Most Important What If by Decade

Another round of Sports WIs By Decade

1900s: The negotiations creating the NCAA
1910s: Babe Ruth being shifted off the pitcher's mound.
1920s: The Survival or Failure of small town NFL Franchises
1930s: Babe Ruth's drinking, Jesse Owen at the WAA Championship Meet
1940s: Early Expansion of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament
1950s: Harlem Globetrotters Join the NBA, the UK NIT scandal either doesn't happen, or results in multi-year sanctions
1960s: The NFL/AFL conflict.
1970s: Bigger expansion of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. New York Knicks stay healthy into the late 70s.
1980s: 1984 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament and subsequent NBA Draft
1990s: 1993 Duke-UK Game, Super Bowl XXXII. the Baseball Strike.
2000s: Contraversy in the wake of the 2003-2008 (Minus 2006) BCS Picture forcing a playoff. The Commissioner Calls the Big Ten's Baseball Bluff. Hurricane Katrina.

Another one you can do along that early expansion of the NCAA one in the 40's is to have the creator of the NCAA Basketball tourney sell the idea of a football tourney, and how it would be better than the bowls.
 
1900s: Assassination of President McKinley
1910s: Who dies in WWI? (Do they include an army corporal...)

1920s: US Financial and Regulatory Policy.
1930s: Austrian Hobo made German Chancellor, World War to Follow
1940s: The boundaries between a Communist and Capitalist world
1950s: Use of Nukes (Korea)
1960s: Cuban Missile Crisis (Honorable Mention: Ussuri River Crisis)
1970s: Use of Nukes (Vietnam)
1980s: Able Archer
1990s: Nature of Soviet Collapse
2000s: Bush vs. Gore
2010s: Probably don't know yet. I suspect that like the 1920s, the actions taken to revive the global economy, tax the wealthy and regulate financial institutions could avert a global crisis. Or we could not, and potentially wind up with WWIII following the collapse of democratic nations over horrible economies. This is already starting, and the people dreaming about cutting budgets to pay off debts will directly lead to this coming to a head. I'm not sure where the tipping point will be, but perhaps its the 2012 election.
 
For the 2010's, there are sports WI's that involve the Denver Broncos and Portland Trail Blazers:

Broncos-What if they didn't fire Shanahan after the 08 season, or what if they hired a different coach other than McStupid who kept the offense together?

Blazers-What if they got the #2 pick in 07 instead of the #1 pick?

What if Greg Oden and Brandon Roy stayed healthy?

What if the Blazers drafted someone different than Roy in 2006, and told Oden to shut it down for two years after his September 07 microfracture surgery?
 
1900s: Agadir Crisis
1910s: Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
1920s: M(ism)anagement of monetary policy in the U.S./Beer Hall Putsch
1930s: Hindenburg's reelection/Italian invasion of Ethiopia
1940s: Bombing of Pearl Harbor/Berlin Airlift
1950s: Ousting of Mossadeq
1960s: Six Day War/Prague Spring
1970s: Evacuation of Saigon
1980s: Bear in the Woods
1990s: Dissolution of the USSR/German reunification
2000s: 9/11 attacks
2010s: Too soon to tell.
 
I will do one for sports

1900's: President Roosevelt and Football
1910's: Radio and an earlier World Series broadcast
1920's: Babe Ruth trade
1930's: The NHL without a Great Depression
1940's: The St. Louis Browns move to LA without Pearl Harbor
1950's: The Dodgers getting a stadium in New York or Brooklyn
1960's: Lamar Hunt getting to buy the Cardinals
1970's: Different endings to the ABA and WHA
1980's: The franchise shifts of the Colts and Raiders
1990's: NHL expansion and re-alignment
2000's: Tuck Rule

I dunno, from a global perspective I'd put the following in there..

1980s - South African Rugby "Springboks" Tour of New Zealand
1990s - Advent of open professionalism in Rugby Union. (and the related Superleague war in Rugby League)
2000s - Invention of Twenty20 Cricket.
 
1900s:Russo-Japanese war
1910s:Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
1920s:US financial policy
1930s:Appeasement
1940s:Too many
1950s:Suez Crisis
1960s:Cuban Missile Crisis
1970s:Stagflation
1980s:End of the Cold War
1990s:Internet
2000s:9/11
2010s:so far, Arab Spring
 
I dunno, from a global perspective I'd put the following in there..

1980s - South African Rugby "Springboks" Tour of New Zealand
1990s - Advent of open professionalism in Rugby Union. (and the related Superleague war in Rugby League)
2000s - Invention of Twenty20 Cricket.

No I think from a global perspective football (or soccer) would dominate much of this. Its the most popular sport globally and most of the sports popular in the US have little interest globally in comparison.
 
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