system that was thrown around a few years ago - where a team's draft position is known years in advance for every draft and its draft position is no longer tied to W/L record. High draft picks are such a valuable asset in the NBA, I think they should be more fairly distributed and can't be "earned" just by sucking.

Get rid of divisions. 2 big conferences, top 8 in each make the playoffs.

MLB:

154 game season, 7 game division series. Keep the 1-game play-in game, but if you win your division or win that play-in game, you have to lose a full 7-game series before you go home.

I was going to say limit days off in the post-season, but I'm OK with 2 days off for travel days in a 7 game series, which I think has been the norm since at least the 50s. That's more time off than the regular season, but I think those days actually add suspense and doesn't screw up the pitching dynamics that much. 2 days off in a 5 game series sucks, but we'd be getting rid of 5-game series....

UFC:

Add more specific stakes to more fights. For example, the winner of a random Fight Pass Show fight gets a spot on a future PPV main card. More specifically defined #1 Contender fights, where the winner is guaranteed to get a title shot (and the champion must vacate if he refuses that fight). Maybe even secondary titles in weight classes that can signify who the tangible #1 contender is. And then there could be official #1 contender fights for THAT title. "Loser leaves the UFC" fights. Anything to help add context to the sea of UFC undercard fights.

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Volleyball is a sport that's dramatically changed its scoring rules and even added a position in the last few decades, improving the sport to watch.

In volleyball changes of the rules are so back and forth from year to year (changing a rule, the changing back a year later), nobody in the game still knows what the exact rules are today. (But these two major ones were two generations ago, 20 or so years.)

But that isn't really an answer to the question at hand.
Maybe make it so to not have rules changed and then changed back a year later? (which technically still isn't an answer to the question either. )

[Toddzilla]

As commissioner of Major League Baseball I heretofor:

• Expand rosters to 29 players, 23 of which are active for any given series.
• Allow trading of draft picks.
• Declare ALL unsigned amateur talent - with the exception of professional players 18 years and older - only eligible to play MLB via the draft.
• Robo-umps to call balls and strikes.
• Eliminate inter-league play
• Reduce the season to 148 games
• Clarify that using instant-replay for safe/out calls on a base *cannot* overturn a call if the baserunner loses contact with the base for a fraction of a second (see: idiot Nationals catcher in game 5 of the NLDS)
• Dramatically increase the minimum salary for minor league players.
• Tighten the standards for the manufacturing of baseballs to improve year-to-year consistency.
• Eliminate publicly funded stadium construction. 100% of all costs for building new stadiums or repairing current ones must be privately funded.
• The wild-card play-in winner only gets one home game in the 5 game division series

[Toddzilla]

For NCAA Football, make the Big 5 conference championship games the de-facto first round of a 16 team playoff. Fill the other 6 spots with other conference champions or whomever.

[JPhillips]

NFL - All 53 players are active each Sunday

[EagleFan]

NHL
- 3 points for a regulation win.
- Either eliminate regular season OT and go with 1 point for a tie or change the OT rule so you don't automatically get a point for making OT but instead make it 2 points for a win in the 5 minute OT and 1 point for a win in the shootout. So you get nothing for losing and the longer it takes you to win the fewer points you get.

NFL
- Kickoff from the 50. No running start for the coverage team, they must be "on the line". You kick it out of the end zone and the other team starts from their 35. If the receiving team downs it in the endzone they start on their 15. Onside must go 5 yards. Receiving team's "line" is the 40. Kick out of bounds and the receiving team gets the ball at the 50. Non of the BS player standing out of bounds touches the ball makes the kick out of bounds, if the receiving team is out of bounds when they touch it, they get the ball there.