Another Great Idea

Last Wednesday, the National Football League announced changes to the Pro Bowl starting this season. There will be multiple changes including eliminating kickoffs and adding two-minute warnings at the end of the first and third quarters. The most prominent change is dropping the long-established NFC and AFC affiliations. Instead of selecting players based on conference, the players for the two teams will be selected by a fantasy-type draft. This change is similar to my suggestion for the Pro Bowl as part of my proposal for improving the NFL and is similar to the format adopted by the NHL several years ago for its All-Star Game.

To be honest, my suggested change to the Pro Bowl was necessitated by my proposal for dropping the AFC and NFC. I am hopeful that the actual changes to the Pro Bowl will foreshadow a future elimination of the two historical conferences. Perhaps changing the Pro Bowl format is just the first step in a major reorganization of the league.

I previously never got around to fleshing out the details of the last component of my NFL proposal with addressed managing the broadcast rights for NFL games, To finally finish up my NFL proposal, I am going to write about this last part (for now at least). Below is a summary of the first six points followed by the seventh.

NFL Proposal Summary

1. Eliminating Conferences: Drop the NFC and AFC and change from the eight four-team divisions to four eight-team divisions by merging the divisions with the same direction names
2. Realignment: Rotate Baltimore, Indianapolis and Miami to form more geographically-correct divisions
3. Relocation: Not a fixed proposal, but the suggested divisional alignment would be better able to handle future relocation of teams
4. Regular Season Schedule: Teams would have 16- or 17-game schedules composed of two games versus each divisional opponent plus two or three games against teams from other divisions
5. Playoff Tournament: Fixed-bracket postseason tournament with semifinal winners continuing to receive the George Halas and Lamar Hunt Trophies
6. Pro Bowl: Players for the two Pro Bowl teams are selected from a pre-established pool in a televised fantasy-style draft - Done

7. Television Schedule

The current contacts with the various television networks would have to be adapted to handle the first part of my NFL proposal that eliminates the AFC and NFC. The two contracts for broadcasting NFL games on Sundays at 1 PM and 4:30 PM are based around the two conferences. The Fox Broadcasting Company currently owns the rights to televise NFC games while CBS has the rights to the AFC games. For inter-conference games, the broadcast rights are based on conference of the visiting team. There are separate television contracts for the time slot on Thursdays at 8:30 PM (currently held by the NFL Network), Sundays at 8:30 PM (currently held by NBC), and Mondays at 8:30 PM (currently held by ESPN).

Under my plan, the networks would basically buy the rights to the currently established time slots. The networks would also be allocated a certain number of points for each season. Using these pools of points, there would be an auction for the television rights to each regular-season game. I think there would probably have to be a separate auction to establish the broadcast schedule for postseason games.

In regards to broadcast scheduling, I would also establish a rule that teams located in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones could not be scheduled for regular season games starting at one o'clock Eastern. I do not think scheduling West Coast teams for early kickoffs is fair for the players traveling across the country or the fans of those teams. Unfortunately, there would have to be an exception to this rule for the playoffs since there are a limited number of playoff games and my tournament format forces teams to travel across country.

Shiny Trophies

It is the start of summer, so of course I am writing about the National Football League. In fact, this will be the fifth part of my now not-so-modest and seemly never-ending proposal for revamping the league. To quickly recap, the first part proposed combining the existing eight four-team divisions into four eight-team divisions. The second part discussed realignment and the possible relocation of teams. The third part covered the postseason tournament, and the fourth part suggested changing the Pro Bowl. This part will return to the topic of the postseason.

In current sports news, the Miami Heat defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in the fifth game of the NBA Finals on Thursday night to win the championship of the National Basketball Association. The week before, the Los Angeles Kings defeated the New Jersey Devils in the sixth game of the Stanley Cup Finals to win the National Hockey League championship. I think the difference in the importance of the actual trophy related to these championships is significant. In fact, I would say the Stanley Cup is the most important trophy of the four major professional team sports. Hockey players do not just think about winning the NHL championship. They grow up specifically dreaming about lifting Lord Stanley's Cup. I would argue that the next most important championship trophy is the Vince Lombardi Trophy which is award to the winner of the Super Bowl and thus the NFL championship. Third on the list would be the NBA's Larry O'Brien Trophy, the image of which is seen on the court and as a patch on the players' jerseys during the Finals. This trophy has been made famous by basketball players trying to make out with it. Bringing up the rear would be Major League Baseball's championship trophy. I can not even remember the name of that trophy or exactly what it looks like. (Wikipedia tells me that is the Commissioner's Trophy and looks like this.)

The important of the championship trophy varies between leagues and sports. A few other trophies come to mind that are highly important to their leagues. Another playoff tournament that is primarily know by the name of the championship trophy is the Grey Cup. The Grey Cup is awarded to the champion of the Canadian Football League. Perhaps placing a ton of importance on physical trophies is a particularly Canadian phenomenon. The glass football that is awarded to the team winning the National Championship Game of the Bowl Championship Series has now almost moved into iconic status. Although, I had to search Wikipedia to find that it is named the AFCA National Championship Trophy which is not quite as catchy as the simply-named Stanley Cup. The tennis championship at Wimbledon starts this week, and I have always thought that the plate awarded to the women's champion is particularly notable as a championship trophy. Wikipedia tells me that the silver (and not gold, as I previously thought) dish is a salver which is a type of serving (a pun?) tray and is named the Venus Rosewater Dish. Of course, the most famous of championship trophies are probably the Olympic medals.

While championship trophies can be important to their sport, much less important are the trophies awarded to conference and division champions. In the NHL, the Prince of Wales Trophy is awarded to the Eastern Conference champion while the Clarence Campbell Bowl is awarded to the Western Conference champion. Teams that win these trophies generally avoid touching them because it is considered bad luck towards the team's ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup.

After continuing to ruminate about my proposal for the NFL postseason tournament, I came to see what I thought were two somewhat minor issues which could easily be solved with one solution. The first is the clunky monikers which I gave to the two games leading up to the Super Bowl. Going off the directional names of the four divisions, these games would be called something like the North/South and East/West Semifinals, and the names would switch annually based on that year's divisional match-up. While not as bad as the AFCA National Championship Trophy, those are definitely not attractive names. The second issue was that by eliminating the NFL's two conferences, I had also eliminated the trophies for the champions of those two conferences. The straightforward solution is to keep the two trophies, and name the two semifinal games after the trophies. Not so simple is how to implement this idea.

Losing the two trophies in question would also mean losing some of the game's history since those trophies are named in honor of two the greatest statesmen of the game. The Lamar Hunt Trophy is awarded to the winner of the AFC Championship Game and is named after Lamar Hunt who was the first owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. The George Halas Trophy is awarded to the winner of the NFC Championship Game and is named for George Halas who was the longtime coach and even longer-time owner of the Chicago Bears. As far as I know, NFL players have no qualms about touching those championship trophies. By the way, the NFL recently had the look of the two trophies overhauled.

Deciding to keep these two trophies presents a bit of a problem since there would no longer be conferences and thus no conference championships. Dubbing the two games the George Halas Semifinal Game and Lamar Hunt Semifinal Game seems simple enough. The associated brackets could become the Halas bracket and the Hunt bracket. However, which game and bracket should be the named for Halas and which for Hunt?

Here is where my proposal gets wonderfully complicated. Since Hunt is closely associated with the Chiefs and Halas with the Bears, it seems logical that those teams should be able to play for the appropriate trophy if reasonably possible. If only one of those two teams make the playoffs or if both teams make the playoffs but are in opposite brackets, then the solution is simple. The Bears play in the Halas bracket, and the Chiefs play in the Hunt bracket. If the teams are in the same bracket, the naming would follow the higher-seeded team. If the teams have the same seed or if neither team makes the playoffs, then another rule is needed. In these cases, I would take the two top seeds from each bracket and evaluate the number of times those teams have won each trophy. I would apply a bit of redaction since the trophies have only been awarded since 1984. For instance, if the Dallas Cowboys who have won the NFC championship eight times and the San Francisco 49ers who have won the NFC five times are the top seeds in the same bracket, that would be the Halas bracket. If the Pittsburgh Steelers who have won eight AFC championships and the New England Patriots who have seven AFC championships are in the same bracket, then that would be the Hunt bracket. If there are ties in the championship counts, then the rule would move down to the second-seeded teams and so on.

This ends the fifth part of my proposal for revamping the NFL. There is however still one more part to be written which deals with the giant contracts between the NFL and the television networks. It will also cover when and on which network games are broadcast.

A Modest Proposal, Part IV

After several months, I am returning to my quite immodest proposal concerning the National Football League. I have three previous posts on this topic. The first post proposed eliminating the two legacy conferences. The second part covered realigning the divisions and handling the relocation of teams. In the third part, I discussed changes to the postseason. Why am I returning to this topic now? At the end of the third post, I promised an "innovative approach to the Pro Bowl". Unfortunately, my basic approach was recently co-opted by the National Hockey League for its All-Star Game starting this season. Some people are already proposing this format be extended to other leagues including the NFL.

6. Pro Bowl

One problem with my proposal to eliminate the AFC and NFC is the makeup of the rosters for the Pro Bowl, the NFL's annual all-star game. Each NFL season, the best players from the two conferences are selected to play in the Pro Bowl. Without conferences, a new process would be needed for picking the players for the game. In the NHL's new process, two captains will first be selected, one for each team. Those two captains will then pick the other players for their team.

My thought for the Pro Bowl is very similar in that there would be a televised draft for the game. Instead of the rosters being selected by two players designated as captains, I would suggest that the coaches for the two teams do the drafting. I have three suggestions for which coaches should be selected. One suggestion would be to follow the current process of selecting the coaches from the teams that lose the two semifinal games, but that would not be possible due to timing. Coaches from teams that lost earlier in the postseason tournament would have to be used as was done this year. Another idea would be to use coaches from the college ranks, perhaps the two coaches from that season's BCS National Championship Game. This would be similar to coaches from the NFL coaching teams of college players in all-star games such as the Senior Bowl.

A third idea would be to use previous NFL head coaches that are currently not coaching in the league. Many former head coaches, including several Super Bowl winners, are currently working for television networks. Perhaps the two Pro Bowl coaches could be selected from the network that has the broadcast rights for that year's Pro Bowl and/or Super Bowl. This season, FOX Sports has the broadcast rights for both the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl XLV. FOX's lineup of former coaches include Super Bowl winners Brian Billick and Jimmy Johnson. CBS has the broadcast rights to the 2012 Pro Bowl, and the CBS roster includes Super Bowl winner Bill Cowher. NBC has the rights to Super Bowl XLVI, and the NBC lineup includes Super Bowl winner Tony Dungy. ESPN has previously broadcast Pro Bowls and has "Iron Mike" Ditka and Jon Gruden.

The highlight of this Pro Bowl proposal would not be the game itself but the selection of the team rosters. This televised event would be the ultimate fantasy draft. Of course, the NHL has this idea covered as well. The list of potential players for the Pro Bowl would be available a few weeks prior to the draft to give the coaches time to plan. Last year, the Pro Bowl was played the week prior to the Super Bowl and did not include players from the two Super Bowl teams. Assuming that schedule is to continue, the list of available players would not be finalized until after the two Super Bowl teams are decided. Therefore, the Pro Bowl team rosters could not be set until the conclusion of the two semifinal playoff games. As previously stated, it would impossible for the losing coaches from the semifinal games to participate since the draft would probably have to start immediately following those games. To give the two teams another day to prepare, I would also suggest moving the game to Monday night.

In the next post on my NFL proposal, I will discuss how my changes would affect the contracts the league has with the television networks.

That's a Great Idea

Today's post was originally going to be about beers from a couple of local breweries. I will get around to that post eventually. However, I was reading the most recent article from ESPN.com's Bill Simmons who has a familiar idea. In his article, he complains about the recent futility of the NFL's NFC West division. He blames the problem on the small divisions in the NFL and proposes to correct the issue via realignment. While he attempts to maintain the two conferences, his proposed alignment is very similar to one of my proposals. My first proposal eliminated the AFC and NFC and simply combined the directional divisions. My followup realignment proposal had the Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins rotating divisions. The only difference between that proposal and his suggestion is that he has the Dallas Cowboys in the geographically-correct "NFC South" (my "South Division") which moves the Carolina Panthers to the "AFC East" (my "East Division"). Despite any excitement over this weekend's Lone Star showdown with the Houston Texans, I seriously doubt Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones would ever agree to give up the Cowboy's traditional rivalries with the other NFC East teams.

While our divisional alignments are similar, our schedule proposals are vastly different. He proposes a complicated 18-game schedule which includes only playing home and away games against some divisional opponents while only playing one game versus others. He also fits in eight games against teams from the other divisions. My proposal comes in 16- and 17-game flavors. Teams would play home and away games against each of the other seven teams in their divisions for a total of 14 games plus games against one team from either two or three of the other divisions. I just do not feel that the NFL will go to an 18-game schedule. I think the idea of expanding the regular season to 18 games is a negotiating ploy by the NFL team owners with the players union. If the idea does not get dropped completed in favor of some concessions by the players, I think the two sides will compromise by expanding to only 17 games.

A Modest Proposal, Part III

Disclaimer: Unless you are an über-sports geek who absolutely loves spreadsheets, you probably shouldn't bother reading this post. If you are looking for an update on the home brew (the second batch has been in the bottles a week now), a movie review (Righteous Kill wasn't that good), or something controversial ("Let's tax kids."), come back another day.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I am posting the third part of my now not-so-modest proposal concerning the NFL. The first two parts can be found here and here. The first post proposed eliminating the legacy NFC and AFC. The second posted covered a realignment suggestion, how my proposal would handle a possible team relocation, and how the regular season schedule would work under my proposal including expanding to a 17-game season.

5. Playoff Tournament

I would venture that the only sports postseason that rivals the NFL playoffs in popularity would be the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. The postseasons for all the other sports pale in comparison. The playoffs for the NBA, NHL and MLB have best-of-seven formats which result in lots of games. The NBA Playoffs and Stanley Cup playoffs are especially known for having too many games and lasting way too long precisely due to having four best-of-seven rounds. On the other end of the spectrum is the controversial bowl format of Division I football where the champion is decided by a two-team best-of-one tournament. NASCAR has the Chase for Sprint Cup and golf has the FedEx Cup playoffs, but I really don't consider either of those to be serious contenders to the popularity of the NFL or NCAA basketball postseasons.

What makes the college basketball tournament great? Ignoring the ridiculous Tuesday play-in game, college basketball has a one-and-done tournament with a perfectly-square, fixed bracket. The NFL playoffs also single elimination, but the bracket is not fixed. The second round match-ups depend on the outcome of the first round with the lowest remaining seed in each conference playing the top seed in that conference. Under my proposal without conferences, a fixed bracket would be standard. The most straight-forward suggestion for the playoffs would be to have the second and third seeds from each division play in the first round with the winner meeting the top seed from that division in the second round. The winner from each of the divisional brackets would then go to the semifinal round with the semifinal winners meeting in the Super Bowl.

One problem with that straight-forward suggestion is that it guarantees rematches that were already played twice during the regular season. Also, it is possible that the two best teams come out of the same division, and one would be eliminated prior to the Super Bowl. For instance, this year's Super Bowl contenders, Indianapolis and New Orleans, are from the two South divisions. Without any realignment, those two teams would both be in the South Division under my proposal. To alleviate both of these issues, I would suggest sending the second and third seeds to the other side of the tournament bracket.

Another issue with my playoff suggestion is that there will be four number-one seeds. This would be problematic in terms of home field for the semifinal round. The answer to that issue is to have the semifinal games played at neutral fields. This would work by requiring Super Bowl host stadiums to sign up for a three-year stint. Each of the two years prior to hosting the Super Bowl (and possibly the Pro Bowl), the stadium would host one of the two semifinal games. To avoid situations were second or third seed ended up hosting a semifinal game, the semifinal game between two divisional brackets should be played at a stadium for a team from one of those divisions. Therefore, a number one seed may end up hosting a semifinal game, but the second and third seeds from that division would be on the other side of the bracket and would end up at a stadium from one of the other divisions.

Now that I have laid all that out, here is an example. Below are some fictional standings based a 17-game schedule that loosely follow the actual 2009 NFL season.



Using those standings, here is how the 2009-2010 NFL Playoff tournament would have looked.



As discussed above, having New Orleans and Indianapolis in the same division could be a problem since the South Division can only have a single number one seed. However, the Saints would be the opposite sides of the playoff bracket, so this year's Super Bowl participants could still meet in the the big game in this fictional example.

Indianapolis and New Orleans being in the same division also presents a problem for next year's playoff bracket since those two cities will host Super Bowls XLVI and XLVII, respectively. Thus, they would host the two semifinal games in this bracket. To simplify things, I am just going to assume the Colts gets realigned to the North Division.



After that, I have to start assuming hosts for future Super Bowls. For Super Bowl XLVIII, I am going to assume the Giants and Jets win their bid to host the game in their new stadium.



For the following year, I am going just going on a wild-ass guess that Tampa will host Super Bowl XLVIII and start their cycle of hosting semifinal games.



A possible issue with my playoff proposal would be if a city is selected as host for a Super Bowl, but would be an unwilling, unable or inconvenient host for the semifinal games. A good example would be if London is awarded a Super Bowl as has been suggested. The simple solution to this issue is to have another city, such as Miami, serve as a stand-in for London for the two years of hosting semifinal games. In the cycle of hosting, London (with Miami as its stand-in) would be considered in the East Division. As a reward for serving as the stand-in, Miami would be the Super Bowl host immediately starting with next cycle. Basically, Miami would host four straight semifinal games and then the Super Bowl. They could also serve as hosts for Pro Bowl during this period and host the Pro Bowl for five straight years.

Year 1 - Miami hosts semifinal as stand-in for London (and possibly the Pro Bowl)
Year 2 - Miami hosts semifinal as stand-in for London (and possibly the Pro Bowl)
Year 3 - London host Super Bowl, Miami hosts semifinal (and possibly the Pro Bowl)
Year 4 - Miami hosts semifinal (and possibly the Pro Bowl)
Year 5 - Miami host Super Bowl (and possibly the Pro Bowl)

That is my proposal for the NFL playoffs. In my future posts on this topic, I am going to cover an innovative approach to the Pro Bowl plus an interesting suggestion for the NFL's contract with the television networks to broadcast games.

A Modest Proposal, Part II

This post is a continuation of my proposal for improving the NFL which I started three weeks ago. In that post, I suggested that the two legacy conferences be eliminated. Of course, that suggestion would be potentially controversial. It would be a major change and would have multiple repercussions in other aspects of how the league operates.

2. Realignment

Obviously, eliminating the two conferences is in itself a major change to how the teams are aligned. In my basic proposal, the directional divisions are simply combined, and the current alignment of those divisions would be maintained. However, some alternate configurations could be desirable. One suggestion that I have, even in the current arrangement of NFL conferences and divisions, would be to correct some geographical irregularities by rotating Indianapolis north, Baltimore east, and Miami south.

West Division	North Division	South Division	East Division
Arizona Denver Kansas City Oakland San Diego San Francisco Seattle St. Louis	Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Green Bay Indianapolis Minnesota Pittsburgh	Atlanta Carolina Houston Jacksonville Miami New Orleans Tampa Bay Tennessee	Baltimore Buffalo Dallas New England New York Giants New York Jets Philadelphia Washington

Of course, this still leaves the lunacy of centrally-located Dallas being in the East Division, but I do not think that the NFL is really prepared to change the strong rivalries of the NFC East.

3. Relocation

One benefit of having larger divisions is that the arrangement would be better suited to handling a possible relocation of one of the 32 teams. The current hot topic in possible team movements is the Jacksonville Jaguars moving to the west coast to occupy a new stadium currently under consideration in the Los Angeles area. Under the current configuration, realigning teams to handle that possibility would probably involve teams switching conferences. The simplest suggestion would be to swap the Jags and the St. Louis Rams. Under my proposal, that simple suggestion makes much more sense because the Rams would then be reunited with Atlanta, New Orleans and Carolina from the old NFC West.

West Division	North Division	South Division	East Division
Arizona Denver Kansas City LA Jaguars Oakland San Diego San Francisco Seattle	Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Green Bay Indianapolis Minnesota Pittsburgh	Atlanta Carolina Houston Miami New Orleans St. Louis Tampa Bay Tennessee	Baltimore Buffalo Dallas New England New York Giants New York Jets Philadelphia Washington

4. Regular Season Schedule

Another area where my proposal would have a major impact is the regular season schedule. I think that the current 16-game regular season is perfectly balanced. Each team plays the other three teams in its division twice, once at home and once away. Also on the schedule are four teams from a division in the other conference, four teams from another division in the same conference, and two teams from the other two divisions in the same conference that finished in the same place in their division. Therefore, the schedule for each team includes four teams that finished the previous season first in their division, four teams that were second, four that were third, and four that were fourth.

Under my proposal, each team's schedule would still be balanced. Each team would play 14 divisional games by playing each of the other seven teams in its division twice, once at home and once away. The remaining two games would be against teams from two of the other divisions that finished in the same place in their division. Another suggestion would be to go with a current proposal to drop two preseason games and add a 17th regular season game. With a 17-game regular season, there would be 14 divisional games plus a game each versus the team from the other three divisions that finished in the same place.

In the third part of my proposal, I will tackle changes to the NFL postseason and the Pro Bowl.

A Modest Proposal

Disclaimer: In my first post, I stated that the purpose of this website was to provide a place for me to ramble about a variety of random subjects. My posts may not be for general consumption. The post below as well as subsequent posts on this subject might only be interesting to me and perhaps a handful of sports geeks.

As promised, here is first part of my proposal for improving the NFL. Before presenting a solution to a problem, one should state the problem that is to be solved. One of the problems with the NFL, in my opinion, is that it has too many small divisions. While the other major professional leagues have small divisions (NHL and NBA with six five-team divisions and MLB's AL West with only four teams), the NFL takes the cake with eight four-team divisions. Of course, the reason for this is to have as many teams as possible that can call themselves champions. If two wild card teams win the conference championship games, there would be 10 different division and conference champions. That would be over 30% of the 32 teams. That is almost one third of the teams in the league calling themselves champions of this or that.

Unfortunately, this arrangement frequently results in champions that barely have a winning record. This season, all eight division champions managed double-digit wins. However, that is not always the case. In 2004 and 2006, Seattle won the NFC West with 9-7 records, and in 2007, Tampa Bay won the NFC South also with a 9-7 record. Last season, Arizona won the NFC West at 9-7, and San Diego won the AFC West with a .500 record (8-8). Granted, the Cardinals did get hot in the playoffs and made it to Super Bowl XLIII.

Now that the problem has been defined, it is time to move on to the proposed solution which starts with...

1. Eliminating the Conferences

The first part of my proposal is the elimination of the National and American Football Conferences. I know many people will cry foul over this step due to the historical significance of maintaining separate conferences. However, the NFL-AFL merger was over 40 years ago. I think enough time as passed for the league to move forward with integrating the two conferences. (Take a hint Major League Baseball).

To me, the simplest way to handle this consolation is to simply merge the matching directional divisions into four eight-team divisions as shown below.

West Division	North Division	South Division	East Division
Arizona Denver Kansas City Oakland San Diego San Francisco Seattle St. Louis	Baltimore Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Green Bay Minnesota Pittsburgh	Atlanta Carolina Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville New Orleans Tampa Bay Tennessee	Buffalo Dallas Miami New England NY Giants NY Jets Philadelphia Washington

Of course, this change would be a great opportunity to realign the divisions. Also, the possible relocation of a team (say to Los Angeles) would have an affect on the divisional alignment. I will cover those topics in my next post. I promise that those suggestions will be minor compared to the elimination of the conferences. Also in future posts, I will expand on how my primary suggestion would be implemented including how the regular season schedule, playoffs, and Pro Bowl would all work.