My Sports Platform
I am a crackpot, and I am prepared to receive upwards of 2% of the vote in Iowa
On Monday evening, the #1-ranked Michigan Wolverines and #4-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide played a thrilling—if at times sloppy—Rose Bowl Game, a College Football Playoff semifinal that culminated in a 27-20 victory for the Big Ten champions. The victory put the Wolverines in position to play for their first national title in more than a quarter-century, and proved some measure of validation for embattled head coach Jim Harbaugh. It was two of the sport’s bluest blue-bloods playing in the sport’s greatest venue, a New Year’s Day clash as the sun set over the mountains in Pasadena, California, and I loved every minute of it.
Later that night, the #2-ranked Washington Huskies and #3-ranked Texas Longhorns played an equally-thrilling Sugar Bowl, a game that ended on a last-second end zone fade by Texas’s Quinn Ewers being expertly broken up by Washington’s Elijah Jackson two hours after I had gone to bed.
Now, listen.
I don’t want you to think I’m just some whiny, Andy Rooney-esque crank here.
I want you to know that I am.
The fact that a College Football Playoff game—by definition, one of the three most important games of the sport’s season—kicked off at 9:15pm Eastern Standard Time on a worknight is unconscionable. For nearly half of the US population, this game ended at almost 1am, leaving sports fans with the choice of either missing a terrific game or turning themselves into a zombie on the first business day of the new year.
This isn’t limited to college football, either.
When my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers were in the midst of a four-year stretch of NBA Finals appearances from 2015-2018, I was deeply grateful for the team’s success, but also completely drained from mid-April to mid-June each year as playoff games routinely started at 9pm ET.
Something has to be done, and you know what?
It’s an election year.
Instead of just complaining in an email newsletter, I’m going to do what so many other aggrieved Americans have done in the past: I’m going to launch a crackpot presidential run, one focused entirely on my petty sports-related gripes.
Will I win? Maybe not.
But perhaps I can move the needle on some of these issues.
Let’s review my platform.
No Major Sporting Event Can End In Regulation After 10pm ET
Obviously, this is the one that’s most on my mind right now, and I think it’s one that could actually be achieved if we had the political will.
Basketball game? You can probably start at 7:30pm.
Baseball game? With the pitch clock, you might pull off 7pm.
Football? You better have that anthem done by 6:15pm at the latest, or you’re racking up some massive fines from my newly-weaponized FCC.
Football Broadcasts Have to Show the On-Field Halftime Show
I don’t want to know what Urban Meyer or Desmond Howard think about the game. I don’t want to see highlights. I don’t want to hear from the coaches or sideline reporters or the guys back in the studio.
[Werner Herzog voice] I would like to see the marching band.
Now, I’m not stating this just to win votes—I do firmly believe in it.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t think it was politically advantageous. Have you spent any time around marching band people? They are highly-organized and frighteningly-motivated people.
Sports Betting Will Be Treated Like Smoking
That is to say, it will be legal, but you won’t be able advertise it anywhere, and certainly not with pundits giving betting tips in the middle of a sports broadcast.
In fact, let’s extend that analogy and enact an indoor sports gambling ban. If you want to talk about your fantasy football team, you have to do it outside, or perhaps in a well-ventilated room designated specifically for that purpose.
No one should be subjected to secondhand fantasy sports.
No Red-on-Red Jersey Matchups Allowed
Okay, the first few points are the meat and potatoes of my platform, but this is where I sneak in a personal gripe. I am mildly red-green colorblind, and I hate when a football game features two teams with red as their primary color playing. Unfortunately, in the early 20th century the only colors available for uniforms were “various ugly shades of red”, so this accounts for about 40% of college football games.
There is a simple solution to avoiding this: mandate Powder Blue alternate uniforms.
It worked in baseball in the 1970s, and teams like the Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals, both of whom have red as their primary color, look terrific wearing them. I think football should have this. If two red teams are playing—say, Ohio State and Alabama—one of them has to wear their blues.
In major college football right now, only the UCLA Bruins regularly wear powder blue, but it looks spectacular when they play the USC Trojans.
Imagine if we could have this without having to watch UCLA football.
Ban Public Subsidies of Professional Sports Stadiums
Okay, but this one for real.
They’re a giant scam, the proported financial benefits to cities never materialize, and we end up with soulless corporate stadiums that exist only to make the failson team owners feel good about the franchise they inherited.
Similarly,
If You’re Going to Sell Naming Rights to a Stadium, They Can Only Be Named After Locally-Produced Foods, Drinks and/or Familiar Physical Products
Coors Field? Makes sense.
Miller Park? Sure.
Ford Field? Yeah.
Heinz Field? I have a long-running beef with Heinz due to a lifetime of being asked “oh, like the ketchup?” when no, it’s spelled H-I-N-E-S, but I have to concede that the stadium name made sense.
Acrisure Stadium, though? Guaranteed Rate Field? LoanDepot Park?
Get the hell out of here.
(I’m not sure how I would mandate this after banning public funding of stadiums but I feel like I’d have a lot of political capital at this point and could get away with anything.)
Make Professional Sports Teams’ Books Public
“We’re losing money!”
Prove it.
You know how I know that no major North American professional sports franchise is losing money? Because every time one goes on sale, it sells for 5-10x what the last owner bought it for. They are money-printing machines and we need public audits to prove that actually, you didn’t need to trade your star player, you’re just making plenty of money winning 40% of your games and wanted to reduce overhead.
Team Names Cannot Move
As a native Clevelander who lived through the stealing of my hometown football team at age 13, I feel very passionately about this one. Browns fans may not have experienced any real victories in decades, but the sheer outrage the city generated in 1995-6 forced a new standard in moves, keeping the team’s name and color scheme in town even as Art Modell ran off to Baltimore.
For a while, this set precedent—Seattle kept the Supersonics name, and so on. But it’s been slipping of late. I do not respect the idea of the Las Vegas A’s. They should have to be something new. It’ll probably be dumb, too, because all the good team names were taken a century ago, but that’s the price they pay for moving.
We Must Encourage Better Nicknames For Players
This would probably have to be some kind of tax-credit thing. We can’t force nicknames—no one can, ask George Costanza—but we should absolutely encourage our athletes to do better. We once had The Human Highlight Reel, The Big Hurt, Pistol Pete and Chocolate Thunder. Now, it seems the best we can do is refer to a player by their initials or a combination of their first initial and the first syllable of their last name. It’s sad.
Under my Nicknames Act, significant tax benefits will go to the Million-Dollar Mustache, The River City Roomba and the Chattanooga Chatterbox.
The Day After the Super Bowl Should Be a National Holiday
I’m hardly the first to suggest this, but it’s so achievable.
I mean, honestly, what’s the purpose of a bully pulpit if you’re not going to create new national holidays? Heck, you could even move President’s Day—it’s only a week off right now, and it’s far enough removed from its origin as “Washington’s Birthday” that no one will notice if you scootch it up.
In my America, no one will go to work sleepy the morning after the Big Game.
I can already see myself sweeping to an LBJ-in-1964-esque landslide victory, but I think there’s room for one more.
Revert College Sports To Its 1990 Conference Alignments
Realignment has gotten out of hand. Utah and Central Florida should not be in a conference together. Purdue-Oregon should not be a conference game. The Pac-12 should still exist, except that it should be the Pac-10, and it should exist along the Big Eight, Big West, Southwest and Western Athletic Conferences, none of which should have more than ten teams because that way everyone can play everyone in their conference each year.
Heck, doing this would kick my own alma mater, the University of Cincinnati, back to independent status here—but they’d be in good company with teams like Miami, Penn State, Florida State, Virginia Tech and South Carolina. We’d get to the end of the season and have a bunch of bowls that wouldn’t necessarily leave us with a clear national champion, and you know what?
That’s okay.
At least they won’t be trying to crown one after midnight.
That’s my platform. Of course, I want to hear from voters like you. What changes would you campaign on?
—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)
oh, let's also throw in: no discussion of games that don't involve the participants of the game currently airing or teams they are set to play soon
If I'm watching a MAC game I do not want to hear one damn word about the playoff
Also, let's throw in "no college football games in NFL stadiums, ever"
that includes home games. sorry, Pitt, you've got a 3-year grace period to build an on-campus stadium or you're bumped to FCS