Professional sports in North America have been using drafts to disperse players ever since 1921 when major league baseball teams began drafting minor leaguers who had not already signed with a major league team. The NFL started the first amateur draft in 1936 when the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles was upset that his team was unable to sign any top prospects. The NBA's first draft happened in 1950 after its first season of merging with the National Basketball League. The NBA had a nice little feature in the draft in which teams had priority over local players. In 1963 the NHL held its first Entry Draft, all amateurs under the age of 20 were eligible. Prior to the 1963 draft NHL teams used a system similar to European soccer where teams would own junior players and sign prospects out of there. Baseball was the last league to implement the draft in 1965 after ridiculous bidding wars over amateur players. Drafts have done a good job of creating parity but I believe they cause more problems than they solve. Players should have some type of say in which team they will end up playing for, by having a draft that doesn't allow for player choice, it limits their ability to get the most economically out their ability as well as freedom in choosing their team. Since drafts determine their order based off of which team performed worse in the previous season (although some leagues have lotteries), some teams may tank during the last few weeks in the season. Sports such as baseball and ice hockey that allow for control of 200+ and 90 players respectively, also have way too much power over the lives of players. These following proposals will try to fix those problems.
Change the Number of players controlled by team
Currently major league baseball can have over 200 contracts in their possession, that is ridiculous. On the other hand NBA teams can only have 15, a number that should be boosted although they do have the rights to draftees they have not signed. The NHL is almost as bad as baseball with 90 contracts when they only have a maximum of 2 minor league teams. The NFL has no limit because of their assortment of reserve lists. Under this proposal baseball teams will only have the control of 100 players and they would only have two minor league teams (This leaves open the door for those who want to see promotion and relegation in baseball, there will be more on this later) and a 25 man prospect list. No team would be allowed to have greater than 10 teams per graduating class. The players on the prospect list would be allowed to distributed to teams that are not affiliated with any other major league team(possibly teams inside the baseball pyramid) as well as college teams. This means that the NCAA needs to change their definition of amateur, players should be allowed to be signed to contracts and still play college sports. Teams will pay for the players education but not anything else. The current rules about 40 man rosters and and DL rules will still apply.
NBA teams should have their contract limit set at 20, they are allowed 15 players to be selected for games as well as 10 prospects. Each team would be allowed two players per graduating class(ie. 2 Freshmen, Two Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, Redshirt Seniors). A team is not required to carry all those players but if so they are allowed. NFL rosters should be expanded as well, They will keep their current active player and reserve list limits but will be allowed 3 players per graduating class to be under contract. Those players will be playing for college teams.
The NHL would undergo changes similar to baseball, there contract limit would remain at 50 so that each team could field one minor league team. There franchise limit would be brought down to 65 with 3 players coming from each graduating class. European players will have their graduating class determined by their age if they did not finish high school or lived in a location that finished high school at age 16.
Change the Draft Structure
Teams should no longer be rewarded for finishing in last place but teams that do the best should not become stronger by getting the best talent. In this proposal the draft order will go like this. Teams that do not make the playoffs will have their first picks of the draft starting with the best record and ending with the worst. Then the playoff teams will get to draft towards at the end of the round with the champion picking last and the worst record of playoff teams going first. To give teams the option sign local talent as well as give players the opportunity to play for their favorite team, teams will have the ability as many local players as they are allowed prospects per graduating class. (In other terms, a team could sign 3 local players per graduating class if they are allowed 3 prospects in that graduating class).
A local player can be signed by a team that's television market covers his hometown, birthplace, or college. Each team would rank their local players in order of how important they are to each team. If another team would draft a "local" player in a draft round higher than the rank given by the team that player signed with, the drafting team would have priority(If a player was given a rank of 4 but a team drafted him in round 3, the team that drafted him would get him. Another confusing part of this is that no draft has a set amount of rounds. Teams are only allowed to draft as many players as they have spots left on their prospect list. So if a team has 8 spots left they are allowed 8 rounds of drafting. They also still have to comply with the graduation class restrictions.
Although all these changes may seem very confusing, they would make a difference in sports if ever instituted. Writing these rules would not be easy because teams would try to find loopholes in the rules so a legal team would be necessary. Teams being rewarded for sucking is not right, it gives the fans a poor game and wouldn't it be great to see your hometown compete for every game instead of calling it in.
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