I am UPSET!!! I am not happy with the direction of the WNBA. I have decided to throw my hat in the ring to become the new commissioner of the WNBA.
In sports, they say you never want to take a job following a legend. That is part of what makes this job so attractive, I am certainly not following a legend. My 10 point plan can save the WNBA from itself.
#1- Eliminate 8 Technical Suspensions- These are adults, this is stupid. We will look at setting a new total but we will not include Flagrant 1’s in this total. Flagrant 1’s are just playing hard and often something inadvertently happens. I am thinking we will go with something like 12. Why would we let the WNBA refs make decisions that make a player sit out?
#2- Grading Refs- We will score refs in each game. These scores will be shared with the referees but not the public. At the end of each quarter of the season, we will publish our “Honor Roll.” It will be the refs who score in the upper 25%.
We will grade everything in the last four minutes of every game. This will be published and available to the public.
#3- In Game Review Process- Each coach starts each game with one review. If they ask for a review and lose the review, they will have no reviews left and lose a time out.
If they win the challenge, they will get another challenge and no time out charged. As long as they win a challenge, they get another.
The review will be done by people at a different location, like baseball. It is stupid to have the people who make the bad call be the ones to decide if it was a bad call.
Each game will have a 4th ref at the scorer’s table. If one ref’s call is overturned twice in a game, it is like they fouled out, they leave the game and the new ref comes in.
#4- FIBA and Unrivaled- I will sit down with FIBA and we will change their tourney dates. I have always loved Christmas Tourney, why not have them move to Christmas season.
If we are paying players good money, they will not play for the Unrivaled league. They should be using the time to heal and the time to work out to improve their skill levels.
A key will be the great staff that I am going to hire and the jobs they do to clean up this mess.
#5- Don O’Brien- Director of Journalism- Don’s loyalty is questionable, he moved from Galesburg to Quincy. So while I assign him this job, I recognize that I need to keep an eye on him.
Don works with the Better Business Bureau, so he is trained to spot frauds and bad actors.
Don will sit down with all of the major networks, podcasters, and news outlets who are covering the WNBA. His message is that, “Stupid must be gone from your companies.” I trust that he can give corporate executives examples of “stupid.”
Don will be charged with coming up with new contracts with TV in which he will have final say on commentators just like MLB does.
Mr. O’Brien will put together a spin off of his famous “Guess This Expiration Date.” Weekly he will do podcast entitled, “Guess Which Opinion Was Most Stupid.” Each week he will pick out 5 clips of stupid things WNBA analysts have to say. Don will have a panel of Charles Barkley, Mark Cuban, David Letterman, and a 6th grade girl from Iowa. The panel will talk about why each of the five clips is stupid, then at the end, they will vote on which clip was the “Most Stupid of the Week.”
#6- Mark Massey- Economic Czar- I am sure you think this is nepotism, and you may be right, but he taught AP Econ to high school students and obviously few of the WNBA players or owners must have taken AP Econ.
Mark will give a seminar to the players entitled- The Economics of Caitlin Clark. He will go thru a before and after Caitlin economic analysis of the league. I am confident that he will include info about TV audiences. Players will be required to past a post-seminar test or they will be placed as a developmental player and have to go back for a second seminar.
Mark will also be giving the WNBA owners the seminar as well. A major emphasis will be on the value of spending money to help the WNBA keep growing, the value of hiring competent management and staffs, how to evaluate staff, and establishing player standards of behavior.
#7 Jay and Lori Hatch- Referees Czars- Jay and Lori will grade each official in each game. This is a full-time job. We build an addition to their house to accomadate a video system like the NY office has in the NBA and MLB.
They have coached high school girls basketball for decades, so I am confident they know what a bad ref looks like and a good ref looks like.
It will be up to them who they hire and who they fire. They will review calls of games and they will evaluate refs. They will publish a report of errors in the last four minutes of a game.
This job is a dream come true for any basketball coach- to get paid to tell bad refs that they are bad refs!!
#8- Greg Bennett- Common Sense Police- The WNBA players have gotten in their own way. Sometimes it seems the players are determined to see if they can mess up the WNBA.
Greg will have total freedom to fine or suspend players for doing things that defy common sense. He will basically be asking these professional athletes to start acting on and off the court with the maturity and professionalism that is expected of high school athletes.
If a players says inappropriate things on or off the court- there will be a consequence. If a player commits purposeful flagrant fouls- there will be a consequence. Coach Bennett can decide on the consequences. He can choose to fine them (no more than 50% of their salaries), suspend them, or he can just yell at them.
#9- Michelle Obama- Director of Decency- Each team when they play the Chicago Sky will be required to go have a practice at the Obama Center. The Obamas will attend practice and just hang out with teams and share what being a nice person means.
#10- Expansion Teams- I realize you may be with me up to now. I am going to model myself as commissioner a little bit like Bud Selig. He had an interest in the Brewers and was commissioner, so I don’t see why I can’t be commissioner and have an interest in a WBNA.
The next WNBA expansion team is supposed to be Cleveland. Yes, really, Cleveland. That shows no imagination and certainly not a selection that evokes excitement. When has Cleveland been good at anything if Lebron wasn’t on a team. And then, even Lebron left Cleveland. Cleveland will not get the next team!
Let’s capture people’s imagination and think outside the box. The expansion team in 2028 will go to Galesburg, Illinois. Yep, Galesburg!!
Think about this- Galesburg’s metropolitan area which includes the suburbs of Peoria, the Quad Cities, and Burlington has over a million people. Green Bay’s metropolitan area is only 385,000.
The plan will be to buy and fix up the legendary Galesburg Armory. It was the site of the famous stall game that produced the 10 second line- it has history. With a few tweaks to the building, we can easily get it to about 22,000 capacity.
And we will make some minor adjustments to the expansion draft. For the first pick, no team can protect any players. So the Galesburg franchise gets to pick any player in the league. Caitlin will love Galesburg and Galesburg will love Caitlin.
I hope you will write to your congressmen, your senators, your mayor, your city council members, and the WNBA executives- and promote my candidacy for the position of the WNBA Commissioner!
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