Absolutely. The NFL as we know it wouldn't exist had it not been for Wellington Mara agreeing to share revenues back in the 60's
i'm not talking about revenue sharing from TV deals. I'm talking about parity where there is not much difference in quality between teams.
Manchester is the 3rd largest metro area in England. Pittsburgh is the 22nd largest and Green Bay is the 152nd largest in the US.
Are you telling me there is not much difference between the Ravens, Giants, Steelers and Patriots and the Jaguars, Raiders, Chiefs and Bills?
The kind of football you play as a kid in the street is about as much like real football as kickball has in common with soccer. You cant play anything that looks remotely like organized football without a lot of equipment. Now flag or touch football, that you could globalize pretty quickly if you could get a professional league with any interest. And you can mark a goal, like others had said, with two piles of whatever you want. Its not organized soccer, but its not that far off.
That's not what I'm saying.There's always going to be poorly run teams. People on here say the NFL is popular because of parity and because the way it is structured and then make the argument that if MLS copies this structure it will be popular too. I'm saying that the sport of football is popular and it doesn't matter how much parity there is in the NFL. If you had a football dynasty it would probably even be more popular because of people tuning it to see the Goliath slain. Look at College football. Very little parity and very popular. During the 1980's and most of the 90's the NFL had far less parity and ask NFL fans that are old enough to remember. It was a much higher quality league.
In terms of on field performance there is a big difference. But in terms of their franchises ability to be competitive if they get competent management? Those 4 bottom teams are not at a competitive disadvantage. Their failure is a product of poor management in the past. Likewise the 4 teams that have performed well could be driven into the ground fairly easily by incompetent management. The biggest difference between the NFL and most european soccer leagues is that every fan of every NFL team knows that if the GM and Coaches do a good job, they can compete for a super bowl. Meanwhile in England 12 teams know that they have 0 chance of competing for a title without a middle eastern sugar daddy, and actually have to worry that poor management could cause their team to cease to exist.
so you're saying that American football isn't more popular around the globe because of the higher barrier to entry to begin playing the sport? I'm saying that if that is part of it then it is a very small part. American football is not popular outside of North America for a number of reasons. The main one is probably culture. The NFL wants to be a global game. They are trying hard to accomplish this. They schedule regular season games in London. But the NFL is not a global game. It's been a failure globally. And with the science coming out about the health of former players, the NFL is (and this is going to sound crazy) a sport on the decline. There's a moral question now for fans of the sport that didn't exist 5 or 10 years ago. I have to ask myself if its morally responsible for me to support American football. Anyways, here is an interesting article on the future of American football. The author goes a little far but I agree with most of it. http://www.salon.com/2013/02/03/footballs_death_spiral/
And yet, Super Bowls draw higher ratings than back then. That's popularity if you ask me. So what's the most popular league in the world? The Champions League. It's also not a coincidence that there is greater parity in it then in any of Europe's domestic leagues. Once you have reached a certain elite level, parity just happens. It's entirely possible that the quality of general talent in the NFL has increased in the last 20 years naturally and not by some rigging of the system.
The main reason is that it is a terribly complicated sport to understand completely. The other is that it is a horrible live experience.
This is, by far, the dunbest thing I have ever read on BigSoccer. I'm guessing you have never watched the NFL.
You keep saying very little parity, but this is not true. Since 2000 in the pac 10, 8 of the 10 member schools have either won the title, or won a share of the conference title. In the SEC 5 different teams have won their conference title or share of conference title, and in the Big 10 8 different teams have won their conference title or a share of their conference title. You are correct that having some clubs that are more successful and respected can cause having upsets can be a tremendous draw, but what you arent acknowledging is that those upsets need to be meaningful, and those underdogs need to be able to lift the trophy. Back to the NFL. You have dynasty's in the NFL. The difference between the NFL and some other sports leagues are those are dynasty's of merit, not dynasty's forged by an inherent competitive advantage. You don't need to have super clubs to have teams of varying percieved strengths, or to have great upsets. Which isnt to say that great upsets against structural advantages cant generate interest. The NCAA basketball tournament is a great example. However the NCAA tournament is also the perverse sporting event where things are decided by a playoff, and overall interest declines as the event advances. Its a wonderful model if your an interecollegiate atheletic organization, but not the basis for building a stable and profitable sporting league.
It would be great if people understood parity != every team is equal in talent. You can have dynasties and great and lousy teams in a parity-driven league. The key to parity is that everybody starts on equal footing, with the same amount of salary and access to players. How well a team is built is still up to the organizations.
Your selective reading and blatant ignoring the facts of the matter only further expose your ignorance and idiocy. Here, I'll quote myself from just a few posts ago when you posted this bullshit before:
And England is a small island country of no consequence if you're guaging things purely on population.
England is one of the most populous "countries" in Europe, and one of the richest. I dont see how you consider it "of no consequence" in the European scene.
again the reason is because the NFL despite that it is a 9 billion dollar industry, is cheap as hell. Look at the whole replacement ref debacle and the fact they dont have a minor league system. The NFL could focus on a few countries and develop grassroots there and then create a pathway for foreign born players (they have the money to do it). Instead they someone else to do it and then claim it.
So you acknowledge a country's sports culture matters. Except when it comes to you, WSW, cdskou and others demanding pro/rel in MLS.
Yeah, kind of hard to keep spouting shit out like he does when he kicks himself in the throat like that.
That's not the argument for parity in MLS, though. The reason MLS wants to maintain parity is so that individual teams will remain popular enough to be financially sustainable -- not because they want the league as a whole to be popular. I don't know if parity is what makes the NFL popular, but it's pretty obvious that many MLS teams would have folded if their fans knew there wasn't a chance of them ever really competing.
I do not consider England to be of "no consequence," but, as I said, it would be if considered purely by its population, which is relatively small by world standards. And the same goes for the continent of Europe as a whole. England and Europe are rich, and consequential, because of their history. Which is the same reason that Green Bay and Pittsburgh are consequential in the NFL, and Manchester is consequential as a soccer city. Manchester has history, not simply the third largest population in England. "Super clubs" evolve, and not always in the largest and richest metropolises. Your disagreement with me over the consequence of immaterial population figures masks agreement on the larger issue, which is that N.Y. and L.A. do not necessarily warrant "super clubs" because they are large American metropolises. Indeed, by analogy to the NFL, an American sports league can thrive without any team in L.A. or within the city limits of N.Y.