What if American Sports Were Just…. Better?

America declares our champions as the world’s best, but what if sports in other nations are better?

A few weeks ago, as I was writing my piece on Curt Flood, I began to ask myself: what if sports looked different in America? How could they function differently? What examples are there for a different way to structure sports? 

The story of Curt Flood exemplifies the exploitative nature of American sports that extends beyond baseball. For example: In the NFL, players fail to get necessary long-term care from a league that asks them to “get in multiple car accidents every sunday.” In the NBA, players come out of college (and before recently, some skipped college altogether) to pursue their dreams in the league. In the MLB, minor league players just last year won the ability to unionize and join the MLB Players Association.

These are obviously flawed systems that can harm the very athletes that these sports depend on, so what does a better sports culture look like in America? It starts with the development of players, limiting the greed of owners, and changing the way we as an audience consume sports.

As I mentioned in the Curt Flood piece, soccer in Europe takes a very different approach to league construction. Take the English Premier League for example, similar to other major leagues, soccer clubs have development programs in which they’ll develop younger players, pay them and also educate them, and when they’re ready to play for the professional team, they’ll get called up. This system promotes the well-being of the players as well as promoting a healthy dynamic between the players and the team. 

The English soccer system also operates differently from the fixed-league setup we have here in America. In Europe, leagues are set up in a hierarchical order, with the Premier League being the top league in England. Should a team fall into the bottom of the standings in their league in a given year, they are relegated to the league below. Should a team win their league, they advance to the league above theirs, and so on. This setup goes all the way down to recreational leagues – quite literally anyone can create a team and theoretically work their way up. 

This system of relegation and promotion also makes for interesting dynamics between teams and fans. A team that might be new to the Premier League might not have the most sophisticated stadium or the most loyal fan base, but they play some of the most storied teams in England. This setup also means that teams are not decided based on geographic location like in America, where each major city has either one or a small number of teams in each sport, but on the quality of each team regardless of location. There are no concerns about big markets vs. small markets, and it is normal for a big market such as London to have many teams. London alone had seven EPL teams in the 2022-23 season out of 20 teams. For example, if American sports worked similarly, New York City would not have just the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets in the NBA, but would probably have a top professional team in each borough, and some boroughs might have multiple teams.

Sports fandom is in a lot of ways different in the U.K. in relation to soccer than it is in the United States. Fans are more likely to pick a team based on the culture of the team and instead of the team being from the city they grew up in, the team represents the neighborhood and community that they grew up in. This creates a closeness that American sports often lack. This influences how fans consume and discuss sports – something that is incredibly fractured in America. 

Curt Flood, and athletes like him, stood up to the public perception of athletes to ensure that they were treated as human beings and not as a cog within a corporate sports machine. The structure of European sports puts a higher value on the humanity of the athlete, which forges a stronger connection between fans and their team.  

Let’s face it: American sports teams are run by billionaire owners who largely will pinch pennies at any chance they get. Owners are consistently outed for racist remarks towards their players or fans. Evan fans of American sports view players as property, those who are uneducated on societal issues whose life purpose is to play a sport for others to watch.

It’s no secret that American sports is one word: Dehumanizing. 

We know that our sports are dehumanizing, but we struggle to imagine another way to organize sports, so we sadly just accept and believe that dehumanization is inevitable. This needs to change.

Television commentators tell our brightest stars to “shut up and dribble,” while a sitting Vice President will use taxpayer funds to travel to an NFL game, only to leave when players kneel for the national anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

American teams, similar to European teams, rely on owners or ownership groups to handle financing the team. In America, however, teams are (with the exception of the MLB) working within a league-mandated salary cap. In the NBA, teams can go over the salary cap, but must pay an increasing “luxury tax.” 

What would a revolutionized American sports culture look like? These four things would help us get there:

Creation of youth academies. The creation of academies in European soccer clubs was able to bring top talent at a young age to professional clubs. What would this look like in America? Let’s use an example that relates to the modern NBA. Take Steph Curry for example - a North Carolina native and Davidson College alum. If NBA teams had development academies, Steph could agree to train at his hometown Charlotte Hornets’ academy after school, learning from former Hornets players, including his father, Dell Curry and other Hornets legends such as Muggsy Bogues. The benefit of this structure is obvious for both parties. Steph would get world-class training from players he idolizes as a young fan of his hometown team, and the team would develop this player to eventually be a star for their team without having to worry about losing him for the draft. Fan involvement would also be greater – who doesn’t love the story of a hometown kid who was brought up through his hometown academy and is now a star?

Alteration of league structures. In the American system, players will usually play college sports to then be drafted by teams. Minor leagues (aside from baseball) aren’t really a thing – as mentioned previously, development isn’t emphasized. But what if the NBA followed the EPL system? If the Charlotte Hornets placed last in the league, what if they were relegated instead of awarded a chance at a top pick? The implementation of academies would also eliminate the need for a draft that sends the best prospects to the worst teams. The threat of relegation and the potential to get promoted to the NBA would make teams value player development even more.

Elimination of strict salary cap-based leagues. Salary cap leagues incentivize commodifying players more than necessary. While players have transfer fees in soccer leagues across the world, teams in salary cap leagues compare the value of players against one another. This incentivizes low-balling players, trading or cutting them if they don’t perform to standards, and just in general treating players as commodities. 

More responsibility for success on team owners. In modern sports, owners often receive the praise if their team performs well yet none of the blame should their team underperform (the Master-Slave Dialectic at work). This perception leads to hateful comments towards players by fans and a dynamic within sports teams that the players are there to serve (primarily white) owners. In order for sports to have a healthier place in society, this dynamic must change into a more equitable system. 

These changes are not overnight fixes, but they all follow a principle of trying to be better about our country’s relationship with sports and how we invest in and develop athletes. 

If we’re too busy believing that we’re already the best in the world, we’ll never get better.