Line of Scrimmage: Five Things the NFL Must Fix

Football Betting Lines

05/14/2008 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The National Football League will enter the 2008 season just as it entered the 2007 season, and the 2006 season - as the most financially successful sports league in the world.

The NFL currently dominates the U.S. sports landscape in a way that would have seemed unthinkable two decades ago, when baseball held onto its standing as America's national pastime and the NBA was in the midst of the halcyon era of Jordan, Bird, and Magic.

While baseball and basketball have both faced crises great and small in the years since, the NFL has continued its ascent thanks to a combination of an ever-improving product built around an equitable financial structure for teams, a canny marketing effort, and a shift in the U.S. cultural climate, amongst other elements.

That said, the league circa 2008 is far from perfect.

Labor strife looms in the not-too-distant future. The outsized nature of rookie contracts has created a financial burden for teams and has negatively impacted veteran salaries. More retired players seem to step forward every day, complaining that the league for which they risked great physical peril has now abandoned them.

The NFL, its teams, and its player's union have all begun taking steps to resolve these issues and several others, but just as in any bureaucracy, progress is slow. There are conflicting agendas among the NFL's powerbrokers that are sure to stand in the way of change, and that's a dangerous situation for a league that might not know quite how good it has it.

If the NFL spins its wheels and deems itself untouchable atop the hierarchy of American sports, an MLB-styled fall from grace is a possibility. The league must find ways to improve itself and remain ahead of the curve in order to maintain its position, and must also take preventative steps in anticipation of the obstacles that linger just down the road.

Thus, we give you the top five issues we believe the league must confront.

For the purposes of this piece, we're going to ignore the very real problems of the contentious collective bargaining issue and the much-needed cap on contracts for first-round draft picks, which we believe are tied to one another. It should go without saying that an effort toward labor peace and an agreement on compensation must perpetually be at the top of the NFL agenda, just as it should be in all major sports leagues.

We're also going to leave the retired players out of this discussion, since we believe that issue falls solely within the domain of the NFLPA and is not a fixable problem for the league in regard to its on-field product.

A few items that missed the cut in our top five include a serious plan to end free agent tampering, making teams pay for recurring off-the-field problems on their rosters, having the guts to assume league control from bad ownership, and revealing a plan for international play that makes some sense.

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5. OVERHAUL THE ENTIRE PRO BOWL EXPERIENCE

It's not about the game itself, which is more or less flag football with a bit more grunting and an occasional punter being nearly liquefied. To expect the participants in any athletic exhibition to risk great bodily injury for minimal gain, financial or otherwise, is impractical, and who wants a 10-7 Pro Bowl anyway? Leave the low-stakes nature of the game alone.

The first real problem is with the ridiculous voting process, which has players, coaches, and fans combining to determine which players head to the game. Essentially, it's a lazy exercise in name recognition for all of the above, as the NFL players vote in too many past-their-prime legacies (Jonathan Ogden, Ray Lewis, Tony Richardson) in place of more qualified but less heralded youngsters, while the fans of teams with the most rabid followings (Steelers, Packers, Cowboys) engage in ballot-box stuffing to get their hometown heroes to the top of the list.

There might be a fear by the league of a potential P.R. hit in silencing the fan voice, but we believe the majority of NFL fans want their All-Star game to include the most qualified people, and won't raise a major fuss. The players will just be happy not to have to fill out any more paperwork (until they get snubbed, which is when they'll complain, but they do that anyway).

So form a Pro Bowl selection committee of no more than five people who cover the league nationally but have no discernable agenda, including but not limited to Peter King (Sports Illustrated), John Clayton or Len Pasquarelli (ESPN), Mike Florio (profootballtalk.com, The Sporting News), Adam Schefter (NFL Network) and someone from FOX or CBS or NBC who knows what they're doing, to make the picks. At positions where subjectivity is king, like along the offensive line, the committee will consult with some scouts in order to identify the right honorees.

The other must-fix Pro Bowl problem involves the anti-climactic date of the game - one week after the Super Bowl - when the world has mentally shut off its radar on NFL competition. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has raised the possibility of scheduling the Pro Bowl on Super Bowl weekend at the Super Bowl site, and we think that's a decent idea (sorry Hawaii friends, but you had a good run).

The only logistical reason we can discern why the Pro Bowl couldn't be played on Friday night and tied into a "Super Bowl weekend" type of extravaganza is the playing surface during years in which there is a grass game field, like in Tampa and Miami over the next two years. If the potential wear and tear to the game field is deemed too great, then the Pro Bowl can be held on the Saturday between the Championship Games and the Super Bowl, since the league currently has nothing happening at that time.

No, players from the Super Bowl teams would not be able to attend, but many beg off the Pro Bowl under the current format anyway.

The change might not make the Pro Bowl any more watchable, but would at least give the league another real event, a la the dunk contest in the NBA or home run contest in baseball, to help foster the buildup to its feature presentation on the first Sunday in February.

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4. MAKE REFEREES (BUT NOT ALL OFFICIALS) FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES

Any time a bad call or a series of bad calls affects the outcome of an NFL game, the hue and cry begins, both in the media and in the public, about the inadequacies of officials. The fact that, unlike their counterparts in the other major leagues, all of the NFL's zebras are normal everyday working people with day jobs, is seen as evidence of a broken system producing NFL refs.

Should they all be full-time employees? Well, that would be complete overkill. If you can devise a 40-hour-a-week work schedule devoted solely to the job of being an NFL field judge, then perhaps I'll revisit that thought. NBA, NHL, and MLB officials work several games a week for more than half the year in most cases, so it only makes sense that they'd be full-time.

That said, with so much riding on the 50-60 hours a year that NFL officials are actually on the field in meaningful situations, the notion of this group at least seeming better prepared is one that is well worth investigating.

So why not take the league's 17 referees - the men at the helm of each officiating crew - and give them full-time salaries and the resources with which to engage in more advanced evaluation and oversight of their own crew? Film preparation, in-depth rules analysis, and detailed evaluation of each individual crew member would now be more the responsibility of the referee than that of a perfectly nice and oft-embattled man sitting in a Park Avenue office named Mike Pereira. Under the new system, the refs would be asked to make recommendations about promotions, demotions, and firings on their own crew. As it is now, officials never seem to be demoted or fired.

The NFL can't put officials in more game situations with world class athletes, but it can certainly make an effort to better train its people and hold them to a higher standard.

Yes, current high school principal Pete Morelli will have to hand out fewer detentions, and Mike Carey might have to let the assistant manager run the skiing store for awhile, but at least all of the league's officials will have a greater degree of accountability when things go wrong on the field.

3. EXPAND THE PLAYOFFS

We've been lobbying for this one for years, though in its hypocrisy, the NFL has hidden behind its "we don't want to water down the playoffs" tack. This in a league where everyone scratches their head if a team finishes better than 11-5 or worse than 5-11. I guess the league feels that another 8-8 team in the postseason might make some people catch on to this parity thing.

In reality, expanding the playoffs from 12 to 14 teams is only going to enhance the popularity of the league and make the regular season that much more meaningful. More playoff slots will put more clubs in the postseason hunt during the season's final weeks, meaning TV sets will be switched on in more cities during that time frame.

Once the schedule reaches Wild Card weekend, the league could dominate the television airwaves with two afternoon games and a nightcap on both Saturday and Sunday, as opposed to its current double-header format. The league could use the prospect of an extra postseason game to sweeten its network deal, or it could put the extra playoff contests on the NFL Network if it wants to see how quickly the Comcasts of the world will get in line. Remember also that two of the league's top four teams would now be playing on Wild Card weekend, another enticement for networks and TV viewers.

Yes, the No. 1 seeds would have the only byes and thus would have life easier than anyone else, but isn't creating an opportunity for the best two teams to reach the Super Bowl a good thing? And, by the way, a team with a first-round bye hasn't won a Super Bowl since the Patriots in 2004, so you're not exactly handing somebody a Lombardi Trophy when you give them an extra week off as it is.

2. EXTEND THE REGULAR SEASON, SHORTEN THE PRESEASON

Though the average fan is probably unaware of it, we've just celebrated the 30th anniversary of a 16-game regular season schedule, which has been preceded by a four-game preseason schedule every year since 1978. Prior to that, the league (as well as the AFL during its existence) utilized a 14-game slate with six preseason contests for only 17 years (1961-1977) before upping the percentage of meaningful games at the behest of television and the general public.

Clearly, the shift to an 18-game, two-preseason tilt format is long overdue. The NFL regular season lasts roughly three-and-a-half months, a full two months shorter than its next competitor in the pro sports marketplace (the NBA regular season is roughly five-and-a-half months long, though its mind- numbingly overwrought postseason seems even longer somehow). The NFL's popularity dictates an extension of the presence that only more full platters of regular season games can satisfy.

Preseason football has become a joke for everyone but the owners, who are allowed to swindle their season-ticket holders into essentially paying to watch replacement players for two games, get to control their own broadcast rights to air the games, and don't have to pay their real players those pesky and expensive game checks. Also, let's not forget that we've seen a number of significant starters suffer serious injuries during the preseason, in spite of their limited minutes on the field.

At the same time, the only way the player's union is going to consent to an 18-game schedule is if there is a substantial appreciation of salaries, and that makes perfect sense given the fact that it is the players who will be putting their collective health on the line for two more full games.

Given that situation, the notion of an expanded schedule looks like a non- starter, but there's a potential knight to potentially ride in on a white horse, or a multi-colored peacock: television.

The networks would stand to benefit greatly from two more weekends of meaningful, nationally-televised football, programming that would be much easier to sell to advertisers than some Friday night August bumble-fest between two teams of undrafted free agents.

If the networks can pony up enough bucks to tack onto the television deal and in turn prick the owners' ears up, and enough of the owners can see fit to re- mortgage their cabanas at St. Bart's in order to pass a portion of the new- found revenue stream onto the players, an NFL-hungry public might finally see a lot less of Jim Sorgi and Matt Cassel during the late summer.

1. GET SERIOUS ABOUT HGH

I currently have Rams media guides from the years 1987, 1997, and 2007 sprawled across my desk (not picking on the Rams, their guides just happened to be at my fingertips.).

In the '87 guide, there's not a single veteran listed as weighing more than L.A. guard Tom Newberry's 282 pounds.

Ten years later, every guard and tackle on the squad save for svelte 295-pound guard John Gerak is over 300 pounds, though 80 percent of St. Louis' defensive tackles were still under the 300 mark.

By last season, the team's guards and DTs were both heavier by an average of 10 pounds than their 1997 counterparts, and 80 percent of the team's interior d-lineman were over 300 pounds.

Let's face it, it's not just improved weight regimens causing players to get bigger. The fact that 300-plus-pound men are regularly running sub-five second 40-yard dash times cannot be chalked up to the evolution of the species either.

There are players in the NFL - probably a substantial amount of players - who are using human growth hormone (HGH) to gain an edge in a sport where you're either bigger and faster or you're unemployed. With no reliable test for HGH, there's no disincentive for using or abusing it, and though blood tests to detect the substance are supposed to be coming, the league and the player's union have already begun turning a blind eye to the possible epidemic.

Said union leader Gene Upshaw, addressing the prospect of random blood tests to detect HGH at his pre-Super Bowl press briefing, "[The players are] not going to be pin cushions."

Upshaw's posture on the matter is absurd, since random tests would be infrequent by nature, and would mostly be in place to serve as a deterrent, just like similar league-administered tests for steroids and street drugs.

The players are not-so-cleverly hoping to delay any accountability on the HGH issue until a reliable urine test is created, knowing full well that such a day is still years down the line.

But in all likelihood, we're a matter of months from a disgruntled former player, or several players, coming forward to discuss the rampant use of HGH in NFL locker rooms. Once that happens, the league is going to be on the run from a P.R. standpoint, when if it acts now it can avoid the kind of scandal that has doomed the last decade of baseball to irrelevant status.

On the day that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) or someone else comes up with even a reasonably accurate test to detect HGH use - be it a blood, urine, saliva, or skin test - the NFL needs to pressure the union to adopt it and consent to random testing (WADA's current test reportedly detects HGH only 23-36 hours after it is injected into the athlete, rendering it mostly impractical for NFL purposes). The league should also be spending some of its considerable fortune to research and develop an accurate test, and to confront the problem with a vigilance similar to the anti-doping effort at play in the Olympics and in international cycling.

Then, when the contents of Najeh Davenport's laundry basket hit the fan, the league can defend its stance on the matter and protect its reputation.