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Teams That Tank

By Jeffrey Standen

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is the latest sports leader to fret publicly about an increasing problem among professional sports leagues. With so many benefits available to a team from losing a game, or more specifically from not trying very hard to win, then it appears that sometimes teams appear indifferent to winning. I can think of three instances where teams play indifferently. First, where an amateur star player is about subject himself to the entry draft, and a losing team tries to position itself in a better position to obtain the highest draft choice. Second, where a team in the latter stages of the regular season has no chance to qualify for the playoffs, and thus plays rookies and scrubs in order to assess player abilities in preparation for the following season. Third, where a winning team is assured of a playoff berth and therefore uses the remaining regular season games to rest stars and avoid injuries to key players. For shorthand, I'll refer to all of these situations as "tanking."

[Of course situations one and two in the tanking list might in many cases be coincidental; I suspect that sometimes we think we're seeing a team lose for draft position when we're really seeing a losing team making assessments for the next season. So the problem, in my view, is likely overstated.]

Assuming tanking is a problem (Commissioner Goodell clearly seems to think so), let's see what if anything can be done about it. I've read about lots of proposals. Every one of them involves additional rules. I've heard of proposed rules that require stars to play, rules that fine teams for shirking, rules that threaten the forfeiture of a draft pick if teams shirk. Why does everyone always want to make up new rules for every problem in the world? Maybe fewer rules would work better.

So let's eliminate all of the following rules and see if this problem of tanking goes away.

1. Before we discuss remedies, we should ask if tanking is all that bad. In TSLP's glorious formative years in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, although of course I wanted my teams to be in contention and win (vain hope in those days), I used to love when the Red Sox fell out of contention. It was a chance to see the top prospects, or the part-time rookies, get a chance to play. You could estimate their potential and whet your appetite for their eventual contributions. Granted, watching the kids play is a different kind of fan interest than watching your team drive for the championship. Yet sports fans do consume their fanaticism in various ways. Only one team can win the trophy, and only a minority of the teams (one would hope) can qualify for the playoffs. It is important for teams to learn how to market their non-competitive games as much as the ones with immediate playoff implications.

2. Again before we discuss remedies, realize that this presumed problem of tanking is a very modern phenomenon. Although I'm not that old (my internet persona TSLP is a mere twenty-nine, and handsome to boot), part of the current fixation on tanking stems from the current fixation on the playoffs. Of course the playoffs are entertaining and fun, but they are also contrived: they do not determine a league champion in any true sense. Instead, they crown a champion and make everyone call that team the champion. For instance, beyond doubt the New England Patriots (with a 17-0 record) were the best team in the NFL in 2008, and indeed might have been the greatest NFL team ever, yet an improbable upset meant that the Giants were the season's "champion." The Giants were a very good team, but hardly the best. Does anyone really think that the NCAA men's basketball tournament crowns as its victor the best team in college hoops? It would be amazing if it did. Yet winning that tournament, although obviously the product of a large dollop of luck, has become the defining characteristic for NCAA basketball programs and coaches. Anyway, the result of our modern and indefensible addiction to playoffs and champions is that the enjoyment of the game itself has diminished. I grew up rooting for a losing teams. To be a fan meant to follow that team and root for its gradual improvement over the course of many seasons, looking for small signs of hope in promising rookies, cheaply acquired veterans, and improved skills from present players. Today it's playoffs or nothing. My point is that losing teams that play rookies is nothing new; our terming it "tanking" and considering such games "meaningless" is a reflection of the limits and shallowness of the contemporary fan experience.

3. But before I run out of internet space, here's my first reform (by which I mean rule-elimination, not rule-addition): end the limitations on trades of draft picks. If losing teams are in fact tanking for draft picks, they must believe that the draft pick is more valuable to them than is the fan anger their tanking will likely generate. Which means either that young, unproven but talented players are worth it (sometimes, but not routinely) or that the rules of the professional leagues artificially inflate the value of those picks. I suggest it's the latter. The leagues make it either impossible or difficult to trade picks. Draft picks in major league baseball cannot be traded. NBA teams may not trade first-round picks in consecutive years. The NFL allows for trades of picks. Notice how tanking concerns (at least in Situation One, that is, losing for draft priority) are seldom discussed with respect to the NFL. Why don't NFL teams tank for superior draft position? Because the (relatively) free alienability of draft choices makes it comparatively easy for any team to move up or down in the draft. Why would a team tank to turn its high draft pick into one or two spots higher? History shows it's easy and common to trade up as desired. Plus, where a team has traded away its top pick, it no longer has an incentive to increase the value of that pick.

So one solution to the problem of tanking is to allow teams to trade their picks freely. Then a team that wants a particular high draft pick could weigh the cost of moving up in the draft (say its own pick plus a valuable player) against the cost to its fan support from tanking. In many cases, it might be better to play hard now and trade later. Limiting the tradeability of draft picks means teams have no choice but to make their picks as valuable as possible.

4. The leagues also err by imposing rookie salary scales. These scales are designed to pay rookie players less than their market rate. I understand the various rationales for wage scales. But one unintended consequence of rookie scales is that draft picks are more valuable than they would be otherwise. Would teams be as eager to tank games to get high draft picks if those picks cost the teams a market rate in terms of salary? Again, look at the NFL, where the picks in the top half of the first round are paid something close to their market value. Teams that hold such picks have trouble trading them. The "value" in the NFL draft, I've read, is in the lower part of the first round and the second round, where the pay for players is much lower. These cheaper players from the second round are sought after, while a very top pick might be a curse. If the NFL does adopt a rookie wage scale in its next round of collective bargaining, as has been discussed, then the NFL will usher in an era of tanking. The NBA, which has what is probably the clearest slotting system among the major professional sports, has the biggest problem with tanking, and has had to adopt a crazy-quilt series of lotteries to try to dissipate the obvious gains from tanking. Instead of adding lottery rules and other contrivances, let's try eliminating a rule instead!

5. The other side of the problem is Situation Three, where playoff-bound teams save their stars for the post-season. Part of this problem stems from the uber-importance that the leagues give to their playoffs. But that issue aside, the remedy here is simple: just let teams pay their employees for doing good things! Radical idea, yet the American professional sports leagues prohibit it. Players and coaches must be paid in salary, and that salary cannot be contingent, even in part, on the player's or coach's performance. By rule, the terms of bonuses are carefully circumscribed: in general, players may be given what I'll loosely characterize as "participation" bonuses (number of games played), but for the most part are prohibited from any performance bonuses. (Some exceptions: players can get (limited) bonuses for winning or placing high in the individual voting for league-wide awards.) But bonuses are not permitted for home runs, basketball goals scored, or touchdown passes caught. Okay, I can see how those bonuses might be disruptive to team chemistry. But why not allow individual bonuses to players and coaches for the number one thing that (supposedly) the leagues and the fans all care about, that is, winning the darn games? Why not allow teams to make bonuses contingent on winning? Why is this practice prohibited by the rules and by-laws of every major professional sport?

If players and coaches actually earned money by winning games, don't you think we'd have seen Peyton Manning and the rest of the Colts playing in the second half against the Jets last week? How much would the Colts have paid in bonuses for an undefeated season? Would veterans claim their little toe hurts in order to sit on the bench in "meaningless" late-season contests if they stood to gain financially from getting in the game?

6. There may be times teams would want their veterans to sit. The team may want to give the rookies a chance or rest a star for the playoffs. Teams could still do this, only now by guaranteeing the veteran his bonus. What would be wrong with this? Yet, today we have a rule prohibiting paying bonuses for wins, for fear of making the pro contests look like a gambling event. Yet because of this rule, they look like a tanking event. End this rule and let's see if the problem of tanking persists.

Full post as published by The Sports Law Professor on January 07, 2010 (boomark / email).