Yup. Not as big of a deal in the NFL because great players come from all different points in the draft. It's far from an exact science. But they were given selection priority, made the right choices, and improved. I don't really have a big problem with this. It makes the league as a whole better and sort of insures that every fan's team will have a chance (not a guarantee, but the oppurtunity) to get better. Otherwise, what are you left with? A 100 years of "there's always next year"? It's not as if our leagues schedule "Well, the Bills will win it this year, the Cowboys next year, and well, the Cardinals have been bad for a while... we'll give it to them." It just gives teams options and chances to get better should they choose wisely. The good teams stay good for a majority of the time, usually with 1-2 "rebuilding seasons" every 4-5 years, then immediately jumping back to competitiveness (see: Ravens). For as much drama as there is in relegation battle, I don't think anyone can argue with how great the last season was for the Saints in the NFL? From 2nd worst to 4th best in one season. And hell, their best rookie they picked up in the 7th round of the draft. It was an amazing season for them, as entertaining to me (not a Saint fan) as any relegation/promotion battle.
no it doesn't. Currently over 75% of the tv money is domestic rights. no, because that isn't all they have. Portsmouth for example, nearly went down last season and could be in the UEFA Cup next season. and it isn't about finishing 16th. Fans aren't leaping for joy more about finishing 14th - it's about being a premiership club or not being one. that's a very valid comparison, except there aren't 12 Kansas City Royals, there are about 30 of them, with another 30 more who are a bit smaller, and 30 more a bit smaller still. You can give all the draft picks you like, but the kansas city royals are never going to be the yankees. Yes they may have won the world series in the mid 80s, but that's only a 5 years after Nottingham Forest won the European Cup, twice, only two years after getting promoted.
I thought it was in reverse, about 75% of the money comprised of external TV rights... but I checked and you are right. My mistake. 600 million for overseas, 1.7 billion for domestic or something like that. My apologies. As well, I'd like to think that it has become dramatically more difficult for a team to be promoted and jumpt to prominence and win the CL than it was 20 years ago. I think that barring a few dramatic changes, the Royals are set to be the Royals for the forseeable future. As well, UEFA cup? I don't personally see much value in it. A tournament of 3rd or 5th or 7th placed teams? This is just another thing that makes people think they're actually playing for something... Maybe it's just our different sports philosophy, but in the Michael Jordan model "2nd place is just the first loser."
If the real world is the EPL, then almost all your teams must lose money. You only have two teams that compete year after year for the league title. You only have four teams that have even a ghost of a chance. That means you do not have a competitive league at all. You have Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool and.... the rest. The rest are not competative, most never will be. Most EPL teams suck when compared to the perpetual elite 4. Internationally, how often do we see teams other than the big four in serious international competition? Most Americans, at least this American, would never tolerate a system where one has almost no hope of their team winning a championship in their lifetime.
The NFL does not make more money than all the European leagues combined. According to this articlehttp://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20070131/financial-investors-european-football-clubs.htm the european soccer industry is worth 11,6 billion euro ($15,8biilion) a year. But of course the cake is shared among many more teams. It is a totally different system. In Europe allmost every city have a professional team. Its like the NFL having a team in every city with a population over 300 000. I think the interest for the sport as a whole is bigger when every city can have a team instead of a few select cities.
why are so many fans so greedy? personally i just want my team to play good football and to have respected fans, and i'm perfectly happy...Winning just makes things better but i don't ever expect Freiburg to win the bundesliga. there is a hope that someday we will, but i won't be sad if i never see this in my day...I'd much rather have a mid-table team that never does anything new...but the best fans in the league than have the best team with shit-glory hunting fans...Of course we're far from that these days, but it's coming along!
Baseball as well, though the Japanese, Korean & Taiwanese leagues don't draw in the revenues that MLB does. Still, baseball in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is far bigger than basketball anywhere in Europe.
Must not be a Cubs fan. All kidding aside, what you say about Americans can't be true since Hawaii will never win a national championship in either basketball or football, yet the (Rainbow) Warriors have a pretty fervent following. Hell, I _know_ that Northwestern will never win a national championship in football or basketball (we haven't even ever made it in to the NCAA tournament in some 60 years yet), yet I'll still support them.
And in North American "rigged parity constructs of cartel-based leagues", shared revenue is a massive part of the whole parity process. Particularly so in the NFL (where all the TV deals are national) but true even in MLB. The (mostly) equal sharing of revenues is largely what creates parity by putting every club on the same footing. It's hilarious that you suggest that the Euro leagues simple implement the most socialist aspects of North American leagues and insult the "cartel" basis in the same breath. Also, this is why I think it's so silly that many Eurosnobs in this thread are hyping the draft pick as a parity mechanism. Yeah, it has some impact, but it's really not such a big deal. You could make the entire NFL draft order random without regards to how teams finish and I don't think it would drastically affect parity. Revenue sharing and the salary cap have a much bigger impact. If EPL teams would share the massive revenues equally, then yes that would enhance parity there as well. But of course that goes against the entire "each club for themselves" philosophy in Europe and would bring them much much closer to a US style league than we see today.
I just had to comment on this since it doesn't seem like anyone else has.... You do realize that the Marlins have won the World Series more recently than the Yankees, right? And that MLB has had 7 different champions in each of the past 7 years, right? Or the fact that last year, out of 8 playoff teams, only 3 were in the post-season the year before? Or that the runner-up in the World Series last year was one of those alleged "teams at the bottom every year" yet there they were....
It is also true that in baseball one team has won roughly one out of every four championships. Which is roughly what Real Madrid, Juventus, and several smaller league dominators have done. Baseball is in a series of events right now where teams not famed for winning have pulled it off, but before that the Yankees won 4 out of 5 and have won their division 12 straight years. The Braves won theirs for about 15 straight years, while operating on a middle-of-the-road-at-best budget. The runners-up last year, the Tigers... are examples of using the draft (which they did to draft many of their good young pitchers) to create parity. Baseball also does a bit more to protect these teams because of the arbitration system which pretty much locks young players into being on their team until about their 6th-7th professional season unless their team decides to move them. There are some mechanics there to protect competition and parity and young player salaries, while the lack of a cap still leads to certain teams becoming "super clubs." On the college front, Americans DO follow with enthusiasm plenty of schools which are not going to contend for much. But there are reasons that go with that: -Schools are schools, people go there, creates loyalty -Theres hundreds of them, all over the place, much more local ownership than leagues that have 30 teams spread out over a big country. -Schools work much more like european soccer where there's more identification with the team/school/area/tradition than with a player, a result, a game, etc. No matter who wears the red jersey, the Maryland logo on the front is what matters. 90% of the time this isn't how it is in the pros. In the pros you have teams, but players/strategies/systems, etc. take much more center stage. We expect our teams to have good players, we expect the players to play not only hard, but to play well. And we expect them to win. If they lose, you get rid of them and get better players. -Because of all of this, colleges have rivalries unlike anything pro sports in the US has. I was thinking about this the other day. There's almost no such thing as a big rivalry in US pro sports anymore outside of Yankees-Red Sox. Cubs-Cardinals doesn't mean anything to anyone outside of those two cities. In a good rivalry, beating that team becomes more important than the end result of your season, which is rather illogical, but also means that fans don't care as much if you never win a championship. I know, as a Yankees fan, I expect us to win the World Series every year, but I'd accept not winning the World Series if we beat the Red Sox... 18-2, 18 times, plus a four game sweep, combined score 80-0.... That would be 10 times more important to me than a World Series. I liek to think that when the Yanks lost to the Marlins a few years ago it was for this reason. You get a 7 game series with the Red Sox, win on a walk-off HR. That was their world series. They had little interest at all in playing the Marlins. It's rather illogical in the end. Outside of Yanks-Sawx we have little to no examples of this elsewhere in sports and thus winning the championship is the one and only goal.
Basketball it does indeed make a difference. And that's why the league instituted a system (the lottery) whereby teams won't benefit as much from simply losing games to play out the string. But I was commenting more on how the draft and it's impact on parity in the NFL has been widely overstated by many Eurosnobs on this thread. It contributes to the parity in the league, but is only a small component. If people want to talk about how sports in the US emphasize parity, they should start with revenue sharing and salary caps and even limits on free agency. Draft placement is only a part of this phenomena and doesn't deserve the attention it has gotten throughout this thread. It's also worth mentioning that the lack of pro/reg actually encouraged future play (to some extent at least) as teams that are out of the playoffs will tend to play and develop young talent (the core of future teams) in game situations. A similar team in a pro-reg system would tend to play the "best players" throughout the season to avoid the fate of being demoted.
Which is like European soccer as well. I still stand by my contention that unfettered competition creates more intense rivalries. BTW, trust me, no one cares about Yankees-Red Sox outside of the Northeast (except for people from there) either. Cubs-Cardinals is a big deal in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Indiana, and Western Kentucky. Granted, I'd rather have the Cards win the WS than beat the Cubs 18-0 . . . .but that's because we always beat them anyway.
Yanks-Red Sox certainly isn't as big in the midwest as it is here, but then again, we have a gigantic population advantage. It's huge in those places. Red Sox stuff is everywhere all over the north east. Everyone is wearing red sox hats, shirts, etc. Even outside Boston, all over Connecticut, Mass, RI, even upstate New York. It's a cultural institution there, Yanks-Sox. I don't necessarily think it's unfettered competition specifically that leads to better rivalries, but it is the direct cause in a lot of cases. I think that unfettered competition comes out of a league not centrally determining its product, which to me is the real difference. It's hard to have a ton of huge rivalries if a league is centrally dictating the product. The NFL, the most "controlled" league has almost 0 in the way of rivalries. They used to exist, long ago, but they're almost completely stamped out now. The game is so national now, and the hot games are the games between good teams (Colts-Patriots) with the best personal (Manning-Brady/Bellichek) stories as opposed any long-term traditional thing. As good players leave places, a team's successes fade, those games are shoved away in favor of a new one and thus any momentum for the rivalry to go national is pretty much lost. For example of all of this, if Dallas plays Philly, that's supposed to be a huge rivalry? Not really. In the end, it's about T.O. vs. McNabb, Reid, and the Eagles. When T.O. is gone, then the Philly v Dallas game is no longer guaranteed to get any extra coverage, etc.
That argument is blown out of proportion. Tiger Woods said it best, "No one plays to finish second." It doesn't matter what system is used, when two teams step on the field in any sport they are both gong to try to win no matter what the situation.
That's a complete lie. Struggling teams often sell out. In fact relegation battles can lead to an increase in attendance. Obviously, living in Europe means you have more access to facts and figures than the rest of us. What's the population of Houston or Detroit compared to Watford or Wigan? As a percentage of population, the NFL's crowds aren't that impressive.
I don't think the point is that there are 60,000 people at a game... I think the point is that the stadium holds 60,000 people and there are 60,000 in it every single game. If they had a stadium that fit 200,000 people in it, there are quite a few places that would fill it up for football. Alabama had more than 90,000 people show up for a spring scrimage.
No, the EPL makes at least 75% of TV money, and nearly 100$ of ticket money, from the domestic market. Next year will be the first time that foreign money is in any way significant. And the EPL doesn't have ad breaks every five minutes. Teams shouldn't celebrate avoiding oblivion? What should they do, mourn? Maybe it'd be better off if the league was set up so they could lose every single game every season and just eat up the shared revenue. Four teams in England can envision a title. Considering that America has six times the population of England, that's equivalent to an American league having twenty-four title candidates every season. Is there any American league where 24 teams could win it every season?
A- I already admitted to have made a mistake in the 75% comment. B- "Four teams in England can envision a title. Considering that America has six times the population of England, that's equivalent to an American league having twenty-four title candidates every season. Is there any American league where 24 teams could win it every season?" Where in God's name does that come from? Wouldn't the correct math be... 4 teams out of twenty can win in the EPL... Thus 20% of the league. US teams have 28-32 franchises. Do those leagues have 5-6 teams that could win it each year? Certainly. And about celbrating the avoidance of oblivion... I admitted that it is a huge thing for those fans and thus they rightly feel overjoyed that they are still in the premiership. What I said was that it is an indictment of the system. The point - in retrospect ill-conceived - was that because more than half the teams have nothing to go for, simply not being relegated is something to be prized. Not the most effective way of making my point, I admit, but I don't exactly think all of this through as if I were writing a senior thesis.
Most American teams don't have a chance of winning a championship in their lifetime. Look all all those dozens of minor league teams, they won't even get a chance to compete. England has more teams per number of population who can compete than America. England has 50 million people. Can you tell me an area of America with 50 million people where there are significantly more than four teams that can win the national title? In the interests of fairness, this also has to be in a league with equally-rich foreign competition so there can't be a salary cap or a draft.
In which case, baseball is not effected by the laws of economics that other sports are, so it's not really relevant to the discussion. So has the Champions League, which covers an area approximately the same size as the US. How many times have the yankees won their division in a row recently?
How easy is it for an American minor league team to get promoted and win the championship? ... Considering that minor leagues are made up of mostly youth players associated with one specific team... The Yankees brought up a host of their youth players in the mid 90s and won several championships... The Tigers brought up a handful of their young pitchers from their minor league teams to get to the World Series. There's obviously not promotion, which you sarcastically point out... But players in minor leagues do get promoted up to the same team and can then compete. The Marlins are doing it now. They played last year with almost an entire roster of minor-leaguers and almost made the playoffs. Twice in the last decade theyve brought up a chunk of kids from their minor league AA team and added some veterans to it and won the World Series. So in a certain respect, it does happen.