The NWSL is scrapping its collegiate draft because it's the only sports league out there with sense

This is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Mike Sykes.

Good morning, Winners! Welcome back to the Morning Win. Thanks so much for rocking with us today. We appreciate you giving us a bit of your time.

Folks, somebody has finally done it. There’s a league out there who finally had enough courage to say, “You know what? We don’t need a stinkin’ draft!”

It’s the NWSL.

The burgeoning soccer league unveiled its new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday morning, with changes that I’d argue make it the most pro-labor CBA in sports today.

But the biggest change was this: Eliminating the collegiate draft.

Like most American sports, the NWSL brought in talent through a draft system. Like most other drafts, the selection order was based on team record at the end of the previous regular season. The worst teams pick first.

Now, players entering the NWSL will enter free agency immediately upon entering the league and pick their teams, as they should. This is how it’s supposed to work, folks!

Look, I know you’re probably bristling at what I’m saying here. We love our drafts. They’re great theater! Leagues like the NFL, NBA and NHL essentially turn them into pageants for us all to consume and we eat it up.

From the countless super-early mock drafts to the scouting combines that can get creepy and uncomfortable to the ceaseless reporting on rookie workouts and team trade negotiations, we lap it all up.

All that aside, the NWSL had to do this. The league was losing out on talent to leagues worldwide that didn’t have drafts. This and other pro-player provisions in the CBA should theoretically curtail that.

Plus, drafts are unfair to players. That’s not how entering the workplace should be, right?

I could bore you here by discussing the free market principles drafts violate, but I won’t.

Instead, imagine this: You graduate from college at the top of your class. You’re on your way into the world and ready to go to the coolest company you’ve been looking at. It’s located in a city you’ve dreamed of living in for a long time.

But, surprise! You get a phone call from another company. Definitely not a cool one. But they just drafted you. Get ready to learn not-cool-company, buddy. That’s where you’re headed.

It’s not over. On top of that, you have to talk about how it’s a dream come true to work at this precious company you had no desire to work for yesterday.

I’m sure some of you will yell at me about how this impacts parity in sports and how bad teams will never be good again because all the good players will already go to the good teams. But that’s not exactly true!

Different players have different desires. Some players will want to play for good teams, sure. But not every good team has enough playing time available for you.

For example, Brianna Pinto of the North Carolina Courage told Vanity Fair that she may not have gone to Gotham FC if she had the choice as a rookie because she didn’t get enough playing time.

“Maybe there were other opportunities to get on the field right away,” she said. Those are the things incoming rookies will have to make decisions on and those decisions won’t always lead to stacking the decks on a particular team.

Sometimes, it might! But, in the end, it’s the player’s choice. And that’s what matters most. Shoutout to the NWSL for recognizing that.

The rest of the American sports leagues should pay attention.

Happy trails, Joey Votto

“That’s it. I’m done. I’m officially retired from baseball.” Those were Joey Votto’s last words as an MLB player yesterday.

After 17 years in Major League Baseball, Votto is calling it quits. And what a career it was.

The former NL MVP spent his entire career with the Reds, amassing 7,252 at-bats. He wasn’t one of the biggest swingers out there. Votto finished his career with 356 homers, but he maintained a .409 on-base percentage, the 9th best of the integration era, according to USA Today’s Jesse Yomtov. You couldn’t keep the guy off the bases.

Votto was an incredible player, but more than that, he just seemed like a genuinely great human being. After seeing his retirement announcement, people poured in on social media to share their favorite Votto stories.

This one is about Votto going to visit a little boy who was fighting cancer. This is so moving.

Quick story about Joey Votto:

About a month after this, that little boy passed away after a fight with cancer.

Joey went to his visitation. The family offered to let him skip the line but he declined. He didn’t want to detract from people paying their respects to that boy. https://t.co/93ABeng1zc

— Dylan (@dmoody46) August 22, 2024

What a career for Votto. Enjoy retirement, my man. You deserve it.

Steph Curry is a troll

There’s no way Steph Curry didn’t know that removing the “Warriors guard” part from his bio would get fans to act all crazy.

That’s precisely what happened, our Prince Grimes wrote in FTW’s Layup Lines newsletter. “As you can imagine, NBA fans on social media acted totally normal about the small change,” he said. “And by normal I mean they immediately started picking new teams for Curry.”

You know how it goes, folks. Steph was on the Lakers yesterday. He was on the Suns, too. I think I even saw a few versions of Steph on the Heat out there.

In the end, this probably doesn’t mean anything. Probably. Here’s Prince again:

“OK. Look, I can see how this all looks. But we really shouldn’t read too much into it. For starters, I can’t even confirm what Curry’s bio said before today. I think we can trust it didn’t previously have a mention of his gold medal considering, ya know, he didn’t have one two weeks ago. At the same time, this literally means nothing… probably.”

Gotta keep the Warriors fans on edge, I guess.

Quick hits: Steve is back! … CFB Predictions … and more

— Our friend Stephen Nedoroscik is back! This time, he’s on Dancing with the Stars instead of taking on the pommel horse. Meg Hall has more.

— Here’s Blake Schuster with our staff college football picks. Lots of Oregon Duck love going on here!

— We’ve also got Week 0 picks against this spread for you here. Can’t believe college football is back.

— Christian D’Andrea has more on the Jaguars’ bellwether for success this season.

— Robert Zeglinski has fantasy football sleepers for you here

— What a cool moment for Tina Charles. Here’s Cory Woodroof with more.

That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading. We appreciate you! Let’s do this again tomorrow. Peace.

-Sykes