When new sports leagues start up, they sometimes bring fresh ideas.

The NBA got the 3-point shooting line from the ABA.

The NFL game began opening up the passing game more when the AFL was gaining viewers by playing a more wide-open brand of football.

When college softball began putting a runner on second base to begin extra innings, Major League Baseball eventually adopted that concept in an attempt to limit the amount of extra innings played.

Now the new Professional Women’s Hockey League may have come up with the most radical ideas yet in terms of determining draft order and first-round playoff matchups.

The PWHL plans to determine draft order among non-playoff teams through a simple formula. On the day a team is eliminated from playoff contention, its won-loss record over its remaining games will determine its draft position.

The eliminated team with the best won-loss record post elimination will be awarded the No. 1 pick in the draft. The second-best record gets the No. 2 pick, etc.

This move will prevent teams from “tanking” down the stretch in order to attain the first draft pick. To the contrary, eliminated teams will be encouraged to finish strong as they will definitely have something to play for.

Don’t want teams to tank? Invoke this system.

As far as playoff seeding goes, the PWHL is considering a special reward for the No. 1 overall seed: Choose your first-round opponent.

That’s right. The top seed gets to choose which of the other playoff teams it wants to play in the first round. Once that choice is made, seeding of the other playoff teams takes place to determine who plays who.

Two side notes to this: The team the top seed chooses to play is going to be fuming and quite motivated. And consider the embarrassment factor if the top seed should lose to the opponent it hand-picked.

Fun stuff.

University of Iowa basketball sensation Caitlin Cark needs just 17 points against Ohio State on Sunday to break Pete Maravich’s all-time NCAA career hoop scoring record of 3,667 points.

Kudos to Caitlin when she does this, but if there should ever be an asterisk next to a sports record, this would be it.

Clark is in her fourth season at Iowa and has played 130 games. Maravich played only three seasons at LSU — freshmen weren’t allowed to play in his day — and reached the record point total in just 83 games.

Maravich also played before the 3-point basket and shot clock were introduced to college basketball.

The guy averaged 44.2 points per game regardless.

All due respect to Caitlin Clark, but Pete Maravich will always be the most prolific scorer in college basketball history.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle