NEWS & VIEWS

                Situated between the end of football and the start of baseball, February long has been a slow news month in sports, but not so much this year. A bunch of things have been stirring the pot of late. Here are some of them.

                NEWS—Major League Baseball floated a number of proposed rules changes, a couple of them quite drastic.

                VIEWS—Don’t hold your breath for most of them to happen.

                Commish Rob Manfred’s wish list includes:

--the adoption of the designated-hitter rule by the National League.

--a rule requiring pitchers to face a minimum of three batters except when finishing an inning.

--a 20-second pitch clock.

--expanding team rosters to 26 players from 25 with a maximum of 12 pitchers.

--starting each half inning of extra-inning games with a runner on second base.

As any fan knows, the most eye-catching of those is having the NL adopt the DH, which the American League installed in 1973. The NL’s holdout is especially notable because the rule has become almost universal at all levels of the game, in the U.S. and internationally. The change, and the expansion of team rosters, well could occur because both have the backing of the players’ union, which favors anything that would add baseball jobs or extend careers, but it likely wouldn’t happen at least until the next labor contract in the game is negotiated in 2021. And even then it could be linked to reciprocal changes that would allow teams (i.e., owners) to control players longer.

By me, the NL’s no-DH stance has been maintained largely because it gives fans a continuing topic to gas about. Relinquishing it would be no small matter in a sport that thrives on that sort of discussion.

The most-likely change to take place quickly is the 20-second-pitch rule, which was tested in the   last two Arizona Fall League seasons. There it was loosely enforced, as it probably would be if it goes into the Big League books. Least likely is the man-on-second thing, which was tried in Fall League last year. It was fun but unbaseball-like, which is grounds enough for its rejection.

NEWS: The National Basketball Association wants to change its draft-lottery rules.

VIEWS : This one is gonna happen.

The move is another effort to counter the odious practice of “tanking,” by which teams strip their rosters so as to lose on purpose and gain better position in the following season’s draft. For much of its early-modern history (1966-84) the NBA awarded its top draft spot to the team that won a coin flip between the ones that had the worst won-lost records in each of its main geographic divisions. A lottery involving more teams was instituted in 1985. It’s formula has been tinkered with since, not always in the direction of discouraging losing.

 Last year’s system, adopted in 2014, gave the worst team among the 14 that didn’t make the playoffs a 25% chance of going first, with the second-worst team 19.9%, the third-worst 15.6% and the fourth-worst 11.9%, and the worst team could sink no lower than fourth. The new version gives each of the three bottom teams a 14% shot, with the fourth 12.5%, the fifth at 10.5% and so on down to 0.5% at No. 14, with the worst team liable to sink as low as fifth. 

A big deal?

Not really, but it should make tanking a little less attractive.

NEWS: Tyler Murray chooses a career in football over baseball.

VIEWS: Whaaaaat?

Young Mr. Murray, 21 years old, won the 2018 Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player after a sterling season as a dual-threat quarterback at the University of Oklahoma. He also played baseball there, as an outfielder, and last June was the ninth player chosen in the Major League Baseball draft, by the Oakland A’s.  He signed an A’s contract with a $4.6 million bonus from the A’s and said he’d concentrate on baseball. Then he said he might try both sports and, finally last week, firmly opted for football, where he’ll likely be a National Football League first-round pick. Top NFL picks earn more than baseball pays early on but, tellingly, football contracts rarely are fully guaranteed.

 Murray stands a reported 5-foot-11 and his listed weight is 190 pounds, both of which figures look like overstatements. In the NFL he’ll occupy the football fields with much-larger men bent on injuring him. No such danger exists in baseball.

 Is the kid nuts? Who’s advising him?

NEWS: Two assistant football coaches at Clemson University get $1 million-a-year contracts.

VIEWS: Wretched excess gets more wretched.

Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott, who share the offensive-coordinator duties at the national-champ public U, just got their pay bumped to seven figures. There they join the team’s defensive coordinator, Brent Venables, who vaulted past that threshold last year when he signed a 5-year, $11.6 million contract.  Clemson’s 10 assistant football coaches earn a total of $7.4 million, according to USA Today. Head coach Dabo Swinney makes $6 million per.

The paper said that nationally 21 college assistant football coaches now make $1 million or more annually, up from zero not long ago. Pretty soon mommas will be pushing their boys to study X’s and O’s rather than shooting for law or med school.