Please Stop Tanking
One of my favorite, truly unique, elements of American sports is that we’re so competitive, that we even compete over who can lose better. Towards the end of every season, fans of the worst teams across nearly every major American sport start to cheer for their teams to lose even more, or, embrace the tank. Tanking, according to the always reliable urban dictionary, “Is the act of giving up a match or throwing it away, losing intentionally or not competing.” While it used to be unthinkable that a professional team would intentionally lose, recently, it’s become the new hot trend among teams not good enough to compete for a playoff spot.
Tanking is simple:
Step 1. Trade every decent player your team has for draft picks, also known as “blow it all up.”
Step 2. Lose a LOT of games.
Step 3. Get a high draft pick
Step 4. Draft the best player available, regardless of team needs, they can be a trade piece in the future.
Step 5. Rinse and repeat for 3–4 seasons.
Step 6. Assemble your team of top draft picks, bring in good veterans, start winning, and compete for the title.
The problem with tanking is that it works. Not in one league, but pretty much all of them. In football, tanking is tougher, but just this season teams, especially Miami, embraced the #TankForTua campaign in hopes of drafting the Alabama QB. Fans have even started calling on their teams to tank for Trevor Lawrence, the Clemson QB, next year. In the MLB, the Astros are a perfect example of an effective tank. They fielded a pathetic team for a few years and then used their high draft picks (and sign stealing) to win the World Series only a few years later. Look no further than the 76ers for the NBA and the race for last for players like Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid in the NHL for more examples of tanking.
The only league that has avoided the tanking plague so far has been the MLS. There are many possibilities as to why — top players going to Europe, homegrown talent — but considering the almost identical setup of the MLS and the traditional 4 major American sports leagues, tanking is not a matter of if, but when, for the MLS.
Anyway, I’m not here to bitch and moan about tanking going against the “ethos of the sport” or anything like that, I honestly just think it’s a really stupid system. It’s literally rewarding intentional failure. It’s like if a bank were to employ risky business practices like giving out high-risk loans that they know will almost definitely be defaulted on, cause an economic crisis, go bankrupt, and then instead of fading into the void, be bailed out by the government to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. Absolutely nonsensical.
So, what should leagues do? To put it way too simply, relegation. Relegation is the model that European soccer leagues employ to, among other things, ensure teams don’t become complacent.
Relegation is simple, it generally works like this:
Step 1. Play the regular season
Step 2. The bottom 3 teams get demoted to the second division.
Step 3. The top 3 teams of the second division get promoted to the first division.
Step 4. Rinse and repeat for eternity
With the first division comes the money, and with the money comes the reason to compete at the top level. Owners of American teams don’t have to fear a loss in profit over their team performing poorly. For example, the Lions have won 7 playoff games in their entire team history (since 1930). They haven’t won a playoff game in over 10,000 days (nearly 20 years), and are 1 of 5 teams since 1944 to go a season completely winless in the NFL. The point of all this isn’t to say that the Lions haven’t tried to win over the last 20 seasons, I’m sure they have (well not sure, but hopeful), but that winning isn’t urgent. The owners of the Lions have only seen their teams value skyrocket over their playoff drought, so why would they care if the team hasn’t won a playoff game?
This is also not to paint relegation as a simple solution, it is far from it. The talent disparity between the major leagues and the minor leagues in the United States is too great to bridge in some sports as it currently stands. What would happen to the draft? Is there even enough talent for a second division to the NFL? These questions, and many more, would have to be answered and while I’d love to sit here and say I have the perfect solution with every question answered, I don’t. I’m just tired of watching teams call it quits before the season even starts.
