The NFL is the biggest show in town, without question. The numbers don’t lie, it is Americas past time now. I’m not going to debate that. But NFL fans love to tell me that it’s because of the salary cap. That the NFL has parity that baseball doesn’t have, because they limit how much a team can spend and they have profit sharing. I call bullshit.
Parity in the NFL is due to one thing and one thing only: the weighted schedule. In the NBA, you play the teams in your conference so many times, and then teams in the other conference less, but it’s still a set number. Baseball is the same, only with a shifting inter-league schedule, that changes on an annual basis so fans in every city eventually get to see every team come to play.
This isn’t how the NFL does things. If you’re a really good team one year, the next year you’ll play your division schedule, and then a tougher schedule of other good teams. And if you’re bad, you’ll get a schedule that is heavy with other bad teams. Look at the Chiefs this season; they had the 5th easiest schedule in the league this past season. This makes turning things around that much easier. Of course, it still takes good front office moves and coaching to turn things around, but the scheduling gives teams a boost. Sounds like charity almost, right? It’s so funny, because it’s often been said that the salary cap is an awful socialist idea, but the weighted schedule is welfare for billionaires.
Now Chiefs fans are feeling pretty good about themselves, but teams that win ten games the season after losing ten, historically have a 40% drop off the following year. Not because they suddenly got worse, but they no longer had a cupcake schedule. Want proof, just look at the Bengals from this past season. They went 4-12 in 2010 after a 10-6 season in 2009, and 4-11-1 in 2008.
(To further explain the weighted schedule, each team plays two intra-conference games based on the prior year’s standings. So if you finish last, you get two games against other last place teams from the previous season)
The best franchises are the best because they know what they’re doing. They scout talent better, they make trades at the right time, and they keep key guys. The revenue sharing and salary cap make that a lot easier to do, this is true. But it doesn’t make it easier for poor teams to turn things around. Just look at the last 20 years, the NFL has seen the Giants, Steelers, Broncos and Packers win two Super Bowls each. The Cowboys and Patriots have won three each. That’s 14 out of the 20 between six teams. They’ve also lost five Super Bowls between them. Don’t tell me parity.
The majority of an NFL team’s schedule is made up from playing the three other teams in their division. If the salary cap is such a great equalizer, why is it the strongest teams still so often come from the major television markets? The AFC East, with teams in New York, Miami and Boston. The NFC East is home to teams from Philadelphia, New York, Dallas and Washington DC.
The NFL is popular because America loves violence, speed and we don’t have the attention span for more games. There’s other reasons, some obvious (a more engaging experience for fans) some aren’t (Race. Yeah, I said it) and because we often don’t see the faces it’s a less personal relationship with the players, and therefore more about the team.
I’m not knocking the NFL, it’s a fantastic product and the league has done a superior job marketing itself over the years. Baseball had horrible labor issues and lost a World Series in the 90’s, and the NBA has image issues that I could spend an entire post on. Just don’t tell me it’s the friggin’ salary cap.
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