SPORTS RESOLUTIONS FOR A SPORTS REVOLUTION!
By Scotty Mincher
Sports are terrific, and as a fan, there’s nothing better than watching and rooting your favorite team on to victory. Unfortunately, fans impact on games and organizations as well as schools, etc. only goes so far. But like everything in life, in sports things are constantly evolving. Fans have been able to enjoy playing fantasy sports for decades now but think of how much more enjoyable and fun sports would be if fans had a bigger voice and say in regards to the construction of sports ideas, strategies, and so on. It’s 2020 things always change and in this story, We’ll go over my dream sports resolutions I’d like to see put to action for 2020 and beyond. There has already been one athlete in the past year of 2019 that has played at a remarkably high and revolutionary level in football As the quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens in Lamar Jackson and some of the greatest ideas in history were once considered crazy at one time or another but that doesn’t mean they didn’t eventually work out or become widely thought of as brilliant or genius. That being said I’m certainly no Albert Einstein. But hey, A guy can dream can’t he?! With that, we get to the changes I’d like to see implemented in sports for the new year and the years to come.
I’ll start with my favorite sport to watch in person, That is the grand game of baseball. My biggest problem with America’s national past time is the fact that MLB uses no salary cap. I went to my first baseball game in 1998 and I still salivate at the thought of the Indians being able to keep their core of superstars they had in the ’90s. Major League Baseball is the only major U.S. professional sport without a salary cap. Major League Baseball’s luxury tax was introduced as a compromise during collective bargaining in the late 1990s as a way to avoid implementing a salary cap, which had been one of the major points of conflict that led to the 1994 strike by the Major League Baseball Players Association. For years, baseball fans have heard about the dominance of certain teams. Year in and year out the playoff picture is never complete without including the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Phillies, Angels, Cubs, Braves, and Cardinals in the discussion. What do all of these teams have in common? These teams are large market teams. That means that they generate a TON of revenue from ticket sales and other sales. This benefits these teams in ways that the other 22 teams cannot.
For example, the Yankees could afford to sign C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixiera before Opening Day ’09. That combination cost the Yankees money that most teams cannot afford to shell out. This is a major reason for the dominance of large market teams.
There is only one way to fix this problem.
It is called a salary cap. When you look at these sports, there is always a team that comes to mind that seems to be dominating, but it is never for more than about a decade. The NFL has done the best job utilizing a salary cap. It seems like there are always different teams in the playoff mix. n baseball, the Yankees and Red Sox have always dominated their opponents and it does not look that is going to change anytime soon unless the MLB institutes a strict salary cap.
Until that happens, the Indians, the Pirates, the Rockies, Rays, Royals, White Sox, Twins, Brewers and other smaller market teams who are in the hunt every now and then will continue to be looked at as inferior to their richer brethren in the Bronx and Boston.
They will also not win the World Series because these larger market teams will always have teams packed with all-stars.
If baseball had a salary cap, neither the Rockies nor the Rays would have been blown out in their respective Fall Classics in 07 and 08. So these are the reasons why I think baseball should implement a salary cap, It’s doubtful that it will happen anytime soon because of the luxury tax. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen. The second thing I’d like to see happen in sports is for football and basketball officials to be held to a higher level of accountability. You could look at the no interference in the 2019 NFC championship game When the refs missed a blatant pass interference that should have been a penalty called against the rams. Or most recently the overturn of a play that was ruled a fumble on the field then, via reply changed to an incomplete pass in the Clemson-Ohio State playoff semifinal game, a ruling that was incorrect according to the Big Ten supervisor of officials Or even the NBA and former referee Tim Donaghy and the betting scandal, The allegations against the NBA and the effect it had on the league. All of these examples are of the human error which is a part of sports, But I feel that refs get off to easy when it comes to them making mistakes, in comparison to players, coaches, general managers, etc. It’s not an easy job—regardless of sport. But officials need to be held accountable for their work the same way players and coaches are held accountable. Almost every sport does a poor job of this. Baseball does the best job: most nights, reporters are free to knock on the door to the umpire’s locker room to ask about calls. Occasionally, an umpire will refuse to talk, but more often than not, they’re willing. When Jim Joyce, at the time regarded as one of baseball’s best umpires, missed a call at first base in Detroit in 2010 that cost the Tigers’ Armando Gallaraga a perfect game, he met with the media to apologize for what had happened. It’s also my belief that ALL NFL officials should be full-time employees. They should be graded on their work throughout the season—much the same way coaches grade their players by watching tape of each game and, often, practice. If they fail to achieve a certain level—I’ll leave it to the professionals to figure out the grade scale—then they lose their job, just as players do. It’s vitally important to me that in sports that officials be held accountable in 2020 just as the players and coaches are.
The third and last thing I’d like to see happen in sports for 2020 or anytime soon is a woman pitcher make it to the big leagues. American soccer player and two-time FIFA women’s World Cup champion, As well as two-time FIFA Player of the Year Carli Lloyd, is serious about pursuing an NFL kicking job in 2020 and stated that she received pretty serious offers from teams this past August So, Who says a woman can’t make it to the show?! Bernice Shiner Gera was the first female umpire in professional baseball and the tv show PITCH which aired in 2016 and starred Kylie Bunbury as Ginny Baker In what I could only hope was foreshadowing for pro baseball As it tells the story of a young pitcher who becomes the first woman to play Major Leauge Baseball on her journey to prove herself are examples of woman doing groundbreaking things in sports, Although one is a fictional example. With that being said sports have continued to evolve and you’d have to think that women’s voices and abilities will only get stronger and louder for 2020 and beyond so, fasten your seatbelts for anything to be in play. Maybe Carli Lloyd will kick for the Browns in 2020 and maybe we’ll even see a female pitcher or umpire in this decade.
No one has a crystal ball, but a lot could and will happen in the next ten years and I have to wonder if certain sports resolutions, will create a sports revolution!
