They Changed It Now It Sucks / Sports

• Major League Baseball created the World Baseball Classic to try to promote the growth of the game in other countries, modeling it in large part after the World Cup and handling matters of advancing similarly in the inaugural event in 2006 (round-robin pool play, top 2 teams from each pool advance). Many people railed against the whole idea of the WBC itself, but only because they were worried that players could get hurt competing at such a high level when they would normally be in Spring Training.
  • In the 2009 tournament, the pool play was double-elimination (with an unnecessary single-game final) rather than a standard round-robin pool.^note This resulted in an odd scenario where Venezuela, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States each played four games in a four-team pool without facing one specific opponent. Also, because both teams advancing from a first-round pool were in the same second-round pool, Japan and South Korea played five times, twice in each pool and once in the final. Pool play is not supposed to work that way!
  • The fifth WBC—planned for 2021 but delayed to 2023—expanded the field from 16 nations to 20, and in the process gave automatic qualification to the 16 nations which had participated in 2017. This was seen as an excuse to retroactively bail out Mexico, who failed to naturally qualify after they misread the tie-breaking rules.
• Baseball fans in general act like this. Any time there is any change in the sport—expansion teams, the designated hitter, AstroTurf, the Wild Card, interleague play, polyester uniforms, the second Wild Card, sabermetrics, pace of play improvements, the third Wild Card, etc.—many fans are up in arms.
• Many Fox Sports television viewers were disappointed in 2010 when Fox switched all of their individual sporting event themes for the NFL on Fox theme, feeling that while the theme is good, it should only be used for football and not baseball or NASCAR. The original theme returned for baseball in 2020.
  • Similar things happened when the all-motorsports Speed was relaunched as the generic sports channel Fox Sports 1 and the all-soccer Fox Soccer was relaunched as the FX spin-off/rerun farm FXX.
• Australian Rules Football has regular rule changes, all of which lead to massive fan outcry. Some work out for the better by most people's opinion (such as the rushed behind rule introduced in 2009) whilst others such as the "hands in the back" rule introduced in 2007 and removed in 2019 (best explained by Wikipedia) are almost universally hated.
• In a valiant but failing attempt to make water polo a higher scoring, more watchable game, the rules have (massively) changed about three times in less than a decade—the game was made faster (30 second shot clock instead of 35 for women), the pool longer (30 meters instead of 25 for men), only one hand can block a ball for field players instead of two, and the meter markings were changed to 2-5-7. At one point, they discussed removing basic fouls since a water polo foul is nothing like a "real" foul in other sports. The result? Coaches storming out of meetings, USA Water Polo receiving death threat emails, and teams completely falling apart—really.
• In all sports, whenever a sports team changes its logo, colors, name, or uniforms, expect there to be a large amount of criticism towards the new scheme. Notable examples in American sports include the Denver Broncos' dropping of the "Orange Crush" jerseys, the Milwaukee Brewers' change from their iconic "glove logo" to a Notre Dame ripoff, and just about all the Toronto Blue Jays' changes in the '90s and '00s.^note A lot of the backlash comes from fans thinking a jersey redesign is nothing but a cheap cash grab (really two because you can also sell the old jersey everyone likes and just call it a "throwback") and it's usually a valid point
• NASCAR. Tracks repaved. Tracks closed. New tracks added - doubly so for mile-and-a-half, mid-banked ovals, which are seen as Boring, but Practical. Dates changed. The vehicles. The Chase championship format. The championship sponsor(s). The rules themselves. Fans are divided on some of them.
• Modern Formula One is subjected to be burned, especially by '80s and '90s fans, because of rules and regulation that provides too much safety, subpar drivers, boring dominations, booster assisted cars, fake overtakes, low quality tires, horrible sounding engines, etc. Basically said, anything post Ayrton Senna sucks. This all in spite of the fact that, due to how far aerodynamics have come along, the worst team in 2014 is faster than the best team of 1994 on some tracks. Interlagos in particular would've had 2014's last-place qualifier (Pastor Maldonado) beat the time set by 1994's pole sitter (Ayrton Senna) by nearly four seconds.
• In the National Hockey League, even goal horns are subject to this. All it takes is the slightest hint of a change to the horn and/or accompanying song to trigger backlash from hockey fans.
• Many Association Football fans were enraged when FIFA announced The World Cup was expanding from 32 teams to 48, given the proposed format's (16 groups of 3) likely possibility of collusion among teams (as opposed to the straightforward 8 groups of 4), not to mention the possibility of more subpar squads qualifying. The eventual format (12 groups of 4) mostly alleviated the collusion concerns, but that merely turned the outrage toward another proposal of reducing the four year distance between World Cups...
• Even more Association Football fans were enraged at both Real Madrid and 11 other teams failed proposal for a European Super League and UEFA's new champions league format as they both widen the gap between parity amongst teams and elitism. For the ESL, it is a closed system similar to American leagues with the founding members unable of being relegated. For the "Swiss model" Champions League, it allows easy access to fallen giants like Arsenal despite terrible performance.
• The European Championship was hit by this in 2016, when it was expanded from an even 16 teams to 24, thus allowing some third-placed teams into the knock-out stages and leading to some matches having nothing resting on them, as both teams knew that they'd go through regardless of the result.^note As a result, Northern Ireland got through despite losing twice in their group. It was made worse in 2021^note Euro 2020 was postponed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic as a result of the pan-European hosting of it, causing some teams to travel a lot more than other teams^{such as} Poland, Slovakia and Sweden had to undertake a more than 2000 mile one-way trip for their games (in Spain and Russia), compared to the less than 400 that Croatia, Czech Republic and Scotland had to travel (they played in England and Scotland).
• For fans of Indiana high school basketball of a certain age (and even some younger ones), two words: class basketball. For decades, all of the state's high schools played for a single championship, allowing for David-and-Goliath matchups, most famously Milan High's run to the 1954 state title. The Milan team was the basis for the 1986 film Hoosiers. Then starting with the 1997–98 school year, the state split high school basketball into four enrollment-based classes, leading to an uproar that continues to this day.^note Bobby Plump, the star of the 1954 Milan team, was one of the most vocal opponents of class basketball.
• In 2020, the National Football League announced plans to both expand the playoffs from 12 total teams to 14 (while also giving a bye to only the #1 seed in both conferences), and to go from 16 regular season games to 17 as early as 2021. Many fans reacted negatively to both proposals. With the former, fans feel that the present playoff system was already fine (and arguably, the most sensible among America's professional sports leagues), that expanding the playoffs would allow more sub-par teams to make it in, and that it gives an unfair advantage to the #1 seed. With the latter, fans feel that the present scheduling algorithm was also fine as is and that adding more games unnecessarily shakes up that formula. And both proposals come off as hypocritical, going against the NFL's assurances about increasing players' safety, as adding more games means more opportunities of players being injured.
• For many sports fans, regardless of country, sport or league, two words: team relocation. Among the relocations that continue to draw ire from ex-fans today include the relocations of the Quebec Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets and Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League (though this is downplayed in the case of the Jets as Winnipeg got a "new" Jets team half a decade later), the Montreal Expos of Major League Baseball, the Seattle SuperSonics and Vancouver Grizzlies of the NBA, the San Diego Chargers and the St. Louis Rams (though the latter is downplayed due to the team having an established fanbase in Los Angeles^note they had been the Los Angeles Rams from 1946-1994 before moving to St. Louis) in the NFL, the South Melbourne Swans in the Australian Football League, and especially Wimbledon F.C. in English football — European association football teams, and sports teams in general, are completely independent entities rather than league franchises, and relocating them is anathema. Not to mention the Cleveland Browns, again in the NFL, even though Cleveland did get a "new" Browns team a couple of years later, which inherited the history of the "old" Browns, don't bring up Art Modell^note the owner who moved the "original" Browns team to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens in Cleveland if you value your life. Unless you're cursing him out. The generally poor and at times pathetic play of the post-relocation Browns hasn't helped either, leading some fans to actually switch allegiance to the "old" Browns/Baltimore Ravens. (There may even be a few old-timers who root for the Rams, though you'd need to be 80 or more to recall when they were a Cleveland team and give a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer for that.) Back on the subject of the MLB, the relocation of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee to become the Milwaukee Brewers actually led to the entire state of Washington suing the American League for breach of contract, leading to the creation of the Seattle Mariners.
• For artistic gymnastics, the elimination of the Perfect 10 and corresponding change to open-ended scoring. Hoo boy. Absolutely everybody has an opinion on it, and as far as many of those opinions are concerned, eliminating the Perfect 10 basically murdered the sport.
  • That's true for the international rule set, most notably used in the Olympics. However, the NCAA still uses the old scoring system. Coincidentally or not, NCAA women's gymnastics has exploded in popularity and media attention in the last decade or so, though it's still nowhere near the level of football or men's basketball.

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