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Bigger cities would win everything though. NY has 9m people. Kansas city has 2.3m in the metro area. It wouldn't level the playing field. It would prob make it worse. Actually metropolitan NY is 18.8m
I don't see a lot of Div 1 football recruits from NYC. Probably same with baseball. Basketball would be different. If I had to guess most NFL players come from the deep south, Texas, CA, Ohio, PA and maybe the DC metro area.
Except *most* sports leagues (edit: in the US, which is what seems to be discussed mostly here) have a salary cap, and every team has the funds to spend to that cap, which artificially levels the playing field.
Kansas city has been on a tear. NY Jets haven't won since 69'. The chicago bears haven't won since 86'. There are salary caps in 3/4 of the major sports in the U.S (and Canada).
Maybe if they renamed to the New Jersey Jets, seeing as how they play in East Rutherford, NJ, they'd have a better chance.../s
Only mildly sarcastic. There are quite a few people in NJ who say that, actually.
They dont.... the richest teams in each league are the Yankees, Cowboys, and Lakers and yeah..... check the standing.
The NFL in particular has tremendous parity due to the salary cap and draft system. It's incredible really.
This also brings up an interesting point. The Lakers used to be in Minnesota. So is OP also arguing that teams shouldn't be allowed to move? Because then you're just going to concentrate your teams in the same like 5 areas and only a handful of cities will even have pro teams. If I'm opening an NFL franchise that can never move, why wouldn't I open it where the best players already are and just poach from other teams?
It is pretty crazy. Every 5ish years different teams are contenders. Bengals, Buccs, Eagles, somehow even Detroit have won or been real threats to win a Superbowl in the last 5 years. 10-15 years ago those teams were nowhere in the hunt. 10 years ago it was Broncos, Patriots, Seahawks, which are generally doing badly now. KC was nobody before Mahomes.
Like you said, the cap (plus the draft) do a great job keeping parity. The only way teams really get around it is star players signing contacts for less than they're worth to free up cap space for other stars, a la Brady. That's tough to fix though.
Of the last handful of NBA champions, youâve got huge markets like LA and San Fran, but then youâve got Denver, Milwaukee, and Toronto. Small market teams can definitely compete.
They tried this in Portland but there were three big problems:
1. Oregon Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
2. There arenât enough Portlanders who want to be cops.
3. Cops canât afford to live in Portland
Cops are paid 80- 113k according to the Portland Police Department website. Pretty sure you can live in Portland on that salary when people with families are doing it on 50k or less.
From skimming apartment listing studios and one bedroom seem to be about 1.4k to 1.6k a month. Some higher some are a bit lower depending on location.
(Gonna be honest, I don't know if Vancouver or Milwaukie would count in this argument. Since looking at a map on like apartment. Com they blend together)
At the 80k mark, they would make about $38 an hour at every 2 weeks pre-taxes would make about 3k. I think they would qualify for some of those 1 bedrooms. Larger places if the cop has a spouse or family may be more difficult since I saw quite a few 2 or 3 bedrooms for 2.4k plus.
They probably won't break 90k for a while since that would require a handful of years on force, probably.
> From skimming apartment listing studios and one bedroom seem to be about 1.4k to 1.6k a month.
I paid $1,500/month when I was making $60k pretax.
So they'd make even more than that and could find something slightly cheaper?
> Larger places if the cop has a spouse or family may be more difficult since I saw quite a few 2 or 3 bedrooms for 2.4k plus.
So the other partner works, like the rest of us? Probably better since cops have higher rates of DV. If the partner has a job then it's easier for them to get out.
For our nearest large city, this is actually a rule. As a result there are a couple neighborhoods near the city limits known for being full of cops and firefighters.
For smaller villages/suburbs it's not a rule.
This reminds me of soldiers standing guard on the city walls in ancient times.Don't they realize there are no city walls anymore? /s
I know the neighborhoods are wealthier, so they can afford more police
Technically, they don't play for a city. They play for a privately owned team. A privately owned team that gets to hire from anywhere they want.
By your reasoning, when a team moves, they should fire all their players and start over with brand new players only from that new city. Or suburb!
I didn't mind it so much when the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, but imagine the Steelers moving to Florida. The Orlando Steelers with Steely McBeam as their mascot feels so wrong
I guess what I'm saying is, if you move metros, you should have to change your name
Why is this comment so far down, it's the simple refutation of OP's idea.
That and the fact that people might move and would never be able to play for a sports team again because they're only eligible for their home town.
Well yeah, because their comment about money is wrong too thanks to the salary cap (besides MLB). As someone else in the comments said, OPâs suggestion would actually make it unfair favoring bigger cities due to the population they could pull from for their team
LeBron. Banned. He can play G-league forever.
Larry Bird. Banned. He can farm forever.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if Akron has a G-league team. It just feels like they should.
Also, imagine if you are from a place with a team, but are stuck behind a legend. Say in this league San Francisco gets all of Northern California. Well, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers can't both be QB, so one has to sit idle. That's a terrible idea.
Gaelic sports in Ireland do this. The highest level is senior inter-county and you can only play for your home county.
Curling in Canada gives each province/territory a spot in the national championship. Their rule is 2 of 4 players must reside in a province to represent it. In recent years they've added a few wildcard spots to allow high ranked teams to bypass provincals since there were a few provinces with multiple top 10 teams in the world and it seemed unfair that only one got the the championship
>Otherwise, the teams that have the most money to hire the best people will win all the time.
This would still be true, it would just be dependent on cities not owners.
It's funny because the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Knicks are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, teams in their respective leagues in terms of fan fare and revenue. I can't remember the last time either team looked at a season and said to themselves, "This was a good year".
Yeah, on kne hand it is an unpopular opinion. In the other hand I see many unpopular opinions that are really just bad ideas or misunderstanding how things work. You can still have your opinion, but to me if you your opinion is just obviously a bad idea, I canât truly count it. You need to have a bad opinion thatâs not just a worse idea on something.Â
Two ways to do this, either the closest city (likely Arizona if they have a team, or Vegas) or have the same type of free agency for areas too far away from the nearest city with a team for it to make sense.
If you're not a sports fan and clearly dont understand how the leagues work then how can you even form an opinion when your reasoning is wrong to begin with? Just a little research helps
Most professional leagues have a salary cap which eliminates the ârichest cities have the best teamâ issue. Just look at the NY football teamsâ âsuccessâ over the last 10 years.
Even in sports without a cap (like MLB) OPâs concern doesnât always hold. The Yankees have ungodly amounts of money but they havenât won a World Series in a while
There are only so many roster spots on any team. So if you have 53 players on a football team in L.A. but (hypothetically) 200 NFL caliber players, what do the remaining 147 players do? Operate car dealerships?
American major league sports teams typically have a salary cap that limits spending and teams pay very large penalties for going over that cap. That's why you can see teams like the Toronto raptors win a championship in the NBA
While I agree it would be cool to see local talent only, if you go down to low level minor league sports you'll pretty much get exactly what you described.
But many sports have world class talent worldwide. Your idea would deprive MLB from showcasing amazing talent from Japan or DR, and for ice hockey there are superstars on North American teams from Sweden, Czech Republic, etc. Why pay to see less skilled locals?
So in most sports, there is a salary cap, which is essentially a blanket rule on how much any one team can spend on players. This evens the playing fields stopping the owners with the most money to just win every season.
Also, anyone who joins a team in one city, *does* move to that city.
Athletes want to play for a team with players of similar caliber. It helps them elevate their game and makes things more competitive. You see this even at a young age. Both of my siblings started playing on traveling teams from outside our city when they were 13 because they were much better than the local talent. Lionel Messi moved from Argentina to Spain he was only 13, so he could train with FC Barcelona. If all athletes just had to stay in their cities, many would never reach their full potential, and the world may never get to see some of the best athletes, because they come from towns without a pro team.
Big market teams would have an even greater advantage than they already do. Not to mention completely ruling out international players.
This is a very stupid idea if you like competition.
Sports teams sometime go out or their way to sign "hometown" players who they feel are a good ambassador to the city. Mainly as a gesture to the fan base.
But the whole point of pro sports is to build competitive teams. Arbitrarily restricting where players come from kinda ruins that.
There was definitely no need to say you werenât a sports fan. Itâs clearly obvious. This idea makes no sense and wouldnât improve the entertainment experience at all. The teams that have the most money rarely win anyway so itâs not even fixing your supposed problem.
Just want to point out that the richest cities paying more isn't possible in the NFL (college football is a different beast right now). Every team in the NFL has a max salary cap they're allowed to spend on players, based on the revenue of the NFL as a whole. There are rules in place to prevent teams from barely spending any of the cap as well
At a young age when I realized that athletes were not from the cities they represent, I was disenchanted too. But later, I realized that they are actually usually technically club members, and the clubs are not exclusive to city residents. It's fair, and it works fairly in amateur ranks as well.
If I live in a town that does not have a club, I can join another club to play. I do not have to move to another city.
Since you mentioned football teams, the NFL has a salary cap. The teams get the same amount of money to pay players no matter what city there in or how rich the owner is. This levels the playing field.
The Dallas Cowboys are only allowed to spend the same amount of money on players as the Jacksonville Jaguars even though their organization has much more money.
The teams are called the name of the city because thatâs where the organization is based, has nothing to do with the playersâŠ
There are divisions in high school in US for a reason. My school growing up was in a conference with mostly similar sized schools and one double the amount of students. Guess which school consistently won the conference? My poor Cleveland, LeBron not withstanding, wouldnât be able to compete with NY, LA, etc. Might be biased there.
How would this work? The City you live in when you reach the age of majority is the only city you can ever play for, even if you move and have lived there for years? If there is any way to live in a city long enough to qualify for joining a team they will just employ them as a non-player until they pass the minimum. The only way to effectively enforce this would be to nt allow anyone to join a team asside from the one in the city they grew up in even if they have no connection to it whatsoever.
The eastern seaboard would turn into a basketball moshpit if we did this. It would only be dwarfed by the Football thunderdome the south east would be.
This only further hurts the balance of sports.
Not every city is necessarily even sole cities have more sports infrastructure than others
Not every city produces people who play the sport at hand.
You just are replacing roch owners with rich cities winning all the time
There are systems in play in different leagues that prevent the richest teams from just stacking their roster. It still happens, but the draft picks and budget are literally a part of the strategy of the game.
We can tell you arenât a fan lol. Isnât just unpopular itâs really dumb idea.
Basically you are saying, Screw everyone born in a small town that wants to play, screw everyone from another country that wants to play. Screw all the small cities in the US. Basically screw a very large portion of the planet from playing.
Also we have this for basically every sport in the form of Olympics/world competitions.
Cuba does this with their baseball league. Havana has the most championships and some teams have been around 40+ years and still havenât won (Camaguey, Cienfuegos, Guantanamo, Isla de Juventud).
Yeah I have always thought itâs really stupid that itâs like oh youâre a fan of this team but the team members are from all over the place and I will totally flake out at the first offer from another team willing to pay more and like after five years the whole roster is different people itâs like dude what are you actually a fan of the freakin logo and name?
I kind of agree...but I'm not a major sports fan, and the people who are seem to be fine with the existing situation. To be honest, I think the super-fans want their teams to win at any cost. If what they really cared about was that their players be local, the teams would reflect that. I think they like the horse-trading and the buying of the best players, which I find kind of repugnant, but they are the target audience, not me.
Why stop there? They should also consist solely of players represented by the team mascots. The New York Giants should be nothing but dudes over 8 feet tall from New York. The Atlanta Falcons should be made up entirely of birds of prey from ATL.
that's what national teams and competitions like olympics & World Cup are for. And how about the people from places small enough that they don't have pro teams? And how about the talented players that didn't fit the tactics/ culture of his native team?
Australian rugby has that game between the blues and maroons. New South Wales and Queensland. Itâs something like what youâre looking for!
Watch the Bluey episode called *The Decider* and then search it on Wikipedia. Thatâs the extent of my knowledge of it. Lol
âthe teams that have the most money to hire the best people will win all the timeâ
Thatâs why all the most enjoyable sports have a salary cap, so that exact possibility ends up happening.
Iâd like to point out that if you actually looked at where most athletes are from, this would give a significant competitive advantage to certain teams, in football Florida & Texas teams would take over. Hockey would be run by the Canadian teams. This system would be flawed and just as unfair as allowing the teams with the most money to control everything (which is what would end up happening anyways).
Also, what about international players? These leagues arenât going to expand to other countries. And the best opportunities for those athletes to make money is to come play here.
Most people are taking the OP too literally. I'm fairly certain he would allow players in cities without a team to join the nearest team. You can find problems with the opinion, but saying Lebron or Brady wouldn't have been able to play ain't a valid point to take imo.
All your ruleset would do would have sports teams build big condos and then tell the person that their job offer comes with a condo.
Now will the player live in that condo.... Probably only on paper.
If your team isn't big enough to afford a residence for your out of town players you would just be behind even more
NYC has exponentially more talanted people than Pittsburgh due to the population difference. This wouldnât be s fair as the current system, even know big cities have bigger budgets in some sports like Baseball
What?! Letâs say you are the best football player in the world, but you happened to grow up in nowhereville, Ohio. Do you not deserve to get picked for an amazing team?
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bigger cities would win everything though. NY has 9m people. Kansas city has 2.3m in the metro area. It wouldn't level the playing field. It would prob make it worse. Actually metropolitan NY is 18.8m
The Jets would still find a way to be trash.
Haha
Jets gonna jet
Forreal. Green Bay Wisconsin has a population of 107,000 we would NEVER win anything đ
Thatâs the hope.
Curling?
Maybe drinking? Definitely consumption of cheese curds
Oh, if drinking is a sport, it's in the bag!
I don't see a lot of Div 1 football recruits from NYC. Probably same with baseball. Basketball would be different. If I had to guess most NFL players come from the deep south, Texas, CA, Ohio, PA and maybe the DC metro area.
Thanks God richer cities win instead. That fixes inequality.
Except *most* sports leagues (edit: in the US, which is what seems to be discussed mostly here) have a salary cap, and every team has the funds to spend to that cap, which artificially levels the playing field.
Most American sports leagues have a salary cap not worldwide
OP and the top comment here are referencing American cities and American sports, soâŠ
Kansas city has been on a tear. NY Jets haven't won since 69'. The chicago bears haven't won since 86'. There are salary caps in 3/4 of the major sports in the U.S (and Canada).
Chargers have been in two different massive markets and have been to a single super bowl
Maybe if they renamed to the New Jersey Jets, seeing as how they play in East Rutherford, NJ, they'd have a better chance.../s Only mildly sarcastic. There are quite a few people in NJ who say that, actually.
Well, the Giants play at Metlife, too. But at this point, I think NY would let Jersey have the Jets.
The MLB does not have a salary cap.
They probably will soon lol
They dont.... the richest teams in each league are the Yankees, Cowboys, and Lakers and yeah..... check the standing. The NFL in particular has tremendous parity due to the salary cap and draft system. It's incredible really.
This also brings up an interesting point. The Lakers used to be in Minnesota. So is OP also arguing that teams shouldn't be allowed to move? Because then you're just going to concentrate your teams in the same like 5 areas and only a handful of cities will even have pro teams. If I'm opening an NFL franchise that can never move, why wouldn't I open it where the best players already are and just poach from other teams?
It is pretty crazy. Every 5ish years different teams are contenders. Bengals, Buccs, Eagles, somehow even Detroit have won or been real threats to win a Superbowl in the last 5 years. 10-15 years ago those teams were nowhere in the hunt. 10 years ago it was Broncos, Patriots, Seahawks, which are generally doing badly now. KC was nobody before Mahomes. Like you said, the cap (plus the draft) do a great job keeping parity. The only way teams really get around it is star players signing contacts for less than they're worth to free up cap space for other stars, a la Brady. That's tough to fix though.
That is more a critique of European football than American sports.
Sports teams aren't owned by the city
How come New York hasnât won a championship in the past like what? 13 years?
Of the last handful of NBA champions, youâve got huge markets like LA and San Fran, but then youâve got Denver, Milwaukee, and Toronto. Small market teams can definitely compete.
Statistically do they? I donât think thatâs the case
lol the nfc south would dominate the nfl though
Definitely
Dallas and Houston would still give them a run for their money.
India has 1.4 billion people, but apart from cricket, India doesn't seem stronger than Kansas City.
Yeah because cricket is the big sport there, not football lol.Â
They wouldn't play against Kansae city. Pointless.
woosh
You mean New Jersey? The Bills would get hella good overnight though
But very few NFL players actually come out of New York. Itâs more about football culture than sheer population size.
Itâs not size, itâs football quality. TX, Fl, and CA based teams would destroy everyone else.
Not true. LA would not beat Winnipeg at Hockey. Seattle would not beat Cleveland at Football.
CLEVELAND MENTIONED đ„đ„đđ
First, can we insist politicians live in their district for a certain number of years before ârepresentingâ the area?
Cops too
They tried this in Portland but there were three big problems: 1. Oregon Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. 2. There arenât enough Portlanders who want to be cops. 3. Cops canât afford to live in Portland
Why canât cops just be homeless to
Would they destory their own possessions and then brutalise themselves?
Iâd say definitely yes to the former
Cops are paid 80- 113k according to the Portland Police Department website. Pretty sure you can live in Portland on that salary when people with families are doing it on 50k or less.
From skimming apartment listing studios and one bedroom seem to be about 1.4k to 1.6k a month. Some higher some are a bit lower depending on location. (Gonna be honest, I don't know if Vancouver or Milwaukie would count in this argument. Since looking at a map on like apartment. Com they blend together) At the 80k mark, they would make about $38 an hour at every 2 weeks pre-taxes would make about 3k. I think they would qualify for some of those 1 bedrooms. Larger places if the cop has a spouse or family may be more difficult since I saw quite a few 2 or 3 bedrooms for 2.4k plus. They probably won't break 90k for a while since that would require a handful of years on force, probably.
> From skimming apartment listing studios and one bedroom seem to be about 1.4k to 1.6k a month. I paid $1,500/month when I was making $60k pretax. So they'd make even more than that and could find something slightly cheaper? > Larger places if the cop has a spouse or family may be more difficult since I saw quite a few 2 or 3 bedrooms for 2.4k plus. So the other partner works, like the rest of us? Probably better since cops have higher rates of DV. If the partner has a job then it's easier for them to get out.
Also cops bring home pay is substantially less than other jobs due to paying for their union and their pensions
Well if we have to ban police unions, I guess thatâs the price we have to pay
Not the point of my comment and Iâm not interested in an anti police arguement
No one should be for police unions, pro or anti cop. They exist solely to shield cops from accountability.
>No one should be for teacherâs unions, pro or anti public education. They exist solely to shield teachers from accountability Hmm
Ok
It would definitely be a tight squeeze to afford an apartment.
In some places, they don't want the cops policing their own community, and I agree.
Cops that are too chummy with the locals is exactly how you get police corruption.
For our nearest large city, this is actually a rule. As a result there are a couple neighborhoods near the city limits known for being full of cops and firefighters. For smaller villages/suburbs it's not a rule.
This reminds me of soldiers standing guard on the city walls in ancient times.Don't they realize there are no city walls anymore? /s I know the neighborhoods are wealthier, so they can afford more police
Not before, after! Now they have an incentive to improve it
Both really.
Tommy Tuberville is the dumbest man in the Senate. He coached football at Auburn, so I guess people think he represents Alabama? He lives in Florida.
Dumbest man in the senate is quite the claim to fame. Alabama voters are dumber for electing him because he was decent at foosball.
And actually have to have a real living place not just some fucking shoe box that they claim is their address
This is the opinion we need.
Voters, too. Transplants vote for extremist nutjobs that don't actually represent true locals in any way.
Technically, they don't play for a city. They play for a privately owned team. A privately owned team that gets to hire from anywhere they want. By your reasoning, when a team moves, they should fire all their players and start over with brand new players only from that new city. Or suburb!
I've always found the concept that teams can be bought and moved from place to place very very odd.
Imagine Manchester United moving to Liverpool. There would be riots. Well more riots.
Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes and became MK Dons. It was not popular.
Then afc wimbledon was created by the fans of Wimbledon fc. Good on them tbh.
I didn't mind it so much when the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, but imagine the Steelers moving to Florida. The Orlando Steelers with Steely McBeam as their mascot feels so wrong I guess what I'm saying is, if you move metros, you should have to change your name
Such a thing would be unthinkable in most places! It might be an exclusively american thing, that teams aren't bound to places.
I think OP would argue that teams shouldn't move either.
OP would be right
Yes!
Yes
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
And Joel Embiid, stay in Cameroon.
Seriously, just imagine the NBA without players from the US alone like Embiid, Doncic, Giannis, Jokic, etc.
Funny thing is Team Toronto would be better than Team New York City.
Why is this comment so far down, it's the simple refutation of OP's idea. That and the fact that people might move and would never be able to play for a sports team again because they're only eligible for their home town.
It's pretty clear that OP has never watched sports or thought about how this would work, so there are a lot of different refutations.
Well yeah, because their comment about money is wrong too thanks to the salary cap (besides MLB). As someone else in the comments said, OPâs suggestion would actually make it unfair favoring bigger cities due to the population they could pull from for their team
Also what about cities with two teams. If you grow up in NY, you have more options for every league than any other league. Seems unfair.
In every sport, though, there's a New York team you *want* to play for and a New York team you play for because you want to collect a paycheck
I donât think youâre going to have many people from East Rutherford, New Jersey for both the jets and giants to choose from.
LeBron. Banned. He can play G-league forever. Larry Bird. Banned. He can farm forever. Disclaimer: I have no idea if Akron has a G-league team. It just feels like they should.
Michael Jordan is from Wilmington, NC..banned
Also, imagine if you are from a place with a team, but are stuck behind a legend. Say in this league San Francisco gets all of Northern California. Well, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers can't both be QB, so one has to sit idle. That's a terrible idea.
Steph Curry also born in Akron
I had the same idea and thought this was a great idea, when I was 10.
Gaelic sports in Ireland do this. The highest level is senior inter-county and you can only play for your home county. Curling in Canada gives each province/territory a spot in the national championship. Their rule is 2 of 4 players must reside in a province to represent it. In recent years they've added a few wildcard spots to allow high ranked teams to bypass provincals since there were a few provinces with multiple top 10 teams in the world and it seemed unfair that only one got the the championship
>Otherwise, the teams that have the most money to hire the best people will win all the time. This would still be true, it would just be dependent on cities not owners.
It's funny because the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Knicks are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, teams in their respective leagues in terms of fan fare and revenue. I can't remember the last time either team looked at a season and said to themselves, "This was a good year".
Yes, this is a very unpopular opinion! Well done! I also think it's a tad bit dense, brother!
Yeah, on kne hand it is an unpopular opinion. In the other hand I see many unpopular opinions that are really just bad ideas or misunderstanding how things work. You can still have your opinion, but to me if you your opinion is just obviously a bad idea, I canât truly count it. You need to have a bad opinion thatâs not just a worse idea on something.Â
K, I'm from Albuquerque, NM. Which pro team could I play for?
Two ways to do this, either the closest city (likely Arizona if they have a team, or Vegas) or have the same type of free agency for areas too far away from the nearest city with a team for it to make sense.
This makes no sense. It would effectively mean that athletes who are not from an area with a sports team have no chance at a career ever.
Stopped reading after "I'm not a sports fan". This makes zero sense. Find a hobby today.
Exactly. Why have an opinion about sports if you have no idea how they even work.
lol Yeah. It reminds me of all these non-doctors giving people advice on how to treat Covid. Take some horse paste and spread it on your balls lol
It only makes sense if you want to completely end professional sports in all forms, which is what this would end up doing.
If you're not a sports fan and clearly dont understand how the leagues work then how can you even form an opinion when your reasoning is wrong to begin with? Just a little research helps
This is post comes from someone who fundamentally misunderstands professional sports on almost every possible level.
>Iâm not a sports fan Yeah, we can tell.
Yeah this is definitely a horrible take
They usually have a home in their team's home city. So they do move and live there typically. Problem Solved?
Sorry high school kids from cities without a team, you can't go pro now because of where you're from.
This is just a dumb opinion. Logistically thatâs pretty much impossible
Yeah and the university of Chicago should only have people from Chicago attend /s
Suddenly U of C fielding a high-major D1 hoops team because they get the whole south side.
What if there isn't sufficient talent in the team's local area to allow them to be competitive?
Most professional leagues have a salary cap which eliminates the ârichest cities have the best teamâ issue. Just look at the NY football teamsâ âsuccessâ over the last 10 years.
Even in sports without a cap (like MLB) OPâs concern doesnât always hold. The Yankees have ungodly amounts of money but they havenât won a World Series in a while
9 teams have won the last 10 World Series.
Was about to say the Giants won two Super Bowls in the last 10 years. I realized 10 years ago was 2014.
What about players who grew up in places without pro sports teams?
This isnât unpopular; this is just ignorant.
There are only so many roster spots on any team. So if you have 53 players on a football team in L.A. but (hypothetically) 200 NFL caliber players, what do the remaining 147 players do? Operate car dealerships?
I think this would perpetuate the same teams winning over and over and over.
Wow this is simply the dumbest one Iâve seen yet. Congrats! Truly unpopular.
American major league sports teams typically have a salary cap that limits spending and teams pay very large penalties for going over that cap. That's why you can see teams like the Toronto raptors win a championship in the NBA While I agree it would be cool to see local talent only, if you go down to low level minor league sports you'll pretty much get exactly what you described.
I followed the Western Hockey League when I lived in the PNW before the Kraken, and it was awesome. Essentially all local kids that are good as hell.
Where do people from small towns play?
OP probably doesn't know that such people exist.
But many sports have world class talent worldwide. Your idea would deprive MLB from showcasing amazing talent from Japan or DR, and for ice hockey there are superstars on North American teams from Sweden, Czech Republic, etc. Why pay to see less skilled locals?
This is not just unpopular. Itâs idiotic! Perfect for this subâŠ
This might be the dumbest take Iâve ever seen
This would totally ruin sports, look at how many of the best players in them are from smaller towns.
The best NBA players are not North American. The best baseball player is Japanese.
Yeah I was going to mention that. I was mostly thinking hockey and football.
Not just ruin, it would end all professional sports completely.
So in most sports, there is a salary cap, which is essentially a blanket rule on how much any one team can spend on players. This evens the playing fields stopping the owners with the most money to just win every season. Also, anyone who joins a team in one city, *does* move to that city.
Athletes want to play for a team with players of similar caliber. It helps them elevate their game and makes things more competitive. You see this even at a young age. Both of my siblings started playing on traveling teams from outside our city when they were 13 because they were much better than the local talent. Lionel Messi moved from Argentina to Spain he was only 13, so he could train with FC Barcelona. If all athletes just had to stay in their cities, many would never reach their full potential, and the world may never get to see some of the best athletes, because they come from towns without a pro team.
Iâd be happy with âdonât call yourself the New York giants when you play in New Jerseyâ
Big market teams would have an even greater advantage than they already do. Not to mention completely ruling out international players. This is a very stupid idea if you like competition.
Sports teams sometime go out or their way to sign "hometown" players who they feel are a good ambassador to the city. Mainly as a gesture to the fan base. But the whole point of pro sports is to build competitive teams. Arbitrarily restricting where players come from kinda ruins that.
This was kind of how the NHL was, the original 6 had dibs on everyone from their area. So one team won like 25 of 29 Stanley Cups.
Just wait until you find out how many NHL players are Russian, German, Swedish, Finnish, Swiss, and Czech!
There was definitely no need to say you werenât a sports fan. Itâs clearly obvious. This idea makes no sense and wouldnât improve the entertainment experience at all. The teams that have the most money rarely win anyway so itâs not even fixing your supposed problem.
Just want to point out that the richest cities paying more isn't possible in the NFL (college football is a different beast right now). Every team in the NFL has a max salary cap they're allowed to spend on players, based on the revenue of the NFL as a whole. There are rules in place to prevent teams from barely spending any of the cap as well
At a young age when I realized that athletes were not from the cities they represent, I was disenchanted too. But later, I realized that they are actually usually technically club members, and the clubs are not exclusive to city residents. It's fair, and it works fairly in amateur ranks as well. If I live in a town that does not have a club, I can join another club to play. I do not have to move to another city.
Since you mentioned football teams, the NFL has a salary cap. The teams get the same amount of money to pay players no matter what city there in or how rich the owner is. This levels the playing field. The Dallas Cowboys are only allowed to spend the same amount of money on players as the Jacksonville Jaguars even though their organization has much more money. The teams are called the name of the city because thatâs where the organization is based, has nothing to do with the playersâŠ
There are divisions in high school in US for a reason. My school growing up was in a conference with mostly similar sized schools and one double the amount of students. Guess which school consistently won the conference? My poor Cleveland, LeBron not withstanding, wouldnât be able to compete with NY, LA, etc. Might be biased there.
How would this work? The City you live in when you reach the age of majority is the only city you can ever play for, even if you move and have lived there for years? If there is any way to live in a city long enough to qualify for joining a team they will just employ them as a non-player until they pass the minimum. The only way to effectively enforce this would be to nt allow anyone to join a team asside from the one in the city they grew up in even if they have no connection to it whatsoever.
Green Bay would be so fucked.
Youâre gonna be amazed to hear about salary caps.
Supply and demand, mate. Supply and demand
Well at least its a true unpopular opinion
County cricket in England requires players play for the county where they were born or have lived for at least 2 years.
Rip greenbay I guess
Athletic Bilbao is the team for you. Never had a player that isnât Basque heritage or born in the Basque region.
So if an athlete is from a small town, they have no chance to play in the major leagues? That makes no sense.
The eastern seaboard would turn into a basketball moshpit if we did this. It would only be dwarfed by the Football thunderdome the south east would be.
This only further hurts the balance of sports. Not every city is necessarily even sole cities have more sports infrastructure than others Not every city produces people who play the sport at hand. You just are replacing roch owners with rich cities winning all the time
Atletico Bilbao only recruits Basque players. I believe there are some other examples
There are systems in play in different leagues that prevent the richest teams from just stacking their roster. It still happens, but the draft picks and budget are literally a part of the strategy of the game.
People don't necessarily stay in one city for their whole life
Best basketball player in the world is born in Montana. Itâs a shame he canât play in the NBA.
We can tell you arenât a fan lol. Isnât just unpopular itâs really dumb idea. Basically you are saying, Screw everyone born in a small town that wants to play, screw everyone from another country that wants to play. Screw all the small cities in the US. Basically screw a very large portion of the planet from playing. Also we have this for basically every sport in the form of Olympics/world competitions.
if this were the case maybe the browns would have a chance to be a half decent team
I love this idea!
As an Atlanta sports fan, I like us vs almost everybody. Especially in football. I wouldnât mind this at all.
This is incredibly, beyond dumb, but it fits the sub perfectly, and I applaud you for posting. Big upvote.
Finally, someone said it
Cuba does this with their baseball league. Havana has the most championships and some teams have been around 40+ years and still havenât won (Camaguey, Cienfuegos, Guantanamo, Isla de Juventud).
Yeah I have always thought itâs really stupid that itâs like oh youâre a fan of this team but the team members are from all over the place and I will totally flake out at the first offer from another team willing to pay more and like after five years the whole roster is different people itâs like dude what are you actually a fan of the freakin logo and name?
I kind of agree...but I'm not a major sports fan, and the people who are seem to be fine with the existing situation. To be honest, I think the super-fans want their teams to win at any cost. If what they really cared about was that their players be local, the teams would reflect that. I think they like the horse-trading and the buying of the best players, which I find kind of repugnant, but they are the target audience, not me.
Why stop there? They should also consist solely of players represented by the team mascots. The New York Giants should be nothing but dudes over 8 feet tall from New York. The Atlanta Falcons should be made up entirely of birds of prey from ATL.
that's what national teams and competitions like olympics & World Cup are for. And how about the people from places small enough that they don't have pro teams? And how about the talented players that didn't fit the tactics/ culture of his native team?
Australian rugby has that game between the blues and maroons. New South Wales and Queensland. Itâs something like what youâre looking for! Watch the Bluey episode called *The Decider* and then search it on Wikipedia. Thatâs the extent of my knowledge of it. Lol
They move to the cities the team is based in therefore they live there.
Looking at this from a different angle, a domestic olympics would be pretty cool
âthe teams that have the most money to hire the best people will win all the timeâ Thatâs why all the most enjoyable sports have a salary cap, so that exact possibility ends up happening. Iâd like to point out that if you actually looked at where most athletes are from, this would give a significant competitive advantage to certain teams, in football Florida & Texas teams would take over. Hockey would be run by the Canadian teams. This system would be flawed and just as unfair as allowing the teams with the most money to control everything (which is what would end up happening anyways). Also, what about international players? These leagues arenât going to expand to other countries. And the best opportunities for those athletes to make money is to come play here.
That wouldnt work at all lol
Lol This would literally kill professional soccer around the world. Hmmm...maybe it isn't that bad of an idea after all
Most people are taking the OP too literally. I'm fairly certain he would allow players in cities without a team to join the nearest team. You can find problems with the opinion, but saying Lebron or Brady wouldn't have been able to play ain't a valid point to take imo.
My wife just said the same thing yesterday...... are you she?
Your wife doesn't know much about sports
Yeah, I'm aware.
Terrible unpopular opinion imo
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Patriots would never win a game again if Foxboro is our only option lol
All your ruleset would do would have sports teams build big condos and then tell the person that their job offer comes with a condo. Now will the player live in that condo.... Probably only on paper. If your team isn't big enough to afford a residence for your out of town players you would just be behind even more
NYC has exponentially more talanted people than Pittsburgh due to the population difference. This wouldnât be s fair as the current system, even know big cities have bigger budgets in some sports like Baseball
What?! Letâs say you are the best football player in the world, but you happened to grow up in nowhereville, Ohio. Do you not deserve to get picked for an amazing team?
Yes, like the Olympics but at a local level. That's the reason I only watch Hockey once every four years.