Least Original Contrarian Takes

[BBTV]

7 minutes ago, DnBronc said:

Just winning a SB as a QB doesn't mean you are great.

 

You're right.  Winning a SB doesn't mean you are great.  Trent Dilfer was not great.  Mark Rypien was not great.  Brad Johnson was not great.

 

Winning seven SBs does mean you are great.

[dont care]

1 hour ago, DnBronc said:

 

 Because other QB's didn't have coaches that were cheating. Also, Just winning a SB as a QB doesn't mean you are great. It is a team accomplishment.

But he didn’t win a super bowl he won 7 of them, that is more than anyone in the history of the nfl, not just qb’s. And while being a team accomplishment you’d be a fool to say the qb isn’t the most important position on any team in order to have success.

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

Winning seven SBs does mean you are great.

 

On second thought, I was wrong - winning seven SBs does not mean you are great.  

 

It means you are the greatEST.

[DEAD!]

4 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

On second thought, I was wrong - winning seven SBs does not mean you are great.  

 

It means you are the greatEST.

Thanks Bianca Belair.

[monkeypower]

On 8/27/2021 at 4:41 PM, sportsfan7 said:

Topic of tanking/parity comes up:

 

"I think European soccer does this, but I've always thought that (insert league here) should demote the worst team and promote the best minor league team after each season"

 

One of the dumbest thing ever when it pertains to North American sports. The system isn't set up like that and it's crazy that some people keep parroting it when they should know full well that it isn't set up like that, shouldn't be set up like that and can't easily be changed to be set up like that.

[ManillaToad]

16 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

You're right.  Winning a SB doesn't mean you are great.  Trent Dilfer was not great.  Mark Rypien was not great.  Brad Johnson was not great.

 

Winning seven SBs does mean you are great.

 

hey Johnson had a pretty solid career

[sportsfan7]

5 hours ago, monkeypower said:

 

One of the dumbest thing ever when it pertains to North American sports. The system isn't set up like that and it's crazy that some people keep parroting it when they should know full well that it isn't set up like that, shouldn't be set up like that and can't easily be changed to be set up like that.

The other thing people ignore is that European soccer has many high level leagues running in parallel (Prem, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, etc...,). I think the only North American sport that could pull it off is soccer, mostly for the reasons outlined above. I don't think they will, but I think it could be feasible to have an American soccer pyramid with pro/rel

[OnWis97]

I don't know a lot about European stadium funding, but in North America, I can't imagine $500,000,000 public  dollars and $300,000,000 (or whatever the mix may be) going into funding a stadium only to see the team be relegated to some minor league. There's no way small- or mid-markets would spend a nickel of taxpayer dollars; nor would private entities be too thrilled about it. Further, the economic realities of having, say, the Diamondbacks (and their enormously expensive stadium) relegated in favor of, say, whatever they have in Oklahoma City just doesn't work. And that's before you get to the salaries being paid to minor leaguers or the very notion of, say, Matt Ryan, being relegated.

 

I don't have a strong take on pro/rel in other places but in North America it would be ridiculous and I hope I never here that take again.

[gosioux76]

31 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

I don't know a lot about European stadium funding, but in North America, I can't imagine $500,000,000 public  dollars and $300,000,000 (or whatever the mix may be) going into funding a stadium only to see the team be relegated to some minor league. There's no way small- or mid-markets would spend a nickel of taxpayer dollars; nor would private entities be too thrilled about it. Further, the economic realities of having, say, the Diamondbacks (and their enormously expensive stadium) relegated in favor of, say, whatever they have in Oklahoma City just doesn't work. And that's before you get to the salaries being paid to minor leaguers or the very notion of, say, Matt Ryan, being relegated.

 

I don't have a strong take on pro/rel in other places in the North America it would be ridiculous and I hope I never here that take again.

 

To that point, soccer might be the only sport that could make this work in North America. It wouldn't work right now, of course, because what you said is 100% true regarding the continued need for someone (be it taxpayers or deep-pocketed investors interested in an expansion team) to make huge investments. That's a terrible gamble to make knowing the typical fate of expansion franchises. 

 

But one of the arguments you make against it -- the drop-off in minor league vs. major league infrastructure -- is starting to level off in soccer. I continue to be impressed by the willingness of USL Championship teams to pursue stadium projects that would not set them far off from the MLS standard. I'm sure there are degrees of scale here that I'm missing, but on TV, that new Louisville stadium would outclass a few current MLS venues. I know Phoenix Rising had something master-planned at one point, and New Mexico United is trying to get public buy-in to a plan for a new downtown Albuquerque stadium. Even if those venues are, by comparison, minor league, the gulf is far less wide in soccer than it would be in the baseball example you referenced. 

 

If the trend continues, I can see how, at least from a stadium perspective, how a pro/rel system might come into play. Still a lot of moving pieces to this, of course. But a decade or two away, I wouldn't be surprised if things moved in that direction. 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I think we need to stop thinking about pro/rel for stadium sports but more for arena sports. America is littered with arenas and they take up far less space than a baseball or football stadium does.

 

I know entrenched powers would never let it happen, but I could see a world with a 40-team NBA and 40-team NHL that have 20 teams in each conference with promotion and relegation among the top and bottom three of the A and B leagues.

There are two key rules complicating factors:

- It messes up the draft, because who would go first? The worst of the bottom league or the worst of the top? Would the top league get picks?

- It messes up scheduling because I don't know how you get 81 games among 20 teams.

 

The other key complicating factor is owners would never go for it so it's an idea dead in the water. I still think it could be cool though, and a way to extract $500M to $1B all at once a crop of new owners for the winter sports leagues.

[Glover]

The debate of "Could Alabama beat the worst NFL team?" is a classic one. People always overreact to an NFL team starting off 0-4 and this debate rears its ugly head. Alabama, or any college team for that matter, would get smoked by the worst NFL team. 

[OnWis97]

38 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I think we need to stop thinking about pro/rel for stadium sports but more for arena sports. America is littered with arenas and they take up far less space than a baseball or football stadium does.

 

I know entrenched powers would never let it happen, but I could see a world with a 40-team NBA and 40-team NHL that have 20 teams in each conference with promotion and relegation among the top and bottom three of the A and B leagues.

There are two key rules complicating factors:

- It messes up the draft, because who would go first? The worst of the bottom league or the worst of the top? Would the top league get picks?

- It messes up scheduling because I don't know how you get 81 games among 20 teams.

 

The other key complicating factor is owners would never go for it so it's an idea dead in the water. I still think it could be cool though, and a way to extract $500M to $1B all at once a crop of new owners for the winter sports leagues.

In terms of the fitness of hockey/basketball arenas, you're probably right that the gap is smaller vs. stadiums. I'd still argue that it would have been very difficult to construct that Milwaukee arena if the threat of relegation would have loomed. I know we're splitting hairs since we both agree there are too many roadblocks, but I still think the arena construction would get in the way.

 

53 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

 

To that point, soccer might be the only sport that could make this work in North America. It wouldn't work right now, of course, because what you said is 100% true regarding the continued need for someone (be it taxpayers or deep-pocketed investors interested in an expansion team) to make huge investments. That's a terrible gamble to make knowing the typical fate of expansion franchises. 

 

But one of the arguments you make against it -- the drop-off in minor league vs. major league infrastructure -- is starting to level off in soccer. I continue to be impressed by the willingness of USL Championship teams to pursue stadium projects that would not set them far off from the MLS standard. I'm sure there are degrees of scale here that I'm missing, but on TV, that new Louisville stadium would outclass a few current MLS venues. I know Phoenix Rising had something master-planned at one point, and New Mexico United is trying to get public buy-in to a plan for a new downtown Albuquerque stadium. Even if those venues are, by comparison, minor league, the gulf is far less wide in soccer than it would be in the baseball example you referenced. 

 

If the trend continues, I can see how, at least from a stadium perspective, how a pro/rel system might come into play. Still a lot of moving pieces to this, of course. But a decade or two away, I wouldn't be surprised if things moved in that direction. 

 

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about the places that the lower North American leagues play.  So maybe there's a bit more opportunity. North American soccer has taken on a lot of worldwide characteristics that I was not sure Americans would like (imprecise non-stop clock, minimal substitutions, ties, the approach to naming teams, sponsors dominating the uniforms, etc.). So for NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, I'll say the topic's a non-starter.

I guess people think that pro-rel will force some of our poorer or more poorly run teams to be smarter or spendier.  Maybe. But even if it works, you're going to see relegation and all the impacts that come with it.  Speaking only for myself, my team being relegated would pretty much chase me away; I'm not paying more than 10 bucks for a ticket and I'm really pissed off about public investments into buildings. Not sure how that would go over for the MN United stadium. Maybe there's a chance it would be OK since there's not the same history of fandom there.  Even if the Vikings will never win the Super Bowl, we want our team to be playing in the league that plays for it. Soccer's a bit different, as is our history of following it. 

[Red Comet]

Decided to do some research and the answer for why Europe has pro/rel and the US doesn’t is that amateur baseball leagues in the US went out of existence in favor of professional leagues back in the late 1860s and then the professional leagues folded under the weight of having hundreds of teams. What came afterwards in the US elected to have a strict franchise system to avoid that issue again.

 

In the UK in particular, the amateur soccer leagues when faced with the onset of professionalism saw the writing on the wall and embraced it around the 20th century. Then, faced with still having hundreds of teams, decided on having elections where the worst teams would be sent down to a lower league and the best teams were promoted. Obviously this became a lot more organized later.

 

So, if you want pro/rel in America, you’re going to need a time machine. 

[BBTV]

Are there players unions in European soccer?

 

Even back before revenue sharing and salary caps, the teams in North American pro sports (at least NFL, MLB, and NBA) have been more centrally managed, with the teams being franchises, rather than the teams being the powerful entities that choose to do whatever they want and the league being just an administrative thing.

 

I don't think there's any way pro/rel could work in a franchise model that has to collectively bargain with its labor - and now that there's some form of revenue redistribution in all leagues, it's a non starter.

 

North American sports are just different.

[gosioux76]

14 hours ago, BBTV said:

Are there players unions in European soccer?

 

Even back before revenue sharing and salary caps, the teams in North American pro sports (at least NFL, MLB, and NBA) have been more centrally managed, with the teams being franchises, rather than the teams being the powerful entities that choose to do whatever they want and the league being just an administrative thing.

 

I don't think there's any way pro/rel could work in a franchise model that has to collectively bargain with its labor - and now that there's some form of revenue redistribution in all leagues, it's a non starter.

 

North American sports are just different.

 

MLS, though, operates under a single-entity structure and is in a seemingly endless pursuit of expansion. I realize some of this is pro/rel fantasy, but I don't think it's entirely unrealistic to conceive of MLS expanding to, say, 40 teams, welcoming in some of those USL clubs that invested in top-level stadium infrastructure, and then splitting into two 20-team divisions — a MLS1 and MLS2. 

 

Being single entity, it can negotiate with the players union as one organization, rather than 40 individual ones. It would just need buy-in from its investors/owners. 

 

I'm not someone who thinks this needs to happen. But the concept is fascinating to me. @OnWis97 talked about having to come to terms with the fallout of relegation. But you have to think about the other side of it as well.  The whole idea of a relegation battle -- from the agony of being sent down to the relief of avoiding it -- adds a dimension to competition that doesn't exist in the U.S. sports landscape. 

 

Maybe I'm a fair-weather fan, which I'm fine with, but if I'm following a team (like, say, the Twins this year) that are absolutely horrible and are out of contention almost from the jump, I tend to lose interest in the game for the remainder of that season. I'm not advocating for pro-rel in baseball, but I can see its value in adding new layers of intrigue to otherwise lost seasons.

 

The prospect of landing top draft picks can have a similar allure, at least for the NFL and NBA, except that it's essentially an incentive for losing. 

[Sport]

21 hours ago, Glover said:

The debate of "Could Alabama beat the worst NFL team?" is a classic one. People always overreact to an NFL team starting off 0-4 and this debate rears its ugly head. Alabama, or any college team for that matter, would get smoked by the worst NFL team. 

 

I hate when people say that so much. It would look similar to when a highly ranked FBS school plays an FCS school. And It's really simple math - There's some future NFL players on a #1 ranked college team, maybe even a handful of pro-bowlers, but at least 90% of that roster won't make the NFL, including most of the offensive and defensive lines, which is where they'd get  destroyed. 100% of the roster on the worst NFL team is good enough to play in the NFL, as dumb as that sounds. 

 

 

[Red Wolf]

9 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

I hate when people say that so much. It would look similar to when a highly ranked FBS school plays an FCS school. And It's really simple math - There's some future NFL players on a #1 ranked college team, maybe even a handful of pro-bowlers, but at least 90% of that roster won't make the NFL, including most of the offensive and defensive lines, which is where they'd get  destroyed. 100% of the roster on the worst NFL team is good enough to play in the NFL, as dumb as that sounds. 

 

 

 

I would say it's an even bigger gap than that. FCS schools can give FBS schools trouble, even some of the good ones. If the Titans played Alabama for instance, it would just be Tennessee finally beating the Tide by just handing the ball off and steamrolling for 10+ yards a carry. We're talking about filtering out players from hundreds of schools down to 32.

[ManillaToad]

7 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

Maybe I'm a fair-weather fan, which I'm fine with, but if I'm following a team (like, say, the Twins this year) that are absolutely horrible and are out of contention almost from the jump, I tend to lose interest in the game for the remainder of that season. I'm not advocating for pro-rel in baseball, but I can see its value in adding new layers of intrigue to otherwise lost seasons.

 

Sounds better than being a fan of one of the dozens of clubs in European soccer leagues that have never and will never sniff a championship. I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about the ins and outs of how soccer works but the pro-rel system seems to do a lot worse for parity than the closed league system in the NA.

[Red Comet]

22 hours ago, BBTV said:

Are there players unions in European soccer?

 

Even back before revenue sharing and salary caps, the teams in North American pro sports (at least NFL, MLB, and NBA) have been more centrally managed, with the teams being franchises, rather than the teams being the powerful entities that choose to do whatever they want and the league being just an administrative thing.

 

I don't think there's any way pro/rel could work in a franchise model that has to collectively bargain with its labor - and now that there's some form of revenue redistribution in all leagues, it's a non starter.

 

North American sports are just different.

Looks like there are player’s unions in Europe

[DnBronc]

On 8/28/2021 at 11:26 PM, BBTV said:

 

You're right.  Winning a SB doesn't mean you are great.  Trent Dilfer was not great.  Mark Rypien was not great.  Brad Johnson was not great.

 

Winning seven SBs does mean you are great.

 

A team, not a QB.