NFL / Franchise System in SA sports?

From the Sports Mongrel blog...

I haven't blogged in a while but with the NFL SuperBowl this evening, I thought I'd touch on something that could become quite topical to South African sport - the franchise system...

The SuperBowl final this year pits the Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals - two sides who didn't make the grade last year.

Sides like the New York Giants, The Green Bay Packers and The Patriots who dominated last year are nowhere to be seen this year...

The draft system ensures that players don't end up stuck in contracts where they are not playing. It also ensures constant rotation of the top players ensuring development of players in various geographical regions.

Currently our cricket and rugby teams have looked at franchise systems with mixed success, but what we haven't seen is moves from controlling bodies like Cricket SA and SARFU to help manage players more actively... Maybe its time for us to look at a draft system...?

I see they're doing it in the IPL cricket league and it makes it helluva exciting.

One obvious complaint is that sides will argue that they have invested a lot of time and money in player development and a draft system will negate that. I guess its always possible but in the bigger scheme I think it could make SA more competitive.

Instead of one side having an excess of batters, bowlers, strikers or flyhalves, players go into a pool and are split up evenly where they're needed.

I immediately think of sides like the Cheetahs in rugby who are constantly finding themselves outbid (financially) for quality players. A draft system would ensure that they would have fair access to quality players... and we wouldn't be losing players to Australia or New Zealand or even the UK.

Times are a changing in South Africa and the old provincial loyalties are being replaced by commercial franchises in different sports disciplines. As a result better player management is going to be essential...