Elite 8

In the NCAA Basketball tournament it takes 3 rounds to get to this point, in the NHL and NBA this is the 2nd Round, and even in the NFL it's the 2nd round after a few teams get byes. The only major sport that has less teams at the starting point of it's playoffs is College Football, which uh, doesn't have a playoff and starts eliminating teams from it's "championship" before the season even starts. But that's another story.

Major League Baseball starts with 8. 20 years ago it was only 4, and 45 years ago it was only 2. But baseball plays more games to decide these 8 than any other sport does to determine it's 12, 16, or 64. 162 games over 6 months leaves us at this point--22 teams gone (or will be after today's tiebreaker game between the Twins and Tigers) and 8 remain.

The battle for the World Series begins Wednesday in best of 5 battles for the League Championship Series, and althought the next 4 weeks will bring us much drama heartbreak and joy in the 8 Mudville's left (well, actually 7 since LA will have two representatives) there are still a couple things I'd like to see changed.

Division Series--Make it a best of 7 like the others. Since 1995 when the Division series started, there have been 56 of them. 22 of them have been 3-0, 14 of 28 in the National League. 21 have gone four games, 10 in the National League. Only 4 of 28 NL Series have gone 5 games, the Last in 2004, while 9 have gone 5 in the AL the last being in 2005. These things are pretty much over after the first game. By extending it two more games and compressing the schedule a little bit, it would actually allow the LCS to move forward faster. Start one league on Tuesday and the other on Wednesday. Allow TBS to use TNT to broadcast simultaneously on certain days to use up to three windows a day (possibly overlap them by 1.5 hours so everybody can see the end of the games.) a 2-3-2 Schedule would only extend it one additional day and starting a day earlier would get it back.

League Championship Series--The biggest thing here is to remove the extra off day between games 4 and 5. It hurts a team that sweeps by giving them way too much time off between the LCS and World Series.

World Series--Start the games earlier, even if it means putting them in daylight in the West including Denver. All night games in Colorado will be cooler in the fall anyway. I'd go back to weekend day games also, but know that that is not going to happen.