Money has a tendency to ruin sports. If you step back and examine the current trends in pro, college, and even youth sports, it’s quite eye-opening, especially as it relates to holding onto timeless traditions versus doing new things exclusively to make money. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that the NCAA had football conferences that made sense based on geography and traditional rivalries. Today, however, storied conferences like the Pac 12 are gone (though currently in the works to be re-established), with several of the former conference’s teams moving to the Big 10, creating a ludicrous 18 school Big 10 conference with schools traveling as far as coast-to-coast to play. More games, more travel, and more money — that’s a theme of the NCAA these days, but they are not alone, as most sport leagues from the pros to the preps are following suit.
Current money-making trends
While NCAA football mucks up college conferences, traditional rivalries, and even the ways in which they have introduced NIL and sports gambling, other sports are doing their own things to screw things up. Similar to college football, efforts are underway in college basketball to add even more teams to an NCAA tournament that most felt was already the best and most exciting in sports. Apparently a 68 team playoff isn’t enough, making you wonder how many teams would be enough? If everyone makes the dance, is there really a dance??
College sports are not alone, as Major League Baseball (MLB) continues to add more playoff teams and expand the playoffs, with the World Series now playing into November. The National Basketball Association, under constant pressure to shorten the season to minimize player injuries, decided to go in the opposite direction and instead add a mid-season Play-In tournament! And lets not leave out the National Football League (NFL), who only recently added a 17th regular season game — soon to be 18, and possibly even more. In all of these examples money, not player safety and welfare, drove the decisions.
Even at the youth sport level as youth injuries mount, we only see more travel, more expenses, and more professionalization of youth sports. While fans seem to enjoy things like traditional conferences, reasonable playoffs, and even innocent youth sports, decision-makers at every turn trade those approaches in exchange for more, more, more. Will there ever be enough? Will we ever see decision-makers leave any money on the table?
While it makes sense to look for ways to grow sports (and increase revenues), what does not make sense is to trash every traditional rivalry, conference, and tournament exclusively for the last buck. Do any league commissioners or decision-makers ever stop to examine what make their sports great? It makes you wonder, as most sport fans I know love the geographical rivalries, playoffs that make sense and are competitive (and not a system that nearly everybody gets in), traditional sport conferences, and a focus on growing sports rather than exploiting them.
Final thoughts
What does the future hold? More dollars and exploitation, or a return to cherished rivalries, playoffs that make sense, and a focus on competition instead of revenues? It is kind of sad that we already know the answer to that question, especially since there has been no evidence of rolling back profits in exchange for a healthier sport landscape. Instead, we can expect the NCAA to continue expanding eligible teams for the football and college playoffs to grow to a point of absurdity, and seasons to eventually last so long that they essentially never stop.
drstankovich.com
