Playoff baseball vs. regular-season NFL

Among NFL champions the past 10 years
Tampa
Pittsburgh
Indianapolis
Pittsburgh

Game, set, match

 

The only part of this that's correct is the date of the last Twins WS victory.

Other than that, uber-fail.

 

LOL... I would love to hear your euphemistic, forgiving language if that was an NFL official blowing a postseason game as badly as any number of the playoff baseball games have been fucked up this year.

Only one playoff game in my watching the NFL for 34 years has been adversely affected that greatly by that level of officiating ineptitude. The Tuck game.

There have been two such games this baseball postseason alone.

 

Seamhead circle-jerker.

That is the only person who could disagree with cwilson3 there

 

Yeah, good thing the cap is in place to avoid...the...same...teams...winning...all...the...time.

AFC East: Patriots have won five of the last six titles (soon to be six of seven)
AFC North: Steelers have won four of the last seven titles
AFC South: Colts have won five of the last seven titles (other two won by Titans)
AFC West: Chargers have won last three titles and four of the last five

NFC East: Eagles have won five of the last eight titles
NFC North: Packers have won four of the last seven titles
NFC South: no repeat champs this decade. the one place parity actually exists
NFC West: Seahawks' run of four straight titles ended last year

The cap doesn't do dick for competitive balance. It provides 32 owners the ultimate effort:reward scenario...try as little as possible to make as much money as possible. If this really worked as well as some of y'all say, then why are the owners looking to blow up the CBA?

The cap also ensures some shitty-ass play that apparently serves as a synonym for parity.

You NFL nuts have done the impossible. Made me root for the Steelers to win the Super Bowl this year. That'd be two repeat champs this decade, at least one more than in MLB! Hooray parity!

 

They both are hard watches, for the most part.

With the baseball playoffs, you never know if you're going to get an instant classic (ALCS Game 5) or some 7-3 stinker.

At least in the NFL, I can usually look at the schedule and determine what games are going to be good and what games will not. Rams-Colts, Pats-Bucs, Chargers-Chiefs -- at least I KNOW NOT to watch those. I'll hold out for Vikings-Steelers, Broncos-Pats, etc.

I just don't have the time to watch endless baseball games. As for the NFL, I generally TiVo it and watch the games in about 30 minutes.

The difference between the sports fans of 2009 and the sports fans of, say, 1984 is that we have more options in viewing but we also have less leisure time. Sorry, MLB, that means fewer and fewer will watch you.

 

Fuck parity. Just give every team the same opportunity to win. If some teams are run well enough to do it consistently, wonderful. They earned it. If some teams are too stupid to do it ever? Fuck them. They earned their suckitude.

You say that the owners are taking care of their own bottom lines as if it is a bad thing. These are businesses. Making money has to be part of the goal along with winning. In the NFL, every team has the same opportunity to do both. In baseball, that just isn't the case. The Pirates, for example, only make money because they refuse to spend. They wouldn't be able to get away with that bullshit in the NFL because there is a salary floor as well as a cap.

And really, that is one of the two reasons that the NFL's system is better. One is legitimate revenue sharing, not the half-assed system that baseball has. The other is the salary floor, which makes sure that teams can't tank it like you see MLB teams such as the Pirates do year after year.

 

We've been through the "legitimate revenue sharing" discussion before and there is a reason it works only in the NFL: EVERY GAME IS PART OF A NATIONAL TV PACKAGE. That cannot happen in baseball.

 

"Sports fans" had more leisure time in 1984ish? I'd like to see some confirmation of that. The biggest reason ratings are down across the board is the first part of your statement, ex-hack: more options in viewing.

And oop, football was becoming more popular than baseball decades before the salary cap was implemented. You want to use "level playing field" as a reason for ratings or popularity, again, find me some real confirmation -- actual cause and effect -- for it.

 

Oh, I forgot to address the question about the NFL blowing up the CBA. You know why that is happening? Because the owners are so used to seeing the players cave and they think it will happen again, especially once the players figure out that the uncapped year isn't going to bring nearly the windfall they think is coming.

This is one area where the NFL has a built-in advantage over MLB. The careers are much shorter, so NFL players are far more concerned about a work stoppage than those in MLB. They have less time to make their money, so losing even part of a season is a killer. I think that is a big reason why you saw so many NFL players cross the picket lines in 1987.

 

Not only are there careers, for the most part, much shorter than baseball players, they make much less money because the owners are guaranteed their profits.
That is what the salary cap does ... reward bad ownership, not good players.