Can the EPL learn from the NFL

[canadagooner]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5301-1459615,00.html

[Bluto11]

i'm not sure how a salary would fit into the system and one thing that helps the NFL is what Jay Mariotti calls the "parity party" and how the schedules are based on records from the previous year or something like that so that teams like the Bears in 2001 can go 13-3 one year and do god awful the next.

[jonam]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5301-1459615,00.html


The system in the USA is completely different from ours over here. Not only in some parts but from head to toe.

Btw, What I've learnt when I was young about the USA is that it is a very competitive life (real life as business-wise), on the contrary pro-sports is something like communism regarding sharing revenues etc..

But at all the success proves the NFL right all the way. Their TV-deal is beyond believe (though regarding the population the EPL deal could be even bigger).

[fortunatesonJG]

Sadly the NFL doesn't have relegation battles or many dictatorlike coaches as the EPL does. Even if there were some sort of draft system implemented in the FA the top players would still crawl to the clubs with the most money to flaunt.

This is my favorite piece of the article: "The team with the poorest record in the 2004 regular season, the San Francisco 49ers, gets first pick of the new crop of players graduating from college this year..."

Graduating? Hahahahahahaha. I don't even want to get into the statistics about the number of NFL players holding college degrees.

The EPL need not learn anything from the NFL. Why on earth would you want to have homicidal lunatics invading our league anyway?

[Tmagic77]

Sadly the NFL doesn't have relegation battles or many dictatorlike coaches as the EPL does. Even if there were some sort of draft system implemented in the FA the top players would still crawl to the clubs with the most money to flaunt.

This is my favorite piece of the article: "The team with the poorest record in the 2004 regular season, the San Francisco 49ers, gets first pick of the new crop of players graduating from college this year..."

Graduating? Hahahahahahaha. I don't even want to get into the statistics about the number of NFL players holding college degrees.

The EPL need not learn anything from the NFL. Why on earth would you want to have homicidal lunatics invading our league anyway?

Well they'd have to beat out the gang-rapists for spots first.

[DutchFootballRulez]

The only thing the EPL needs is the ability to get a Mega-Sized TV Deal. The Clubs are older than the NFL itself. The major difference is that the FA Premier League is a grouping of clubs under one governing body. The NFL is a governing body to ensure fair competition amongst the 32 members. the FA has hundreds of clubs to monitor, and each club produces and cultivate is own workforce.

From a players standpoint, its better than the EPL is run the way it is. From a Owners' standpoint, the NFL is the better model.

[Schapes]

NFL Schedules are no longer based on won loss records.

They are based on playing the teams in your division 6 times. And then you play teams from another corresponding division in your conference, as well as a corresponding division outside of your conference. 8 games

You play 2 games from teams that finished in the same position in the same conference.

The Miami Dolphins have the most difficult schedule next year with the Saint Louis Rams having the easiest.

[Bluto11]

NFL Schedules are no longer based on won loss records.

They are based on playing the teams in your division 6 times. And then you play teams from another corresponding division in your conference, as well as a corresponding division outside of your conference. 8 games

You play 2 games from teams that finished in the same position in the same conference.

The Miami Dolphins have the most difficult schedule next year with the Saint Louis Rams having the easiest.
i stand corrected

[tmaker]

As much as I absolutely hate American gridiron football, I'd have to say the NFL has consistently run the best ship in the sorry fleet of pro sports in this country. It is not that the system insures "parity" so much as it at least gives all its members a fighting chance, if the management and coaching don't screw it up. If baseball, for instance (by far the worst sport in the world for being disorganized and favoritist), had the NFL salary cap, and more importantly, an equally divided TV contract negotiated by the league rather than its member clubs, teams with smaller TV contracts (read: smaller metropolitan areas) like Kansas City and Milwaukee could actually compete again, rather than being laughable opponents for billionaire teams like the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves to crush beneath their heels.

I'd actually like to see Nottingham Forest able to compete again in Europe instead of fighting for Division Two relegation, or Stoke, or Huddersfield Town, or Derby County. Teams with which I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s now have absolutely no chance at reaching premier status now. But I think the time for anything sensible in EPL TV contracts to occur has long since passed. Sky Sports will see to it that we have the same deep-pockets clubs on the tube, and therefore in the EPL year after year, and any rotation will be deemed lucky.

1. ARSENAL 42 18 3 0 41 6 11 4 6 30 23 65
2. Leeds United 42 16 2 3 40 12 11 8 2 32 18 64
3. Tottenham Hotspur 42 11 5 5 33 19 8 9 4 21 14 52
4. Wolverhampton Wanderers 42 13 3 5 33 22 9 5 7 31 32 52
5. Liverpool 42 11 10 0 30 10 6 7 8 12 14 51
6. Chelsea 42 12 6 3 34 21 6 9 6 18 21 51
7. Southampton 42 12 5 4 35 15 5 7 9 21 29 46
8. Manchester United 42 9 6 6 29 24 7 5 9 36 42 43
9. Derby County 42 9 5 7 32 26 7 5 9 24 28 42
10. Coventry City 42 12 4 5 24 12 4 6 11 13 26 42
11. Manchester City 42 7 9 5 30 22 5 8 8 17 20 41
12. Newcastle United 42 9 9 3 27 16 5 4 12 17 30 41
13. Stoke City 42 10 7 4 28 11 2 6 13 16 37 37
14. Everton 42 10 7 4 32 16 2 6 13 22 44 37
15. Huddersfield Town 42 7 8 6 19 16 4 6 11 21 33 36
16. Nottingham Forest 42 9 4 8 29 26 5 4 12 13 35 36
17. West Bromwich Albion 42 9 8 4 34 25 1 7 13 24 50 35
18. Crystal Palace 42 9 5 7 24 24 3 6 12 15 33 35
19. Ipswich Town 42 9 4 8 28 22 3 6 12 14 26 34
20. West Ham United 42 6 8 7 28 30 4 6 11 19 30 34
21. BURNLEY 42 4 8 9 20 31 3 5 13 9 32 27
22. BLACKPOOL 42 3 9 9 22 31 1 6 14 12 35 23

How far we are from those days.

[Rick B]

I think I'm on my own here, but I don't give two bollocks about there being parity and fairness in the league. What Arsenal and Man U have done and achieved is over a long period of time. To have that advantage just taken away because other clubs arn't run as well and they don't have as good a manager seems utterly crazy to me.

I wouldn't want the likes of Spurs to have a "fighting chance" in the league to pick up the best youth players. That would be awful. Imagine if they actually managed to finish above us one year *Shivers*

[michaec]

I'm with Rick on this one, but for a different reason. I'd hate to see an artificial element introduced with the express intention of building smaller teams up and dragging bigger teams down.

It would be way, way harder to do with 92 clubs rather than 32. And what do you do with those clubs outside the 92? It effectively becomes a closed shop as it wouldn't be fair to have relegation out of this group. The Wimbledon dream of starting in the Southern League, climbing through the leagues to reach the first division and winning the FA Cup would be a thing of the past (I know they're in a sorry state now, but that's another story).

Or are we talking specifically just about the Premiership? In which case does the team who get relegated out of the top 20 get the best of the new crop or the team coming up? Or both? Hardly fair for a team relegated down to the Championship to get a free infusion of new talent when no-one else in the division is.

Or do we just stop relegation out of the Premiership and say "******** you football league"? This seems to me to be the only way to implement something like this. And that definitely sounds the death knell for most, if not all professional clubs outside the elite group.

There are so many holes in this proposal that it's laughable. Professional football has flourished in England for over 100 years. We had Preston go an unbeaten season way back when, did anyone think competitive football was about to die?

[sinner78]

Wage caps only guarantees mediocrity in the league .Its spreads out the talent and means more mediocre teams rather than having maybe 4 or 5 strong teams at the top .Parity doesnt do anything for quality of a league.

And as for the drafting of talent from colleges!! haha that idea just doesnt fit with european football .You reckon teams are gonna ditch their youth schemes to have a laughable college draft scheme were the worst team from last season gets the first pick?? not ********ing likely.

[Publius]

I can't see the NFL model working for soccer. Were the EPL to adopt a salary cap, its teams would be put at a gross competitive disadvantage compared to other leagues throughout Europe and the world who would be free to spend as they choose. No player who could make more elsewhere would see fit to stay in the EPL and be constrained by an artificial salary limitation.

Salary caps work when you're the only game in town, so to speak. The NFL has no real competition (sorry CFL fans) so it's not like their players can look elsewhere for work. Salary caps do allow teams to budget their labor expenses in a manageable way and that coupled with the pooled television revenues goes a long way to explain why no NFL franchise has folded in over 50 years.

It's a shame, but also the nature of the beast, that the structure of English football forces many a team to overspend itself into administration in the hopes of getting promoted. Still, the idea of a salary cap would only be feasible if adopted throughout UEFA.

[topcatcole]

The English league once had a salary cap. It led to many of the top players playing in Europe. George Best is just one example.

A salary cap assumes that there is only one entity that needs a particular type of labor. When there are multiple leagues this is not the case.

One area that could be improved is the marketing. IMHO the EPL does a poor job of marketing itsef as a whole. Marketing is left to individual teams. Some do a good job (give the devil his due, ManU is one of these) and others, like our beloved Arsenal, are very poor in this regard.

[Flyin Ryan]

There's good points and bad points about a salary cap. The obvious good point is "there's always next year...". Teams can rebuild their weaknesses and hope it pans out the coming year.

A bad point though is exactly that. A team can throw away a year in "rebuilding", which helps no one from an entertainment perspective. I remember a year in which the GM of the Denver Nuggets of the NBA got rid of all the players that cost any money, started journeyman benchwarmers, and pretty much boasted about it at the start, "This is a rebuilding year. Next year we will be better." At the year's halfway point the team was 5-36 or something. They wound up like 13-69. Thankfully, that GM was fired. The owner said, "Under no circumstances is our record acceptable."

Another bad point of a salary cap is there is no Manchester United or Real Madrid, there is no one universal team to hate because they're so good. Baseball-everyone hates the Yankees (no cap). In NFL football, the team to hate changes every 2 to 3 years. You can't hate a team that goes 5-11. I'm a Denver Broncos man, I'm supposed to hate Oakland and K.C., but I don't live there so it's just like any other game for me.

On a sidebar, can you imagine if college sports had a salary cap-style system. Duke would lose to UNC-Wilmington in basketball. Miami would lose to Florida A&M in football. Even though I don't like either, would people really want that?

Agree with people above, a cap though would never work with a promotion/relegation system.

[michaec]

The English league once had a salary cap. It led to many of the top players playing in Europe. George Best is just one example.Unless Hibernian qulifies as "in Europe", I'd be interested to know who on the continent he played for?

[jonam]

The English league once had a salary cap. It led to many of the top players playing in Europe. George Best is just one example.

A salary cap assumes that there is only one entity that needs a particular type of labor. When there are multiple leagues this is not the case.

One area that could be improved is the marketing. IMHO the EPL does a poor job of marketing itsef as a whole. Marketing is left to individual teams. Some do a good job (give the devil his due, ManU is one of these) and others, like our beloved Arsenal, are very poor in this regard.


100% agree!

[billf]

I think it would be hard to implement an NFL style system in England. The structure is completely different for one and the top teams have near total control over how they are marketed and licensed. In England, the clubs view themselves as 92 individual businesses. In the US, NFL football is the business and each team is kind of like an independantly operated division of the parent business. It's a franchise like a local McDonalds in some respects but the league office sets the salary budget.

The reason the NFL works is because the league killed the original union and the new one formed a partnership with the league. If 20 clubs broke out of the promotion and relegation structure and formed an independant closed shop Premier League, clubs like Man United, Arsenal, and Chelsea were willing to share their wealth with the business of top flight English football, and the players willing to negotiate a set amount of the take, then it could work. I don't see that happening in an environment where teams float at LLCs because it destroys value for share holders, could actually raise the percentage of the take players receive at the top clubs, and I don't see players being willing to set a ceiling for a sqaud's payroll when players could move abroad to leagues and clubs allowed to spend whatever they want. NFL clubs can't go public and they must be owned by individuals, not companies. This, I think, helps to keep the NFL focused on what's good for the business as whole, though loopholes allow teams a hearty share of local stadium reveues which give some an advantage.

The EPL did take some elements of the NFL model though. The collected TV rights and some of the branding emulates what the NFL was doing when it enjoyed modest sucess in the UK as a cult sport. The EPL is a valued brand just like the NFL now. It just benefits the larger clubs more in the UK.

[denver_mugwamp]

I can't see any reason why the NFL structure would appeal to the fans of the EPL. But the NFL is a incredible money-making machine. Not only tickets, TV, and jerseys, but the league has an mazing ability to coerce $600 million stadiums out of local governements like you wouldn't believe. There's already seems to be a trend in EPL ownership moving more toward people who are businessmen first and football fans second. I wouldn't be surprised to see team owners trying to find a way to get more return on their investments. And American sports models are going to look very appealing.

[feej92]

ive been following the NFL for years (dolphins fan) and i HATE the artificial parity. Sport needs dynasties. 49ers, Cowboys, Steelers, Dolphins, Packers dynasties catapulted the NFL to the top of the American sport landscape.

however, chelsea needs a salary cap ;)