I thought this would be a little fun. As everyone knows, I am a dedicated baseball fan. But there are other sports besides baseball. And this allows me a chance to become a little more opinionated.

 

NFL: Generally I dislike the NFL because it dominates the sports discussion more than it should. Every event is treated as a major occurance, even meaningless offseason mini-camps. I rarely watch the games themselves simply because I am rarely free Sunday afternoons. I do not think football is that much more exciting than baseball. Football involves a great deal of time standing around waiting for the next play, and the commercials disguise that fact to the home viewer.

 

Football is a great videogame sport, but from what I read and hear, it is not a very enjoyable sport for the athletes themselves. Football involves a great deal of repetitive drills, and injuries are too frequent. Professional football players are easily the most underpaid athletes in the country. They are paid relatively little compared to their skill level and the massive profits they bring. Plus, they have the unpleasant reality that their owners can cut their contracts.

 

NBA: Probably the most misunderstood sport. The conventional wisdom is that teams, rather than superstars, win championships. You need great players to win. THe problem is not that superstars are cancerous players. The problem is that we have failed to identify the best players. It is easy to pick out a great offensive player in basketball. However, it is extremely difficult to identify the best defenders, unless they produce gaudy numbers in either steals or blocks. The best defenders are the players who allow the fewest points, and those numbers are extremely difficult to attain.

 

Defense has improved over the years, regardless of what columnists write. I have written a column on the subject, and I basically feel that what we view as a lack of shooting prowess is simply improved defense not allowing players to penetrate towards the basket as often, forcing shots from further away. Much of this is due to something we call in baseball invisible range. The focus is not on what a player does as he faces the ball handler, but how he positions himself beforehand. As teams garner more data and video, they learn how to improve their defensive schemes and positioning. Essentially, it is an evolutionary process.

 

The biggest problem with the NBA is the length of the Playoffs. The NBA employs a playoff scheme where over half the teams reach the playoffs each season, and the league uses four best of seven series to determine the winner. This produces a two month playoff system, and diminishes the importance of the regular season. I feel the NBA would be better off cutting a round from its playoffs, and maybe adding five games to the regular season. This would add importance to the season, shorten the playoffs, and give some added ticket revenue to all 30 teams.

 

The NBA does not need an age limit. The supposed attitude problems of NBA players are not the result of players missing a college education. Just look at the Portland Trailblazers. This team is ridiculed for its legal troubles. Meanwhile, Zach Randolph, Rasheed Wallace, Ruben Patterson all attended college. I have seen no connection between a college education and a player's reputation. All college does honestly is create more time to weed out the troublemakers. It does little to educate a player, and quite honestly, it is a waste of time to have these kids go to college when they are not really going to learn anything anyway. If a player is good enough to compete in a major sport at any age, he or she should play. The same goes for the NFL.

 

NHL: I have never been able to follow hockey, but I can recognize the excitement for hockey fans. The NHL needs to learn to market its players better to make them more recognizeable to the casual sports fan such as myself. Also, in this time of the Lockout, they need to realize that fighting the players' union is a lose/lose scenario. If the league increases its popularity and adds revenue, its financial problems will solve themselves.

 

Tennis: Honestly, I think tennis is the most boring of the mainstream sports. One on one bouts that consist of two players hitting the ball back and forth that last over an hour apiece are not exactly my cup of tea. Maybe I simply do not understand the game.

 

Soccer: As I have stated before, I think soccer can be a tremendously exciting game if you have a routing interest in the team. I find it amusing that fans complain the sport is boring, when it is one of the only major sports that features no timeouts, and barely tolerates stops in the action. Much of the problem of the sport's popularity here in the United States is that unlike the big four, the best athletes in the sport do not play here.

 

Boxing: Something people may not know is that like Baseball, I have a deep knowledge of the history of Boxing as well. I am not as involved currently in the sport, as I think it is mired in corruption. However, a good boxing match is as good as any sporting event on the market. Boxing is one of those rare sports where you can stop and watch a contest on tv, and it honestly does not matter who is fighting.

 

Horse Racing: I honestly think Horse Racing is a load of horseshit. No one really cares about the horses themselves. The entire sport is an excuse to gamble, and little else.

 

NCAA Football: The Bowl Championship Series is not a bad idea for deciding a National Championship. Honestly, any time you need to select two teams out of a larger pool of qualified teams, you are going to have controversy. The problem is that by creating three other bowl games, the BCS has completely devalued the entire bowl system except for that one championship game. An annual matchup between specific conference champions can sell. However, a random matchup between team #5 and team #6 is not going to draw me in. The BCS has also shown how computers can be mishandled. If you are going to use them to try and create an objective ranking of teams, you can not then introduce human voting to the system. It ruins the entire point of the idea.

 

A college playoff seems ideal, but it again devalues every bowl game except for the title game. Besides, I think analysts are too hung up on Playoff systems in general. What college football really needs to do is force member schools to play tougher schedules. If a team wants to try for a championship, no more gimme games. In what other sport do the top teams never play each other in the regular season?

 

NCAA Basketball: A better college sport than football, but the NCAA Tournament is overrated. The 64th best team in college basketball has no business receiving a shot at a national championship. The tournament exists not so much for crowning a champion as it exists so fans can again gamble.

 

More sports to come (hopefully).

I want to dispute one thing here.

 

The Bowl Championship Series is not a bad idea for deciding a National Championship. Honestly, any time you need to select two teams out of a larger pool of qualified teams, you are going to have controversy. The problem is that by creating three other bowl games, the BCS has completely devalued the entire bowl system except for that one championship game. An annual matchup between specific conference champions can sell. However, a random matchup between team #5 and team #6 is not going to draw me in. The BCS has also shown how computers can be mishandled. If you are going to use them to try and create an objective ranking of teams, you can not then introduce human voting to the system. It ruins the entire point of the idea.

 

A college playoff seems ideal, but it again devalues every bowl game except for the title game. Besides, I think analysts are too hung up on Playoff systems in general. What college football really needs to do is force member schools to play tougher schedules. If a team wants to try for a championship, no more gimme games. In what other sport do the top teams never play each other in the regular season?

The problem with this is that the BCS, as it stands now, is exactly why we need a playoff in NCAA football. Honestly, I'm not watching the Insight.com Bowl anyway, and any .500 team can be eligible for a bowl game. But under the current format, you can win every game in the regular season, beat every team 175-0, and maybe get into that #5 vs. #6 game if you're lucky. Name one other sport where an undefeated team has no chance to be considered the champion.

The problem with playoffs is that first off, you are going to have teams bitching about being left out no matter what you do. Let's say they had playoffs this season. One, two and three are easy. But how many teams do we incorporate? Four? Eight? No matter where you set the limit, you are going to have an issue deciding the final entrants. And why should any team outside those three have a shot? Then you have an issue that one of the teams outside the three can win the championship, and that hardly seems like the ideal solution.

 

I think these teams need to start playing more difficult schedules. USC, the #1 team in the nation, played just two of the top 25 teams. Oklahoma played three of them. It is no wonder these teams finish undefeated, when they only have three or four tough games on the schedule. Worse, other teams realize that they are going to sell out no matter who they play, and they can bolster their case for the championship if they finish undefeated. So no one wants to play a tough team in the regular season.

Tennis: Honestly, I think tennis is the most boring of the mainstream sports. One on one bouts that consist of two players hitting the ball back and forth that last over an hour apiece are not exactly my cup of tea. Maybe I simply do not understand the game.

Maybe.

 

That would be like me saying baseball is one player throwing a ball, and another player swinging a stick of wood... and luckily hoping nobody else gets to in time.

The biggest problem with the NBA is the length of the Playoffs

Why don't they play the games every night instead of having 2 day breaks and why is each round 7 games?

Maybe.

 

That would be like me saying baseball is one player throwing a ball, and another player swinging a stick of wood... and luckily hoping nobody else gets to in time.

Everyone has their own opinions on sports. I just think the game is too long and repetitive. No offense to the athletes involved.

 

Why don't they play the games every night instead of having 2 day breaks and why is each round 7 games?

I can see the need for a one night break, but three full days in between games is overkill. I do think they would benefit from cutting the series down to five games apiece.