Hypothetical Team Plane Crash

[MorseMoose]

It's really weird. I was talking with a roomate about what would happen if a professional sports team's airplane crashed and everyone aboard died. Neither of us could really come up with a good answer because cancelling the season for the league doesn't seem to work and cancelling the season for the team doesn't seem to work. So we figured things would probably be pushed back for a week and the team would have a chance to get everything straight before playing again. But I don't know.

So, today watching the Tigers/Cardinals there is a preview for a movie about the Marshall football team. Now this is college, so I doubt it would be the same for the pros. I thought it was weird that after talking about it, we would see a commercial for it. So, I ask you people on the board what would happen?

[AnotherAlias]

Originally Posted by MorseMoose

It's really weird. I was talking with a roomate about what would happen if a professional sports team's airplane crashed and everyone aboard died. Neither of us could really come up with a good answer because cancelling the season for the league doesn't seem to work and cancelling the season for the team doesn't seem to work. So we figured things would probably be pushed back for a week and the team would have a chance to get everything straight before playing again. But I don't know.

So, today watching the Tigers/Cardinals there is a preview for a movie about the Marshall football team. Now this is college, so I doubt it would be the same for the pros. I thought it was weird that after talking about it, we would see a commercial for it. So, I ask you people on the board what would happen?

The Cubs chances on winning a division title increases exponentially?

[marc]

Originally Posted by AnotherAlias

The Cubs chances on winning a division title increases exponentially?

HA!!!

[magnet]

Here's a couple more examples, even though they aren't the USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_air_disaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superga_air_disaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia_...n_air_disaster

[bababui]

Its happened in soccer and its only a matter of time before it happens in American sport. There is just too much money on the table for a league to cancel a season. I could see having an 'expansion draft' a couple days after such a tragedy so the team could marshall on.

[kq76]

Off-topic: The cast list for the Marshall movie is the longest I've ever seen: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0758794/ I had no idea that was what it was about or that it happened. Here's the wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal...ter_%281970%29

On-topic: If it happened to a major pro sport in NA I'm sure the season would go on. A selection draft might take too long though so they might go with a combination of minor leaguers and FAs then maybe have a selection draft in the off-season.

[Rizon]

Posted here before, I think:

http://www.s-t.com/daily/02-01/02-07-01/c05sp133.htm

[MorseMoose]

Thanks for the link. Explained more than I thought I'd find.

Each NFL team would be allowed to protect 34 players, only two of them quarterbacks, but a selected quarterback would revert to his original team the following year.

That's a pretty interesting rule. I wonder why they wouldn't do that for all positions. It isn't a terrible rule to have for all the leagues. I mean you have free agency to fill the holes and then there is the draft.

It is one of those things that you hope never comes up, but surprised it hasn't happened. If you think about it, baseball is travelling several times during the year and in football you're flying more 10 times or so. Hockey and basketball aren't as many as baseball, but still quite a lot.

Let's just hope it doesn't happen. I didn't even want to bring it up, but have thought aoubt it several times and figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by MorseMoose

Hockey and basketball aren't as many as baseball, but still quite a lot.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. I imagine most hockey and basketball teams fly after nearly every game (maybe not so much on the east coast). Baseball you fly mostly only after every 3 games. Without looking into it too much with the amount of 2 and 4 game series and makeup games, number of home games in a row, I'd say baseball teams probably fly less.

[bababui]

Baseball 81 road games..lets say they avg 3 games= 27 flight

Basketball has 41 road games=41 flights except for the NY and LA teams and maybe Bay Area teams

[MorseMoose]

I forget that basketball and hockey don't really have series.

[MorseMoose]

Including playoffs, the Twins made about 40 trips (they had to go home after away series which is where those extra trips come from bab).

The Wild on the other hand travel about 57 times (although it is most likely a lot less since they have three games in a row at Sharks, Kings, Ducks (two times) and then series games against the Canadian teams (four times). So, something like 45-50 is more likely. So only about 10 more.

But these are estimates and I just picked my favorite teams in these two sports so some teams may not have 3/4 games in a row at teams near each other. I just figured that teams would have fairly similar schedules.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by kq76

Off-topic: The cast list for the Marshall movie is the longest I've ever seen: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0758794/

Not related, but I think you might want to know this:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0448975/combined

[AnotherAlias]

Originally Posted by bababui

Baseball 81 road games..lets say they avg 3 games= 27 flight

Basketball has 41 road games=41 flights except for the NY and LA teams and maybe Bay Area Bob teams

Fixed it for clarity!

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Not related, but I think you might want to know this:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0448975/combined

That list was so long it crashed my browser! Seriously.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Not related, but I think you might want to know this:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0448975/combined

http://imdb.com/title/tt0448975/plotsummary
That is pretty cool.

[Asshat]

For ze forem reading pleasures

Marshall remains the worst sports-related air disaster
By Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Marshall isn't alone in its grief for a team air disaster this year. Just last month, Wichita State University memorialized the 30th anniversary of its own football air tragedy.

In that crash, 31 of the 40 people aboard, 14 of whom football players, died when one of two chartered planes crashed into the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. The plane's pilot had taken a scenic route over the Rockies when he realized he had taken the plane too deep into a canyon and did not have enough room to gain altitude. He tried to raise the plane's nose and turn around, but it was too late.

Ironically, when the Wichita State plane crashed in October of 1970, officials at Marshall, a school whose athletic teams rarely traveled by plane, reconsidered their planned November trip to East Carolina. But instead of canceling plans to fly, Marshall changed them, chartering a Southern Airways DC-9 -- which was seen as a bigger, safer plane. That plane crashed after the game Nov. 14, killing all 75 people on board.

While Marshall ignored whispers to eliminate its football program, eventually finding success in the 1990s, Wichita State axed the program in 1986, citing the financial burden the downtrodden program was having on its other Division I sports.

Another horrific team crash happened in 1960 at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is one reason that NFL broadcaster John Madden refuses to fly, instead bussing himself to each week's broadcast. Madden, who played at Cal Poly in 1957 and '58 and was a graduate assistant in 1960, stayed behind to coach a junior varsity game at Allan Hancock College when the plane carrying many of his former teammates went down near Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 of the 48 passengers. Sixteen of those who died were football players.

Considering how often college and professional sports teams fly (it isn't unusual for an NBA team to spend one week in three, maybe four different cities), it's a blessing that accidents like the one at Marshall don't happen more often. The charter of a professional sports team has never crashed, while the Marshall accident remains the worst sports-related air tragedy ever.

The only team crash of major national note since the Marshall crash happened in 1977, when a National Jet Services DC-3 crashed during takeoff in Evansville, Ind., killing all 29 people on board, including the entire 14-member Evansville basketball team and their coach, Bobby Watson.

Just three weeks ago the Arizona State football team received a scare when its America West charter was hit by lightning twice outside the Phoenix area, but nothing catastrophic happened. Despite the two large flashes, one of which caused the cabin to go black, the plane landed as scheduled without any major problems.

Plenty off famous athletes have died in their own individual crashes, including Knute Rockne, Rocky Marciano, Roberto Clemente, Thurman Munson, and Payne Stewart.

Rockne, 43 at the time, was one of eight killed in March of 1931 when one of the aircraft's wings separated his plane in mid-flight, forcing the plane to the ground during a heavy storm in Kansas.

Marciano was one day shy of his 46th birthday in 1969 when he and two others died in the crash of a Cessna during a heavy storm in Newton, Iowa.

Clemente was delivering relief supplies to victims of a Nicaraguan earthquake during the 1972 offseason, when he and three others were killed in their overloaded plane off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

And Stewart had won the U.S. Open just four months prior to his death last October, when his Lear jet lost cabin pressure, causing everyone on the plane to lose consciousness. The plane, which was flying from Orlando to Dallas, steered off-course after the loss in pressure, eventually crashing in Mina, S.D., after running out of fuel.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Rizon

Posted here before, I think:

http://www.s-t.com/daily/02-01/02-07-01/c05sp133.htm

That link says the MLB plan has never been made public. That's not strictly true.

The air disaster plan that was first created by the major leagues back when they had 16 teams was made public. You can find newspaper articles about it. The plan worked like this:

The seven teams in the league would each create a list of ten players from their active rosters. The affected team would then choose players from these lists to restock its club. It could choose no more than three players from any one team. So the rebuilding team could get a total of 21 major league players via this emergency draft. It could then fill out the rest of its active roster by promoting players from its minor league affiliates.

The current-day MLB plan probably works along similar lines.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by kq76

That list was so long it crashed my browser! Seriously.

It's long enough that I'm on it, and so are a couple of my friends.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by MorseMoose

It's really weird. I was talking with a roomate about what would happen if a professional sports team's airplane crashed and everyone aboard died. Neither of us could really come up with a good answer because cancelling the season for the league doesn't seem to work and cancelling the season for the team doesn't seem to work. So we figured things would probably be pushed back for a week and the team would have a chance to get everything straight before playing again. But I don't know.

So, today watching the Tigers/Cardinals there is a preview for a movie about the Marshall football team. Now this is college, so I doubt it would be the same for the pros. I thought it was weird that after talking about it, we would see a commercial for it. So, I ask you people on the board what would happen?

I have used this as the premise of an OOTP league before: I sim a history for a league, then I kill off almost all the players on one team. I then have the task of taking that team over. I don't do any drafts like the would in real life, since it's more challenging to try to build a team up from nothing at all.