I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed all of the attention Indiana had leading up to Tuesday’s primary election. I wasn’t too cracked up about our national choices (and neither were a lot of you, I know) but the fact that Indiana was relevant to the delegate process for both of the major parties has been pretty cool. While I did not attend any of the rallies held by the candidates, I really enjoyed seeing the pictures and videos a lot of you posted on social media. And I was very impressed with how close you got to the front, too. I got kinda caught up in the whole campaigning scene, and I started thinking: “What if I ran for the position of Commissioner of All Sports?” What if Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, Rob Manfred and Gary Bettman all answered to me as their final authority? So if that was a real job, I’m sure I’m not the only one who would want it. So I have pulled together a platform that I would run my campaign on – my agenda for that glorious day when I become ruler of the sports world. • COMPLETE REVAMPING OF COLLEGE SPORTS: Let’s be honest, we need a “revolution” when it comes to college sports and I have the plan to make it happen. The biggest lie in sports right now is the value of a college education to a participant in men’s basketball and football. Most of the kids in those sports at the highest level couldn’t care less about their GPA and more about their draft projection. I don’t blame them for that one bit. So, for those two sports let’s just quit pretending. THE GROSSMAN PLAN: Colleges would be able to hire high school seniors and pay them a flat salary to play on their team. No classes. No scholarships. They are semi-professional athletes. These teams would essentially operate as an adjunct entity to the university. Each school would have a maximum dollar amount they could pay, a salary cap. No boosters allowed. Every dollar given to the athletic department would have to be documented and accountable to everyone else. Any violation results in forfeiting of future games. Eighty percent of the income from those major sports teams would go to support the rest of the athletic teams at that school, 10 percent to the athletic department and the other 10 percent going to help the campus as a whole. Also, if a coach leaves a school for another job, their roster becomes unrestricted free agents and can go wherever they want and be eligible to play the next season. This also should eliminate the problem of coaches leaving for other jobs but their players being left behind. • SHORTER SEASONS: Much like this election cycle has run on for over two years, the seasons take too long in baseball, the NBA and the NHL. It defies our sensibilities to be watching hockey’s and basketball’s most important series in shorts and flip flops in June while baseball plays its fall classic in cities where the daytime temps are in the 40s. That’s crazy. THE GROSSMAN PLAN: Shorten both hockey and basketball to 50 games each starting in November and ending in March. You would start the playoffs in April, and every series would be best-of-5. The drama of Game 7 in either sport is tremendous, and playing shorter series means we get to the best part faster. Those leagues would own the month of April after March Madness ends. Shorten baseball to 110 games starting May 1st, with the playoffs in September. • FIRE GARY BETTMAN: No one has ruined a sport more than Bettman has ruined hockey (yep, including Goodell in football). He took away the game from the traditional towns in Canada and put in places like Phoenix, where it has been an epic failure. Some of the rules changes have been positive, but those were done by “hockey people”, which Bettman clearly is not. THE GROSSMAN PLAN: You have a lot of former players who know the game and know the people playing it currently in front office positions in the league. Hire one of them away from those teams and make them the face and voice of the league. Bettman is a ‘nobody’ who makes decisions that remind us he is just an empty suit. A Jeremy Roenick, a Steve Yzerman, isn’t Wayne Gretzky still alive? Where is Mark Messier? You solve a major credibility problem when you put a hockey guy in charge of hockey and let Bettman go ruin something else,like the St. Louis Cardinals or something. • CHANGE THE APPROACH TO KIDS SPORTS: I believe that children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Sorry, Whitney Houston popped into my head just now. We have gotten away from the two-pronged purpose of youth sports: They are supposed to teach kids how to play the right way and they are supposed to be fun. We have coaches who are coaching to win games and not to do either of the above. Oh, they will tell you that winning is fun. But ask kids at the end of those seasons what their coaches taught them and the answer from most of them will be that winning is fun, and when you ask them what they did to teach you how to win … you’ll likely get a lot of blank stares. THE GROSSMAN PLAN: For leagues for players under 10 years old, prohibit score keeping in all games. An 8-year old doesn’t need to know they are down 5-3 in their soccer game. They need to know that they are playing a forward position to start that quarter or second base that inning. Also, eliminating participation trophies and championship trophies for that same age group. There would be no scores, records, no tournaments, no champs. You get rid of that and you get focus on that game’s fundamentals. That makes better players and that is a winning formula. And also, we need to create an award system for coaches who are doing it right. They need to be celebrated and recognized for their contribution to the future of that sport. • NEW SPORTS-RELATED HOLIDAYS: There a few days on the calendar where, let’s be honest, work does not get done at a rate worthy of paying people to be on the clock. THE GROSSMAN PLAN: I would take certain holidays that only federal employees get and transform them into full national holidays. For example: Columbus Day … really? Take Columbus Day off the board and transfer that to the Monday after the Super Bowl. Everyone enjoys the game, and everyone gets the next day off. Hate football? Three-day weekend anyway. Presidents’ Day … take it off and move it to the Monday after the March Madness brackets are announced. You now have all day Monday to do research. Not into filling out brackets? Three-day weekend anyway. You get where I am taking this? How about taking Valentine’s Day and making it the third Sunday in February instead of the 14th? Super Bowl is over, doesn’t interfere with any local events, it always falls on the same day of the week … perfect. My fellow Americans, I can change the world (of sports anyway). Follow me to freedom.
