tamba_trio

Of course, we are not mentioning the real problem with Scottish football: Finances. Being humped eternally because the opposition has a budget 10 times bigger than you is never going to be attractive to supporters. TV Money: Split equally Prize Money: Split equally Gate Money: 50% to the home team, 50% split amongst the league European Prize Money: 50% to the team earning it, 50% to the rest of the league (seeing as the league is nice enough to re-arrange fixtures around European games) Celtic and Rangers would still have budgets 3 or 4 times bigger than everyone else, but it'd level things a little bit. Other sides would start to have a chance.

Yes, the CL spot going to the top points total might appease the Old Firm and stop the average supporter from having a rupture. I like the idea of the best team in the league losing the Championship because of a dodgy last minute goal (see the 2007 New England Patriots...) but I'm in the minority. The A-league also does that with the CL spot. I've came around to the idea of summer football. Albeit, it's not really summer but a March - December league. The reason isn't a quest for glorious weather, but purely because there's no European or International games between the start of December and middle of February (and even the Feb ones are only for the top sides still in Europe). It'd give all our players at least a month without football, so we avoid the stupid situation of players going from league season - Euros - European qualifiers - league season without time to breathe.

I've two problems with the current playoffs: 1 - The league structure isn't set up for it. Playoffs offer a chance to have the season asymmetrical and to vary fixtures. We don't take advantage of that. 2 - Two legged ties don't offer much of an advantage to the higher up team. A one off game at the home ground of the higher finished team would be better. And I wouldn't really have a problem with playoffs for the top of the table as well. Currently, if you're team wins the league easily they might not have a proper competitive match for the last few months of the season, whilst the poorer teams have some thrilling games and much more excitement. I'd rather the best teams were the ones involved in the final matches of the season. Also, if you are 20+ points clear you'd get to rest players and - in my scenario - you'd be getting home advantage too (it could even be like the AFL where the top teams get two chances to get through to the final).

Absolutely. Of course whilst bleating on about fairness it's forgotten that the Scottish league is the most unfair sporting league on the planet. Somehow, team A with a budget of £30 million playing team B with a budget of £1 million, isn't considered unfair. We really should be trying to do the exact opposite of what the EPL does. And there shouldn't be another TV deal with Sky or BT (unless they're willing to pay fairly). Football is more popular in Scotland than England. We really don't have another sport here. TV rights - to a population of 5 million people - should be much closer to £75 million a year. If the TV companies won't give it, then we have to start up our own TV station as the Dutch did. Also, I've completely came around to summer football now. I was always against it but I think we need it now, owing to the European calendar. If the season ended in December, it would give teams January and February to rest rather than having them play European games a month (or more) before the league season even starts. It's no wonder teams struggle. I spent a bit of time thinking up various league structures to try and give other teams a chance - there's loads of possibilities. A Championship play off is pretty much key if we want to start tapping into our potential audience (God knows, 16 teams and 30 games won't do anything). But, it would give teams outwith Glasgow with a chance (albeit slim) of becoming champions though, so we couldn't have that. The sad thing is that football fans are so conditioned into thinking this is normal they haven't noticed that in literally every other sport the best teams or players are defined by a peak snapshot event.

Why is football so against championship play offs? I think every other sport I know has them in some form, with teams and players getting reputations as bottlers if they continously fail at them. Given the struggles we have differentiating ourselves from the English set up and our lack of variety in champions we could do worse than consider it.

The NFL have a yearly owners meeting where they propose rule changes (their aim being to maximimise the enertainment of the sport). It's interesting that modern NFL games are far higher scoring than those from 50 years ago as they believe that more offense is more exciting, and it's all about selling the product. They also will change rules which noticably don't work. I wonder if the SPFL ever have meetings where they review the previous season and discuss how to improve and get more fans into grounds. I think the revenue sharing (with regards to ticket sales) sees the home team keep 60% of the gate. It might be the same with shirt sales and such but I'm not sure. Of course it was the 1960s when they noticed that small town teams would be left behind unless revenue was shared, something we still haven't spotted. I guess - as a defence of Scottish football - it isn't easy. There can't be many countries who pay for their neighbours league before their own (and, for England, it must be nice to have 5 million people paying into their league who don't have to get anything back from it). And I'm sure it's Sky who insist on making the SPFL into EPL lite but I don't see any proper future for the game here unless we can break away from that.

Don't be so quick to judge. As a business, the NFL is an amazing success. This is a sport which - 50 years ago - was completely in the shadows of baseball. Now the Superbowl is annually watched by half the country (imagine any Scottish football game ever being watched by half of Scotland). They do a lot of things very well: Revenue is shared equally: TV money, ticket sales, jersey sales, everything. A salary cap which is set to avoid any debt and so the league actually makes money. Annually reviewing the sport and implementing changes designed to make the game more entertaining. That's before you get into things like video replays and scheduling which is designed to give the better teams tougher fixtures in order to promote parity. In terms of administrating a sport, they're pretty damn good. Given Scottish footballs current position in the shadows of the EPL, we could learn a lot from them.

You'd think after being burned on TV deals twice before clubs would have a contingency plan in case it happened again.

Somewhere along the line we got lost. It's not about football. It's not about competition. It's not about entertainment. It's not even about getting fans to games; increasing attendances and promoting the game. It's about money. Which I could understand if the clubs were running profits and making owners rich. But it's not even that. It's about getting as much money as you can as quickly as possible so you can continue to vastly overpay a bunch of pretty shite footballers (whilst inflating their egos to the point that many of them are utter failures as human beings). The SPL deserves to die. They have a chance to rip it up and start something fresh, new and with some financial sense but they have neither the brains our courage to even try.

In what way would paying what they owe be a punishment? Traynor was saying similar at the weekend. Does this mean that if someone robs a bank we punish them by making them give the money back? Seeing as they seem incapable of budgeting properly I propose that the SPL does it for them. All the money they get goes to the SPL who then give Rangers an annual budget to spend on players. £3 million a year should do it. Anything else they earn gets spread around the other SPL teams as compensation for all the years of cheating.