Has Free Agency Made The Playoffs Obsolete?

There should be little surprise that the NBA Playoffs - the pinnacle of the Basketball year according to the NBA - is drawing less viewers than Professional Wrestling. I mean, honestly, who cares? Its the same old teams as last year and there are no players that anybody could care less about. Besides, whether we watch or not, these players will, with any financial sense in their bodies at all, be set for life. Our watching will not change that, and quite frankly, we all have more important things to do.

Such an attitude can't be far behind for Baseball and Football. It already infects NBA Basketball and NHL Hockey. The fact of the matter is, from year to year, a team changes its stripes so often that there is little reason to root for your home team anymore, and even less reason to root for a sport in general. The money that is thrown around these sports puts the athletes in the unenviable position of having to defend such huge salaries for what is, in essence, a child's game. For the Michael Jordan's of the game, this is pretty easy to do. For the rest of the athletes, its a no-win situation. Add any sort of negative press to an already troubled sport, and the viewers begin to turn away in droves.

But, at least, during the regular season fans can watch their team's struggles and triumphs and hope that their team makes the playoffs. As the team's chances diminish, so do the crowds. As soon as the team is eliminated, so are the fans. 32 Sports teams fans become 16 become 8 become 4 become 2 (and the occassional event fan who watches the finals because they're the finals). By the time a championship game comes around, there might be almost nobody watching the sport.

In sports like Wrestling and NASCAR, each and every contest can produce a winner that was different than the previous week. There are no heroes who stay heroes and no villains who stay villains. Fans are encouraged to adopt a single competitor as their athlete. And they live and die by that athlete, knowing full well that next week the outcome might be completely different.

If we can't have true team sports - where a team remains constant from year to year to year, and we can't have a true athlete sport - where the athletes are the source of our hero worship, then we are stuck with some sort of inbetween compromise where we root for our team until they suck, and then we move on to another sport until next year.

For big time pro-sports, its all about the product they put on the field... but its also about our connecting to that product. Any obstacle that gets in the way of our connection ought to be removed or restricted.

Its time Baseball did something about its free agency problem. Its time Baseball put the Genie back in the bottle.