“Suck for Luck” raises questions of NFL integrity
Most of the time, it’s not terribly difficult for fans to choose who to root for in games involving their team. You cheer for your team, of course. However, the NFL and other leagues that depend on a reverse-order draft (where the worst team gets the first pick) pose a conundrum for fans when their team isn’t doing well; do you root for your team to win an individual game that won’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, or would you rather see them lose in the short term to get a higher pick and (hopefully) a better long-term future?
This debate becomes particularly important whenever there’s an incredibly impressive upcoming projected top draft pick, and that’s the case this year with Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, who’s spawned the controversial and frequently debated “Suck for Luck” movement.
Luck’s had tons of hype around him for years, and for understandable reasons. He’s been perhaps the most crucial component in Stanford’s rise from a school known mostly for academics to a legitimate contender for the BCS championship. This year, despite the exit of famed coach Jim Harbaugh for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, Luck and the Cardinal have run up a 9-0 record so far and are third in the Associated Press poll and fourth in the BCS standings. They still have a tough task upcoming this week against Oregon (sixth in the AP poll, seventh in the BCS), but at the moment, they’re favored to win the Pac-12, and that should ensure them at least a BCS game and perhaps a berth in the national championship.
Luck’s performance has been a key reason why Stanford has done so well. He’s thrown for 2,424 yards with a 71.3 percent completion rate and 26 touchdowns against five interceptions, and he’s solidified his claim as the top overall pick in next year’s NFL Draft. This isn’t exactly a fluke season from Luck, either; he’s been a dominant quarterback for the last two years, was effective in his first year and would likely have been the top pick in the 2011 draft if he hadn’t elected to return to school. With so many teams in need of quarterbacks, Luck’s status as a “sure thing” in the eyes of many NFL scouts and personnel men and his impressive 2011 performance to date, it seems very probable he will in fact go first overall. The question, though, is to whom?
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The “Suck For Luck” movement has gained so much attention not just because of its rhyme scheme or Luck’s perceived standing as a player well above the rest of the 2012 Draft class, but also because there are so many teams in contention for his services. So far this season, there’s one 0-9 team (the Indianapolis Colts, who are really struggling without Peyton Manning), two 1-7 teams (Miami and St. Louis) and five 2-6 teams (Jacksonville, Minnesota, Carolina, Seattle and Arizona). All of them have legitimate chances at finishing last overall and securing Luck.
Do they all need him, though? The Colts already have a proven quarterback in Manning, if he’s able to return from his neck issues next season (not a sure thing), while Carolina and Minnesota spent first-round picks on quarterbacks last year (Cam Newton and Christian Ponder) and St. Louis and Arizona have reasonably young, promising quarterbacks in Sam Bradford and Kevin Kolb.
Jacksonville, Seattle and Miami could all certainly use a long-term answer at quarterback, so Luck would definitely be a nice fit there. The rewards of finishing last overall and earning that top pick don’t apply just to them, though; if one of the other teams finished last, they could either take Luck and hope to trade their existing quarterback, take Luck and let him develop slowly as a backup or trade that first-overall pick for a haul of players and draft choices. There’s significant incentive for any non-playoff team to finish last, as the first pick this year will likely be worth considerably more than any other selection.
It’s that incentive that’s a problem, though. Normally, sports work on an system of positive incentives; win and you’ll get more fans to come, you’ll pull in more money and you’ll boost your franchise’s value. However, the reverse draft order rewards teams for being bad. To a degree, that’s a good thing; it helps to provide the year-over-year parity we see in the NFL, and it means that bad franchises can frequently turn themselves around quickly (see the Lions or the 49ers for recent examples). The issue is that it’s incontrovertibly a benefit to bad franchises to be the absolute worst team out there rather than a mediocre squad.
To that end, there’s significant potential for teams to mess up the league’s competitive integrity. It’s much easier to lose than it is to win, and it isn’t particularly tough to do even if all your players are trying their best so they still have jobs next season. Just come up with bad strategies, call obvious plays or don’t play the best players you have. There’s no real proof that anyone’s actually doing that, but it can’t be dismissed out of hand. Losing’s easy enough to do and there’s substantial incentive to do it; even if teams and coaches are above that, it’s still a concerning situation.
Regardless of if teams are trying to lose or not, the even more notable question is if fans should want them to. On the one hand, your team’s ultimate success probably matters much more than whether they have a terrible season or just a mediocre one; most fans would probably take a couple of 1-15 seasons followed by a 10-6 one with a playoff run and maybe even a Super Bowl over three 4-12 seasons in a row, even though both add up to 12-36 records overall.
On the other hand, though, there’s something very odd about rooting for your team to lose in any particular game. It’s not an easy dilemma for fans or teams, and it gets even more difficult in years where there’s a clear top pick like Luck. It does make the bottom of the standings interesting, but there aren’t any easy answers for anyone involved.
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