A look at MLS parity compared to other leagues using the Gini coefficient

ALMOST every team's fan base. This is Minnesota...

Add it to the list. Goodnight, everyone. pic.twitter.com/u9b6lSDc38

— Will Ragatz (@WillRagatz) January 22, 2018

 

Nobody arguing for parity has argued for anything more than equality of opportunity.

Hence, if you want to draw a political analogy, parity-driven leagues employ salary caps just as democracies which seek to give real voice to a broad spectrum of views cap campaign expenditures. You should not be able to simply outspend your way to a title any more than you should be able to simply outspend your way into a political office.

 

1987 and '91 weren't that long ago, were they? I bet most of this board was alive back then!

But of cities which currently have at least three of five major sports, it's gone the longest without a title.

 

I think the sad fact isn't that we haven't won a championship, it's that we haven't even played for one.

Oh well, there's always the Lynx.

 

I feel like DC is probably about the same. Outside of the DCU cup wins, which most of the city doesn't even know about, Washington has been a barren wasteland to sports since the last of the Skins Super Bowl in 92.

 

Don't forget about the Kastles.

 

I'm a Florida State fan, but I have to point out that you left out the best team in the ACC, Clemson. Florida State has the longest bowl streak, so I don't think they are new to the top group.

 

But they're aren't a perennial like the other schools. Get back to me in 10 years.

 

You forgot the asterisk.

 

Is San Diego a major city or do you need 3 out of 5 sports to be a contender?

 

I believe San Diego's last major championship was the 1963 American Football League (AFL) title, won by a team that no longer plays in that city.

 

Seattle was ground zero for horrible sports until about 5 years ago (no offense Sounders, but I'm not counting the USOC or lower league wins). Hell, the city has lost as many championships by teams leaving as they have from current teams (Metropolitans, Sonics out, Sounders, Seahawks still present). And the Mariners currently have the longest playoff drought of any American/Canadian pro sports team.

At least the Huskies are good again, in both football and basketball (and #1 this week in softball!)

 

From 2015 (prior to the Cavaliers' NBA title):

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/04/upshot/The-Most-Cursed-Sports-Cities-in-America.html

Of course, since it is the New York Times, it contains fake news. Buffalo won two AFL titles, not one.

 

And MLS has teams that are, on average, far more successful than others, and did even before the DP rule.

What people don't necessarily appreciate about the LA Galaxy's success, for example, is that it isn't all about outspending everyone. The Galaxy has had a higher hit rate in the draft, in terms of drafting players who go on to be MLS starters at some point, than anyone else in the league. And this is despite usually having relatively late picks. It's no coincidence. It's a sign of consistently good scouting. (I think it's appropriate to include players who are never starters for LA, because it's still a proxy for good scouting, and because some of these players have high trade value even before they become regular starters.) When financial resources are approximately equal, the edge goes to the clubs that have better coaching, better scouting, and in recent years better youth development. These factors don't guarantee success every season, because there will still be rebuilding years, but the rebuilding tends to go much faster in a well-managed club.

 

But the first was in 1964, and the article is only looking at Championships starting in 1965.

 

The article asserts: "Buffalo's only major championship remains the 1965 A.F.L. title, won by the Bills." That statement, on its face, is false.

Yes, the article's -- arbitrary -- focus is on titles won within 50 years of its 2015 publication, but that does not absolve it from publishing false sentences, especially when an offending sentence could have been easily qualified to make it true within the confines of the sentence itself: "Buffalo's only major championship within the past half century remains the 1965 A.F.L. title . . ." (Emphasis added).

The New York Times' fib is akin to asserting "George W. Bush remains the only member of his family to attain the presidency," in a 2018 retrospective of the last quarter century. No one would abide such stupidity, nor should we.

Back to the arbitrariness of choosing a 50 year demarcation: Cherry-picking data in this way allowed the Times to distort its already subjective rankings. Had the full history of major pro championships been considered, Cleveland could not possibly qualify as the most woeful city, because the 1940s and 1950s Cleveland Browns teams would have had to have been taken into consideration, not to mention the 1964 NFL champion Browns, who -- surprise! -- won their title the very year before the New York Times decided, for their own unilateral reasons, to start paying attention.

It's a classic rendition of Fake News. Constrict the array of facts, stating falsehoods if necessary, to derive a desired but misleading impression.

 

Fake news was crap made up to generate traffic via social networks.

Unless you’re being meta, your fake news example is itself fake.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

Read and learn. And resist gaslighting.

 

The entire point of the article was that the Cavaliers were trying to end a 50 year championship drought in the four major sports, at the time the longest in the country. Stuff that happened before then is irrelevant. Your inability to read the article where it clearly lays out their rating criteria, including the fact that it is looking at the last 50 years, doesn't make it fake news.

 

Your "50 year drought championship drought in the four major sports" is such an arbitrary set of criteria as to be itself "irrelevant." It is inevitably biased and distorts reality. (And, in all events, it does not excuse internally false sentences, like the one about Buffalo's supposed single AFL title.)

As another poster alluded regarding the discussion on this thread, San Diego does not cease to be a major American city because it does not have at least three of five major sports teams. The assumed criteria on this thread, "three of five," is also selective and biased. Part of its bias is that it assumes MLS as a major league sport, which of course your phraseology "four major sports" impliedly does not.

Here's the methodological note from the New York Times, underscoring its bias in this regard: "We counted every season since 1965 in the four major sports. We realize some fans would argue for including Major League Soccer, but it has attracted substantially less fan interest by most measures than baseball, basketball, football or hockey."

So, if people aren't "interested" by "most measures" a championship is not a championship? Let's extrapolate. News is only "fit to print" when people are "interested" by "most measures" (according to GoogleTrends since 2004). That's an editorial position that distorts reality and confirms existing biases. It is not good journalism.

Likewise, the idea of a statute of limitations on sports championships is bizarre. Why are we supposed to endorse the view that championships evaporate after 50 years? "Pele's 1970 World Cup title remains his only one." Excuse me for describing that sentence as fake news.

 

I haven't made it through this whole thread, but I don't understand why everyone assumes that lack of parity must go hand in hand with pro/rel. The thing that kills parity in most European leagues is the differences in revenue and spending. While it's true that a newly-promoted team is at a disadvantage, pro/rel isn't the reason why Real Madrid always finishes ahead of Villareal and Man U always finishes ahead of Everton. You could have pro/rel and still keep MLS from turning into a 2-team race with salary cap, draft, revenue sharing, luxury tax, etc.

 

But if you have all of those mechanisms what's the point of pro/rel? They're there to help teams bounce back which is the opposite of pro/rel.

 

A club like Everton can never look at their roster and say, these guys will never win anything so let’s commit to a youth movement and try to win in 3-4 years, like, for example, the Kansas City Royals. Because if Everton tries to do that they might get relegated.

Pro/rel enforces the status quo by forcing clubs into short term thinking.

 

Which, for half the EPL every year, translates into, "Finish better than 18th."

 

The other problem with the combination of parity measures and pro/rel is that, in a country the size of the US, it would create an extremely high risk of relegation leaving major media outlets without a top-division team. That's not really an issue in most countries because there are fewer major cities and the biggest cities all have multiple clubs in the top league, some of which are big enough clubs to have virtually no chance of being relegated. With parity measures, even the best-run clubs are in danger of relegation every year.

If MLS had relegation, then in most seasons almost half of the league would still be both in Supporters' Shield contention and in relegation danger going into the last month of the season.