It makes no sense to reward the most incompetent teams with the right to select the best players every year. A perfectly fair system would be to have each team cycle through all 32 positions in the draft. Define a 32 year cycle in which each team goes up or down in their position every year. Design it so that the cycle goes up and down so that you are in the top half of the draft every year. A terrible choice would be for each team to drop back one slot each year and then go to the top after reaching #32. For one thing, this would mean that the order would always be the same, and this would potentially give a team just in front of another leverage over that team. Besides being perfectly fair, another advantage of this system is that the draft order would be known years in advance. This would help to facilitate trades because the value of each pick would be known years in advance. Here is a possible cycle:
1, 32, 16, 17, 8, 25, 9, 24, 2, 31, 15, 18, 7, 26, 10, 23, 3, 30, 14, 19, 6, 27, 11, 22, 4, 29, 13, 20, 5, 28, 12, 21
In this cycle, the order is divided up into four regimes: 1-8, 9-16, 17-24, and 25-32. The position cycles through the four regimes and within the regimes. With such a system, there would be no motive for tanking games, each team would be treated the same, and teams would move up and down in the draft in a cyclic manner. Poorly managed teams would no longer get rewarded. The best players wouldn't automatically be doomed to starting their careers with terrible teams. The following cycle is based on the prime number 23:
1, 24, 15, 6, 29, 20, 11, 2, 25, 16, 7, 30, 21, 12, 3, 26, 17, 8, 31, 22, 13, 4, 27, 18, 9, 32, 23, 14, 5, 28, 19, 10
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2022 12:17PM by L.A.Rams.
