There Are Too Many Sports Teams

Someone asked me the other day how I feel about the current state of professional sports in the United States of America.

I feel as though the quality of play is downright bad, which explains why I don't watch very much.

Let's take Major League Baseball, for example. In the recently concluded 2016 season, fourteen out of thirty teams finished with losing records. Or, let's look at the N.B.A., where last season, eleven of thirty teams had losing records and two more finished at the .500 mark. You had one team, the Golden State Warriors, win seventy-three out of eighty-two regular season games. And then you had the Philadelphia 76ers lose seventy-two games while winning just ten.

And with five games left in the regular season, fourteen of thirty-two N.F.L. teams have losing records.

Do I think things were better in the 1960s and 1970s? Yes, I do.

If I were in charge, the NF.L. would have twenty-four teams. Four divisions of six teams. A fourteen game schedule. Major League Baseball? I'd go old school and have two leagues with eight teams per league.

Those teams would play a 154 game schedule with each team playing the other seven teams fourteen times each season.

The N.B.A.? Twenty teams, with four divisions of five teams each. The current schedule of eight-two regular season games is something I would keep.

For the record, I neither know much nor care much about hockey, so I have no idea what the N.H.L. is like.

Please, don't get me wrong. I love sports. But when so many teams are so very bad, what's in it for me to invest three to four hours of my time to watch?

I have several very good sports simulation games and to be honest, I get a lot more enjoyment from replaying past seasons and creating new, fictional ones than I do from watching anything in real life.