How to fix Major League Baseball, after it expand to 32 teams

Expansion

Proposed Portland Stadium

With the push that is coming out of the Northeast and Portland to get an expansion baseball team, it looks like baseball will sooner than later expand to 32 teams.  There is also noise being made north of the border in Montreal for a group to bring the Expos back.  All of this is rumored to not be completed till after stadiums are figured out in Tampa and Oakland.  Now no one goes to games a lot in either market but I can’t see Oakland losing their team.  Tampa on the other hand should not be there and I’m projecting with the expansion into Portland and Montreal, that Nashville will be the other city to get a team. 

Charlotte Baseball

Charlotte and Vegas are also mentioned with Nashville as an expansion target.  Vegas is getting the Raiders and have done well with the Golden Knights, but I don’t see them ever getting a baseball team.  If they do that is the day that Pete Rose is let back into Baseball and inducted into the Hall of Fame.  It’s down to Charlotte and Nashville.  Both cities have an it factor, and either can edge each other out.  For my example you can interchange either, but I’m going to use Nashville as my example. 

Realignment

With the addition and movement of franchises, the divisions are going to get changed up and teams moving leagues.  It’s happened before with the Astros and Brewers, and I’m not moving stalwarts.    

Montreal will go back to the NL and get its NL East rivals back.  Portland moves to the AL West and gets a close rival with Seattle.  The Tampa franchise that moves to Nashville will jump to the National League to the SouthEast and get to play more regional rivals.  Colorado moves to the AL and gets the DH in Coors Field and that thin air all the time now.

Each league would be Four 4 team divisions, regionally based and structured. 

The schedule

Cut the season down from 162 to 154 games.  There are roughly 26 weeks between first week of April and the last week of September, DO NOT START GAMES IN MARCH.  It takes 22 weeks to play 154 games straight through, without byes or days off.  4 weeks off should be plenty of time, also with the All-Star break in there.  (Schedule breakdown coming). 

Teams would play more games within its own division than other opponents.  Here is what the 154 game schedule breakdown would look like:

66 games vs Division opponents (22 vs each team)

72 games vs League opponents (3 game series vs each team Home and Home with all)

12 games vs a Cross League division.  (2 Home 3-game series and 2 Away 3-game series)

4 games vs a Cross League rival (Cubs-White Sox / Yankees Mets) OR 2 2-game series vs Random Cross League teams (San Diego-Portland / San Diego-Seattle)

With the last point, there will be seasons where teams would have a natural geographic rival in the Cross League Division, then random fits would be slotted in.

Players would get 8 games cut off the season, and as Anthony Rizzo mentioned, the should take less (prorated) for playing fewer games. 

The Playoffs

Each league would have 6 playoff teams.  The 4 division winners and the next 2 best records in the league. 

2 Best Division Champions in the league would get a bye.

2 Lesser Division Champions would get Home Field advantage in a best of 3 series vs the 2 Wild Card

The DS would still be best of 5, CS best of 7 and World Series best of 7. 

Schedule of the Playoffs

With this the World Series would go into November more.  But the schedule should be set to where it can be moved up if sweeps happen.  If series would go the full 3 and 5 games in the first 2 rounds, they would be finished up within the first 14 days of the playoffs. 

This all seems too easy for someone in a cube and with 3 kids to manage to figure out so FOR SURE MLB would not go this route.  But laid out, this option for the league and fans would be a great fit. 

This is how the MWC should have looked in 2012

How would this not have worked out as a great conference in college football?  If the “BIG BOYS” would have promised them a BCS Bid and ESPN or Fox ponied up some nice TV cash, this would have been a better conference than the Big East easily and the top 4 teams (Boise / TCU / Utah / BYU ) are pretty good rivals.  Play the conference championship game in Denver or Las Vegas?  You could have played the basketball tournaments in the same cities.  And it’s REGIONAL!  The basketball in the league would have been decent too with San Diego State and BYU both being top 5 before the NCAA tourney last year and the year prior New Mexico was top 10. 

If this would have happened would the rest of the dominoes have fallen in the conference realignment game?

For those who can’t tell by the helmets I have this:

MWC
Pacific	Mountain
Utah	Boise State
BYU	TCU
UNLV	Air Force
Fresno St	Colorado St
San Diego St	New Mexico
Nevada	Wyoming

Aggies instead of Utes?

What if Texas A&M would be Pac-12 bound instead of Utah?  Would this rumble in the landscape of college sports be going on?  Maybe with Texas and going independent, but would there be the dramatic effects going on?

If Utah was still in the Mountain West and Boise State coming in, that conference would have for sure received a BCS bowl bid, and kept BYU around, would TCU have bolted for the Big East or stayed a lot closer to home.

The Cotton Bowl wants in the BCS and with the JerryDome it has a home that it most likely will get one sooner rather than later.  So as I look at it, what would the college conference scene look like?  How about this?

Big Ten	SEC	ACC	Pac-12
Illinois	Alabama	Boston College	Arizona
Indiana	Auburn	NC State	Arizona State
Ohio State	Arkansas	North Carolina	Oregon
Penn State	LSU	Duke	Oregon State
Purdue	Mississippi	Virginia	USC
Wisconsin	Mississippi State	Virginia Tech	UCLA
Iowa	Florida	Wake Forest	Stanford
Michigan	Vanderbilt	Clemson	Cal
Michigan State	South Carolina	Florida State	Washington
Minnesota	Georgia	Miami	Wash State
Nebraska	Tennessee	Georgia Tech	Colorado
Northwestern	Kentucky	Maryland	Texas A&M
Mt West	Big 8	Big East	IND
BYU	Oklahoma	Syracuse	Texas
Utah	Oklahoma St	South Florida	ND
Fresno State	Kansas	Cinciannati	Army
San Diego St	Kansas State	Connecticut	Navy
Wyoming	Missouri	West Virginia
New Mexico	Iowa State	Louisville
TCU	Texas Tech	Rutgers
Boise State	Baylor	Pittsburgh
Air Force		Villanova-move up
Colorado State
Nevada
UNLV

The Big Bowls would then look like this?

Rose – Pac12 vs Big Ten

Cotton – Big 8 vs AtLarge

Orange – ACC vs Big East

Sugar – SEC vs AtLarge

Fiesta – Mt West vs AtLarge

BCS Championship – 1 vs 2

So basically its 5 spots up for grabs along with the conference championships, the Mt West would have its bid.  Texas is independent and A&M is separated from the Horns.

Would there be more stability?  Most likely.  All teams would be happy.  The Big 8 may have not gotten a lot of money without Texas, but its college athletics and they could go for equality and get more than what they are getting now. 

Thankfully NCAA 12 we can adjust conferences and see how it would play out.

Thoughts?

What's the magic number?

When is too big too big?  With A&M SECeding from the Big XII and most likely going to be the 13th SEC team, expansion is all the talk as the college football season kicks off.

With the SEC having 13 teams they are going to be looking to go to an even number of 14.  The Big XII is on shaky ground with 9 and all the fate in Texas and Oklahoma's hands.  Do they expand or will the Pac-12 offer an invitation to some schools and go to the Super Conference.

I this week predicted it happening and that's because college sports is all about business and money and tv contracts in football right now.  Bigger footprints in bigger markets equal a bigger pay day!

Even though I think that is coming, I don't want that.  I think 12 is the magic number for conferences.  It works for 2 divisions of 6.  Scheduling among 6 teams from another division you see teams more often than you would with 8 teams in the other division.  Unless there are no non-conference games, your going to take time to build rivalries in your own conference.  

Then look at the history of conferences.  They were built with like universities in a certain region, hence the names.  Atlantic Coast Conference.  Big East.  Pac-10.  Southeastern Conference.  Southwest conference.  The Big Ten has its footprint in the mid-west and so did the Big 8.  The teams didn't have to travel to far to go to compete.  Yes the big pay day is football and it costs money to send baseball and other olympic sports on the road.  

Now a day or so of thinking about it, what would be best for the landscape?  I think 16 is too big.  I think that it would work for a few years because of the novelty of the thought, but its just too big.  Look at the Big East with the huge conference it has for basketball, or the old WAC when it was spread across 3 time zones and eventually split to the Mountain West and WAC.

Here is where I hope that the Big Ten stays at 12 for the time being and has some history with the way it is set up now.  I'm excited about it and don't want to see it change.