The first and most glaring problem with the status quo is that baseball in cold weather is no fun. That goes for players and fans alike. People rhapsodize about the romance of the game on a crisp fall day, but the demands of TV wiped out the World Series day-game a long time ago. They all start at night when "crisp" turns to "frigid," and MLB's postseason already goes deep enough into the autumn for some bad weather to be almost guaranteed.

Witness the Game 5 of the ALCS postponed. Or the how the Giants' four-game sweep of the Tigers ended at Comerica Park on October 28, and the temperature at first pitch was 44 degrees with a bone-chilling wind—also known as perfectly normal weather for Detroit in late October. The conditions were completely miserable for any playing or watching of baseball, which is a game made to be elegant beneath the summer heat. Did you see those Tiger fans shivering under winter coats and knit caps in the bleachers? Tell me again ... where's the romance?

Football in bad weather is fantastic, of course. The NFL fans in Chicago and Pittsburgh rightly paid top dollar to stand in the cold rain and scream for their clubs. But the same doesn't hold true for all sports. No one pays to see basketball outside in mid-November, for instance, because wintry conditions crush the subtleties of a sport meant for the indoors on hardwood. Not even the prettiest jump shot will fly straight in a 20-mph crosswind.

The same goes for baseball. November doesn't enhance the game, but distort it. Pitchers get numb fingers. They can't feel the rawhide as well and lose their pinpoint control. The distance any given fly ball travels is often more a function of how hard the wind blows rather than how hard the ball was hit. Fielding gets sloppy too, as the trajectories of grounders take tiny, unpredictable shifts in midair.

It's dumb, if you think about it. The World Series is baseball's biggest event, MLB's showcase for their best of the best. Yet frequently, the games are held under conditions that make the highest level of play impossible.

That's just plain bad marketing. By removing the hindrance of bad weather, both teams will shine. That can only be good. For all of football's reveling in rain, the NFL definitely figured out long ago that their biggest game had to be staged in perfect conditions. Suppose it didn't. What if the 2013 Super Bowl wasn't set for New Orleans, under a dome. Suppose the NFL had decided all those years ago to give home-field advantage to the conference champ with the best record? Who's excited right now to see Baltimore in February?

But it's not just about location. It's about planning. The oldest and silliest complaint about the Super Bowl is that the game has become secondary to all the hype around it. Hype is the whole point. Most people who'll be in New Orleans this February won't be fans of either team playing on Sunday. They'll go because the NFL has managed to turn a four-hour game into a week-long carnival/ infomercial/ convention/ amusement park that celebrates their whole league and the entire sport of football. The Final Four captures some of that same spirit: The weekend feels more like a celebration of college hoops and the sport of basketball than whatever four teams made it.