It’s easy to fix what’s ailing sports

Every sport has issues. Some of them big. Some of them silly.

Let’s take a look at how to fix them, at least some of them (we certainly can’t fix all of them, especially in this space).

College football: We’ll start with the game that is closest to perfection. The College Football Playoff that many people thought would hurt the game (remember those folks who said a playoff would damage the regular season?) has taken college football to another level. The game is as good as it has ever been right now (maybe the playoff could go to six or eight teams), and it recently took a small step in the right direction with an early signing period in December. But that needs to move to August and give the sport two true signing periods, just like every other college sport, to give players more options.

NFL: This one is pretty simple. Get rid of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The game has suffered under his leadership, and that’s undeniable. His attempts to show strength and strong-arm the players while trying to lay down the law when it comes to off-the-field issues have taken the focus off the game itself and have shown he doesn’t have the leadership skills needed to run this game. And his rules changes that are supposed to help with player safety (call me a cynic but they seem more like an effort to keep from getting sued) have hurt the quality of the game.

College basketball: This rule change would help the college game and the NBA, and it’s not clear why it’s so difficult to figure out. Get rid of the one-and-done and move toward the college baseball rule. If a player wants to leave high school and turn pro, that’s fine. But if a player decides to go to college, he isn’t eligible for the NBA draft for three years. That rule works in college baseball (and the NFL’s three-year rule, as well), and it would work much the same way with college basketball. For some reason, there are a lot of people who feel like basketball players need college, but they don’t feel the same way about other athletes: baseball, tennis, golf, hockey, etc. (that’s a much deeper column for another day).

NBA: See above. But what can the NBA do to make this happen? First, get the agents out of the way. They’re the only ones who like the one-and-done setup. It hurts the players, the college game and the NBA, but it certainly helps the agents. What else can the NBA do? The big step would be to invest money in the G-League (formerly the D-League) and make it a viable minor league and make it attractive to players who don’t want to go to college or have no business in college. Again, this is a spot where basketball could learn something from baseball.

College baseball: The game is in a good place right now, and it continues to move in the right direction. My only issue is every player seems to feel the need to do a little dance after every double or triple. OK, I’m not that old just yet; dance all you want. But the real issue focuses on keeping the batters in the box during at-bats. Allowing batters to step out after every pitch slows down an already slow-ish game, and that has to be addressed.

Major League Baseball: Publish the unwritten rules. If they’re unwritten, how did they become rules in the first place? But seriously, change the first round of the playoffs to a three-game series instead of a one-game playoff. Baseball is a game of series, and if the goal is to give the top seed an advantage, the real way to do that would be to make the team that survives the wild-card round eat up even more pitching.

Golf: We have seen this come into play recently with Lexi Thompson’s loss at the ANA Inspiration when a fan reported a rules issue the day after it occurred. How is this even allowed? Yes, golf is a game of respect and doing the right thing, but when a player makes an honest mistake that is not caught by anyone in the group or the rules official assigned to the group, it’s time to just move on and admit mistakes are going to happen. Allowing some person sitting at home who obviously has no life to affect the outcome of a tournament is the dumbest thing in sports.

Tennis: Find some American talent. The game is in trouble because there are no real American stars (outside of Serena Williams), and no one in our country really cares because of that. Sure, that puts the focus on America too much, but when John Isner is the most recognizable American name on the men’s side, that’s a huge problem.

This story was originally published June 7, 2017 at 3:33 PM with the headline "It’s easy to fix what’s ailing sports."