To start with, it should be a pretty solid Super Bowl. The sizzle isn’t quite there, but I think that the steak will be. Typically, the next two weeks would be full of hype, culminating in a game that probably wouldn’t live up to it all. This time should be different in that neither Pittsburgh nor Seattle are teams that demand the buildup that we’ve come to expect. Perhaps that’s because they come from what are considered “small market” cities.

Many of you would argue that last point, but I’ll use Minneapolis as an example. That’s a city that typically comes up in conversations about “small market” teams, including when Bud Selig was trying to contract the Twins a few years back. The Greater Minneapolis area has nearly 3 million people. Seattle has about 3.5, while Pittsburgh has about 2.5. Neither city really has a team that spends freely like we’ve come to expect from the “big market” teams. The Mariners are the exception to this, but the perception (at least) is that they never make the necessary additions (in payroll and players) to push them over the top.

What’s great about this Super Bowl is that the NFL is showing us once again that an even financial playing field gives more teams a chance to win. There are a number of teams in the NFL that remain stuck in mediocrity (Arizona is a great example), but their fans can only complain about having incompetent management rather than cheap and incompetent management like many baseball teams (Pittsburgh, KC, etc.). Most football fans can probably see the light at the end of the tunnel (49er fans might have to look hard, but it’s there), while many baseball fans can only see doom and gloom. Their team needs to catch a lot of breaks just to have the slightest chance.

Something has got to change. Baseball’s Collective Bargaining Agreement will end on December 19, 2006, and we’ll all be hearing the debate this summer about what will change and what concessions will be made. A structure similar to the NFL’s (including a salary cap) is just about impossible; the MLB Players Association would never accept that. But there has got to be a better way.

The Shake-Up has got a plan. It’s just a little radical, but it could work (I think): The Major League Baseball Co-operative.

Dissolve Ownership: No more owners, sort of. Instead of every team having an owner, people will own shares in the league. So nobody owns the New York Yankees, but rather the Yankees are a branch of a larger business called the Major League Baseball Co-operative (MLBC), which is owned by the collection of owners who now rule over their respective teams.

Current owners could be bought out based one their team’s position in the sport. For instance, George Steinbrenner (among others) owns the Yankees. If the owner’s share of the MLBC (more on that later) is worth $20 billion dollars, and the Yankees contribute $2 billion dollars to that, then Steinbrenner (et al) will receive a 10% stake of the new organization.

Player Ownership: Of course the Players Association will be vehemently against the MLBC; unless we bring them in on it. That’s the idea of it being a Co-op. Baseball players will hold a stake in the MLBC, essentially making them part-owners. Of course, their portion of this can’t be equal to the current owner’s share, but it can’t be a token amount either.

Fan Lobby: As a non-owner representative, the fans should have a voice in the new MLBC. So we’ll have to create the Major League Baseball Co-Operative Fan Lobby, or MLBCFL. It can be a non-profit institution designed to represent the fans’ interests wherever applicable. This could even be a potential tie-breaker if the owners and player/owners come to an impasse. Or if you want to buy a beer after the 7th inning. Now you have a voice!

The best part on all sides is that what is good for baseball will be good for the owners (now including the player/owners). Competitive balance, cost certainty, potential salary cap/basement, and revenue sharing would all be possible within the MLBC. “Small market” teams would be given new life.

Sure, there are a lot of issues that need to be worked out; for instance, trying to figure out who will run each team (i.e. general managers), how decisions will be made, who will be fired, who will be hired, and so forth. But we could address these questions with preset criteria of performance for team executives. Perhaps the teams that are the bottom five in improving from the previous year will see their front office cleaned out. Perhaps the MLBCFL could be consulted. But those details can be fleshed out later.

It’s not a perfect solution, and it may not be that realistic either (that’s a big Shake-Up understatement), but it would be interesting. And there would actually be a chance we could see a Pittsburgh/Seattle World Series sometime.