"They Bought the Pennant "

Well said Fenen ! Food for thought.

 

NFL hard cap didn't start up till mid-1990s.

 

Racked with unsubstantiation.

Baseball "went batty" about competitive balance in 1980?.... Not until the 21st Century did it implement anything toward that end.

The only thing that masks the problem and keeps baseball literally from being Yankees vs. the NL's top spender every year is the way the sport is so affected by luck and happenstance. It's extremely pronounced in a single postseason series (wild-cards winning 3 WS as evidence). Even over an entire season, though, the very best teams in all of baseball history might win 2/3 of the time.

A 111-51 baseball team is a once-a-lifetime occurrence. An 11-5 football team on occasion hasn't even made the postseason.

This year, if the playoff teams win all their ramaining reg.season games, the average record for a playoff baseball team will be 93-69.

So, yes, the game is socked with its own socialistic reality: As long as hitters fail 72 percent of the time, pretty much no matter what, the teams will all finish with winning percentages in proximity to each other.

The best team winning percentage this year can be 60.3, the worst, 37.3.

In the NFL last year, tops was 87.5, and bottom was 12.5.

If a team was paying $200M to players in the NFL, while the rest paid $80M, that Yankees facsimile would win the Super Bowl (certainly be in it) every year.

So, the vagaries of the basic tenets of the game of baseball mute the money advantages a little bit.

But to not get it....

That people on this board cannot simply agree that, all other factors held equal, a team that spends more money has a greater chance to win. It's Andrea Yates batshit crazy.

It speaks very poorly for us and our role in journalism.

In-fucking-credible.

 

What's this "our" shit? You're not a journalist. You have nothing to do with journalism, other than submitting assholish letters to the editor and comments on message boards.

Go play in traffic.

 

Not sure if this means anything, but I thought this was a cool stat. In the 2000s, there have been 12 spots in the Super Bowl. They have been filled by 10 teams -- New England three times and nine other teams once each.

2000 -- Baltimore d. NY Giants
2001 -- NE d. St. Louis
2002 -- Tampa Bay d. Oakland
2003 -- NE d. Carolina
2004 -- NE d. Philadelphia
2005 -- Pittsburgh d. Seattle

Same period in baseball, 12 spots in the WS, 10 teams. Yankees three times, nine others once each.

2000 -- NY Yankees d. NY Mets
2001 -- Arizona d. NY Yankees
2002 -- Anaheim d. SF
2003 -- Florida d. NY Yankees
2004 -- Boston d. St. Louis
2005 -- Chicago White Sox d. Houston

Don't know what it means. Just another bit of information.