It has been 9 years since I made an entry in this aspect but I feel this one needs to be addressed as it is a problem with the three most popular professional sports in the US. That is tanking.
The same way that a person who wants to jump high needs to bend the knees and get low, it has become common for non contending teams to trade all of its decent players and stock up for the future with the hope of being a viable contender for a title in 3-5 years. When the Miami Dolphins did that before the 2019 season started and then had to face four teams in September that went 43-21 in 2018, the results became comical and people started thinking that NCAA or high school teams could beat them.
(After the bye the Dolphins have been competitive including a one point loss when they went for two with seconds left to go in the game while covering five straight and after winning their previous two are in third place in their division. Other teams that had Super Bowl aspirations when the season began and do not have 13 draft picks in 2020 including 5 in the first two rounds and have not won more games than they lost through the end of November are generally worse off.
There are two solutions that I see to remedy this. The first one is used in soccer leagues in Mexico and throughout Europe and that is relegation. However, that only works when there are multiple leagues for teams to be relegated and promoted and even if that was created in the US, allowing relegation would be changing the culture and that would not work. Granted in the English Premier League, 23 of the last 24 champions have been won by one of two teams from Manchester (United and City) or one of two teams from London (Arsenal and Chelsea) so maybe that is not the greatest idea for what works in the US.
What I am proposing is setting a minimum league standard based on wins. In the NFL, that would be 4. A team that goes 3-13 or worse should be penalized and this is how I would do it:
Slide teams that do not meet the minimum standard down the draft as such (order is based on wins by team):
Round 1: 4,3,5,2,6,1,7,0,8+
Round 2: 3,2,4,1,5,0,6+
Round 3: 2,1,3,0,4+
Round 4: 1,0, 2+
Round 5: as normal
This would make games among the bottom feeding teams far more interesting as it would create a desire to win by rewarding teams for winning as opposed to losing. This would also hurt teams that tank in the future.
A similar strategy could apply to the other three main sports in the US.
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