Don't care what you say as a rabid fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars or the Colorado Rockies—and truly there are not that many of you—the worst idea ever perpetrated, without question, by professional sports has been its over-expansion.
Bigger always has been perceived as better by sports leagues, when real quality had been achieved by less. Expansion may never wreck sports but it has watered it down terribly.
There are too many races in NASCAR, too many baseball, basketball, NFL teams in remote places, too many PGA golfers nobody has ever heard of, and way, way too many faceless guys with Finnish names skating amid Crosby, Kane, and Ovechkin in the NHL. Quickly, name a single Columbus Blue Jacket!
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig dreamed of doing something about his sport's over-population a few years ago when he suggested the major leagues contract by dropping the Minnesota Twins. Ohmahgod, you'd have thought he sought to dismantle the United States and divvy the land between Mexico and Canada.
Frankly, Bud had a great idea; he simply picked the wrong team to start with. Face it, baseball was at its very best when it had 24 teams in two divisions in each of two leagues. No wild card, real pennant races within balanced schedules that rewarded regular-season play, and pressure-packed league championship playoffs.
Today, if the two Florida-based baseball teams, Arizona, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and tap any other choice like Cleveland, Colorado, Oakland, Toronto, or Washington would hardly be missed if they evaporated tomorrow. The woeful Pirates, for example, have maybe two legitimate major leaguers on their roster.
Somewhere somebody is waling that "it isn't fair" that Columbus, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Sacramento, or Oklahoma City should lose its team: "Why can't we have big league sports?" Well, you can, if you suspend your need for a team to represent you city and your city alone. In the baseball model, it would be so easy for the Cincinnati Reds or Cleveland Indians to absorb the best players the Pirates have to offer and play 40 percent of their games in PNC Park in Pittsburgh. It is a beautiful ballpark in a terrific city. So play games there with a regional—and far more competitive—team in a condensed Major League Baseball.
We all know the National Football League is king of the American sports world. The NFL currently has nice scheduling symmetry with 32 teams in eight divisions, which the bigger is better wizards soon will ruin with an 18-game schedule. Frankly, the NFL was a better league when it had fewer teams. It flourishes in its current bloated format because it enjoys the world's greatest, deepest—and completely free—farm system, known as college football.
This brings us to recent developments in college football. Colorado and Utah have gone to the Pacific-10. Nebraska has migrated to the Big Ten. The Big 12 South nearly blew up its whole conference with a wholesale switch to the Pacific. The University of Texas, holding all the cards in the Big 12, chose to stay put…at least for the time being.
Lost in Texas's decision was the wrecked possibility of four super-conferences that would have forever crushed any serious championship hopes of non-BCS conference members Boise State, BYU, Houston, SMU, and TCU and would have meant the death blow to major football programs at Baylor, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and virtually all of the Big East.
The prevailing opinion is that this spring's upheaval is only the beginning. Look for the Big Ten to raid more teams, the SEC possibly to snatch some plums from the ACC, and don't faint if Texas decides to go it alone as an independent fueled by its own all-sports TV network.
Would football fans really miss Baylor, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, SMU, and Syracuse playing in football's big time? I doubt it.
Keep the riffraff out and let the big dogs run.
Bob Boyles
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