What we would change in sports for 2017

Moments of "if I ran the circus this is what I would do" is heavily ingrained in being a sports fan. It's why we're the best commissioners of our fantasy leagues and often loudly proclaim to anyone who will listen –  our friends, the locals at the bar, Twitter – that we know so much more than the coaches, the owners and the leagues. In most cases, we probably don't know more than who is involved, but we also tend to have our toes in things beyond sports, and with that, we're able to provide perspective. 

Hello and welcome back to the Yardbarker roundtable where we ask our contributors to discuss the serious (and not so serious) sides of sports. Over the past week we have been talking about our 2016 favorites; bandwagons, moments, sports films and hype music, but it's time to get real. It's not all parades and victory champagne and all of the major sports leagues in North America are in need of some improvement. So we asked a few of our contributors: 

If you had the ear of any commissioner, what would you ask them to address in 2017?

Daniel Tran : If I could somehow breach the intimidating doors the NFL's Manhattan office, pull some "Ocean's Eleven" trickery and throw in some Harry Potter magic to talk to Roger Goodell, I would tell him to settle down. Less is more when it comes to solving the waning interest in the NFL. He has over-saturated the league with weekly Thursday night games and inconsistent discipline that it has affect the product on the field. Players are openly criticizing him and fans are tuning out because they have reached the limit of their football enjoyment. My biggest concern is that the leagues well-meaning stance of player safety is actually a hypocritical motto where players aren't given enough time to recover to play in a game where men get in car crashes every minute. So if he really wants to get people to watch the NFL again, build anticipation throughout the week instead of force feeding them a crap product on Thursday night. You're welcome, Roger.

Chelena Goldman: I'm going to sound like a broken record because I mentioned this in one of the last roundtables, but I think the concussion protocol in every league should be redeveloped.
Concern just for the NHL: I think a resolution on the Winter Olympics issue needs to be reached sooner rather than later. Then everyone can focus on the fun stuff, like watching the circus surrounding the soon-to-be Vegas team.

Alex Wong: There are bigger concerns (like the general safety of football players), but if I can be selfish here, let's figure out a way to fix the last two minutes of an NBA game, which feels like waiting for 45 minutes in line to go on a theme park ride that lasts 120 seconds. Actually, it's worse than that since there's nothing exhilarating about watching a series of timeouts and offensive-defensive substitution and reviews from the replay center while we often wait for the off-chance that a six-point game with one minute left will turn into a finish worth waiting for. I'm all for a beautifully drawn play out of a timeout but I also think we will survive if teams are only allowed to use one timeout in the last two minutes, or an alternate system where teams don't have to use timeouts to advance the ball. Just anything but what we have now.

Demetrius Bell: I wish that I had some grand idea or scheme that would change the landscape of sports as a whole, but all I want is for people (and, in the case of the NFL, the teams themselves!) to be able to post gifs of highlights on social media. The poor Eagles and Browns had to resort to posting highlights of electric football on their social media in lieu of actual game highlights. Come on, sports leagues. We're entering 2017, now and it's time to accept free advertising of your product on social media.

Jamie Neal: I really need the NFL to figure out something aside from the Pro Bowl. Adding dodgeball? That's the solution that a multi-billion dollar organization came up with? Listen, I played dodgeball in elementary school (not well) and I'm quite positive a class of fifth graders could come up with a better way to fix the Pro Bowl aside from adding dodgeball to the list of meaningless activities.

For more Yardbarker end of the year roundtables from our contributors:
The bandwagons we jumped on in 2016
Our favorite sports docs and movies of 2016
The most intense sports moments of 2016
Athletes who deserve a mulligan for a bad 2016 What was the best 'get hyped' music of 2016?
Sports trends we hope to leave behind in 2016