Former California Horse Racing Board commissioner David Israel has written a piece for Sports Illustrated about the need for a national organization – he calls ‘Major League Racing,’ for lack of a better term – to govern and operate the United States Thoroughbred racing industry federally.

In the SI piece, Israel, who left the CHRB this January, says, “The state-by-state regulatory model has to be scratched like a lame colt. For more than 100 years, only one other sport has been run this way: boxing. How's that working out?

In speaking of his six-year run with the CHRB, Israel said that while the board was doing everything it could to help racing in California, “Still, we were more a part of the problem than the solution, because when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge. For horse racing there can be only one solution: A central, national organization with the authority to run the sport in all participating jurisdictions, just as the NFL, NBA, MLB and, most similarly, NASCAR run their sports.”

To read the piece in its entirety, click here.

(With files from Sports Illustrated)