How To Kill Draft Lotteries Without Encouraging Tanking
Good morning and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Be sure to free some whales this week.
I got a great response to last week’s survey about draft lotteries. I’m glad so many of you also spend time thinking about this—it means we’re all in the right place. We’ll start off with drafts and tanking, then move on to the tush push, and end with a couple baseball topics.
Locker Room Links
- The NBA will either have a first-time champion or the Knicks (who haven’t won in more than 50 years).
- “If the Mets Are No Longer Underdogs, Are They Still the Mets?“
- Dick’s Sporting Goods is buying Foot Locker.
- There’s a reason state legislators aren’t in charge of college football scheduling.
- Gov. Mike Kehoe (R–Mo.) wants the state to pay for up to 50 percent of future (large) stadium construction or renovation projects, even though Kansas City voters just last year rejected a sales tax hike to fund stadiums.
- RIP, P00P.
- Elsewhere in Reason: “Are the News Media in Their Onion Era?“
- If, like me, you skipped the Preakness Stakes because Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty wasn’t participating (or because it’s silly for the state government to own Pimlico), you can watch the whole race here. I won’t spoil it, but there’s some excitement on the homestretch:
You don’t want to miss a second of the ENTIRE 150th Preakness Stakes. ???? #Preakness150 pic.twitter.com/lkqqfkk4yh
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 17, 2025
Abolish the Lottos
A slight majority of Free Agent readers don’t like draft lotteries (or at least a majority of the ones who took two minutes to do the survey—thank you!). A quarter said they like them and about one-fifth said they don’t care.
As for draft lottery alternatives, keeping it simple and just reversing league standings (as the NFL does) was the main preference, with 43 percent. Another quarter of you said they’d prefer to get rid of the draft altogether (I’m a big fan of abolishing the draft), with one reader commenting that it’s “like if the law student who graduates top of the class at Harvard was sent to the worst law firm in Utah.” As for the bolder lottery alternatives, the “Gold Plan” got slightly more support than “The Wheel.” Shoutout to the fun “other” responses who invented their own systems.
The results were a good reminder that as much as I love a complicated system that involves a lot of moving parts and strategy, the general public usually prefers simplicity. So how do leagues keep a simple draft system (like the NFL’s draft order) while making sure teams don’t tank?
It’s easy: money.
I don’t think players and coaches tank, as I wrote last week. There are contracts on the line, and you don’t get to the best league in your sport unless you’re so competitive that you hate losing. But if you want to give them a reason to win, give them money for winning. Even a small fraction of their annual salary will be motivation enough.
You can quibble with the details, but the idea is to give each player on the teams that miss the playoffs something like $10,000 for each win late in the season—maybe it’s each win after playoff elimination, or each win in the last month of the season. The math varies depending on how you do it, but it might cost a league like the NBA or NHL a few million dollars a season. Just fork over a fraction of the new money those leagues have coming in from gambling partnerships and national TV deals.
Give teams money not to tank. It’s as simple as that.
As for the reader who responded to the survey with “How are drafts not illegal?”, it’s because drafts are enshrined in collective bargaining agreements between players unions and leagues, and those agreements are exempt from antitrust law. That doesn’t answer the question of “Should drafts be illegal?”, an interesting query for another day.
Pushin’ Tush
Why should you get a flag for an innovative quarterback sneak tactic someone else noticed?
NFL owners could vote this week to ban the tush push, famously mastered by the Philadelphia Eagles over the last couple seasons. The Green Bay Packers (who?) in March proposed a rule that says offensive players can’t “immediately at the snap, push or throw his body against a teammate, who was lined up directly behind the snapper and received the snap, to aid him in an attempt to gain yardage.”
Article from Reason.com
The Reason Magazine website is a go-to destination for libertarians seeking cogent analysis, investigative reporting, and thought-provoking commentary. Championing the principles of individual freedom, limited government, and free markets, the site offers a diverse range of articles, videos, and podcasts that challenge conventional wisdom and advocate for libertarian solutions. Whether you’re interested in politics, culture, or technology, Reason provides a unique lens that prioritizes liberty and rational discourse. It’s an essential resource for those who value critical thinking and nuanced debate in the pursuit of a freer society.
