Everyone knows that football is the most popular game of this era. Does it have anything to do with the fact that they seem to have the CBA that most heavily benefits the owners? Does the fact that franchises can just cut someone loose with out having a Steve Francis situation make competititveness more feasible year in and year out?
I guess what i’m asking is this:
As far as being good for the game, is what’s good for the owners good for the sport?
Posted per Kent’s request.
Is is because of the CBA or because of other systems like free agency which ensures that there is parity among the teams in the league? That’s what makes the games more competitive.
I don’t think what’s good for the owners is necessarily good for the sport. Wouldn’t it be better for the owners to lock up superstars to long-term high paying contracts with no salary cap?
I think that having a cba (cba stands for collective bargaining agreement, right?) that is weighted towards the owners makes the NFL a better league for the fan, but it certainly doesn’t explain the popularity of football over the other two major sports. I think people like football best because it’s like checkers infused with violence and speed. It also doesn’t hurt that there are so few meaningless games. Maybe there are so few meaningless games due in part to the NFL’s cba. That could be argued. The cba certainly does help in the area of parity; It’s hard to think of an NFL equivalent of the New York Knicks or the Kansas City Royals, teams that don’t have a prayer due to their contractual/finance issues.
It all comes down to non-guaranteed contracts. Having the ability to release a superstar if he doesn’t live up to his contract is a huge advantage to teams.
For instance, in the NBA, Portand recently had to pay Steve Francis $30 million NOT to play for them. Compared to the NFL, where often times, teams can demand parts of signing bonuses be returned if players are released.
Releasing players does count against the salary cap, though, but I’ve always been told manipulation the salary cap in the NFL is far easier than in the NBA.
Along with the parity of the NFL, football is also the best sport to gamble on, which is the No. 1 reason it is the most popular sport.
Brent … you seem ashamed of this post. Are you embarrassed to like sports? I’m not embarrassed to like you.
There is no question that the heyday of all the leagues coincides with the times the owners has the most control: 80’s NBA, pre 70’s baseball. I just think I’ve alwaysw kinda sided with the players when it’s collective bargaining time, and I’m not so sure now. I hate the way the NBA is, in particular, where you see teams saddled with huge contracts for dudes who didn’t pan out. I think they should make releasing doable in all the sports. I realize that takes some of the umph away from players, but they are still going to be making plenty of money. You don’t see any football players hurting for cash. Except retired ones. Who’s with me.
And as for the other reasons why football is popular – I think it comes down to the small number of games. Makes it much easier to keep tabs on – and yes, bet on.
The other thing is that parity doesn’t mean shit to the fans. Look at the last World Series winners vs the last Super Bowl Winners. There’s more variety amongst the MLB teams. The NFL has more teams reversing their previous year’s fortunes, but those teams rarely end up winning it all. a la Florida Marlins/Chicago Whitesox. Parity is alive and well in the MLB. The Yankees suck, and the Brewers are terrific.
Dave, would someone who is ashamed of sports bring up such a thoughtful topic as this?
Chuck is right about the popularity of football, but i’d compare its strategy to chess rather than checkers.
Baseball has its strategy (more psychology I guess), but no violence. Basketball has a little strategy, and its violence mostly consists of people falling down harder than they were pushed. Same with soccer. Hockey has the violence, but more of a checkers-level strategy. They are better because they don’t fill their teams with actors.
Aussie rules football is the second best sport, since it combines violence with batshit insanity. I really wish they would show more of it on TV. We watched it all the time in Maryland.
I wonder if there are stats on the number of people who are football fans, who do not gamble.
Well, just picking the major football fans I know, I have 9 not betting, and 3 betting, so I’ll say 30% bet in some frequency – even if it’s once a year.
I think it would be interesting to compare notes amongst the GM’s in the different leagues. Does anyone know any GM’s? Dave use to drive a GMC Jimmy, but I believe it’s dead now.
Also, football benefits from the fact they all have helmets on. We in America don’t want to see how black our players are. Which is why the NBA is less popular. All these huge black guys running around in with tattoos – I think it turns off white fanship. In the NFL, they look like little robots. Not thugs. And whites are okay with that. I mean football has all sorts of off-the-field problems, but no one cares, because no one knows who the hell these guys are. Basketball has very few, but they are viewed as the more thuggish league. But not by me. I love basketball. Give me an exciting basketball game over an exciting football game any day of the week. The rest of your are racist.
I’d just like to say thank for filling up the site with racist and handicappist invectives these days.
Okay, well that was not my intent. I was just saying that white America is made nervous by NBA players, which I think is a fair point, considering how interest has sunk as tattoos and braids and saggy shorts have become more common. Yes – I know there is a dress code now, which I think just proves my point – even the white execs in the NBA are freaked out by this. And as I said, I think, by and large, the NBA has a lot of great community guys in it’s league. Guys who really seem to care about giving back to their cities and so forth. But they are not viewed that way – because of appearance.
I stand by my handicapped invective.
Fantasy football is gambling, so you better rethink your ratio of football friends who gamble
I knew that was going to make Dave mad. So with my new ratio – I now say that 80% of football fans gamble on sports in some way.
Like chess, football is a form of artificial warfare. It even has militaristic language: bombs, sacks, trenches, field generals, etc. I think this explains its popularity. What’s not to like about a good war, especially if no one dies? It’s even better if you can bet on it, kind of like the Swiss.
I agree with the thing above about whites being a little skittish about the predominantly black players in the NBA. I think the best evidence of this is the fact that–over the last three years–the MVP awards have been given to a guy who was barely better than a journeyman for most of his career and some German dude who never shows up in the playoffs. Sure they had decent years, but I could easily name 12 better players–who just all happened to be black.
I’d just like to say that I’d love to be able to compare things to chess, but as I possess less than a rudimentary understaning of it, well I’m reluctant. Whereas checkers, shit, fucking king me.
Also, I think America is kind of coming back to the NBA. I don’t known if that is because it has more interesting and competent players these days or if the shock/fear over tattoos and everything is kind of wearing out. It’s worth mentioning that no one wanted to watch the Spurs despite the fact they are the least threatening team in the league. At the end of the day, I suspect the whole hip hop quality of the NBA is kind of a wash in that it attracts and turns off about an equal amount of people.
How in the world can you call Steve Nash a journeyman?
i never heard of him until he won the MVP award. he’s not a superstar if i don’t know who he is.
Put Nash’s numbers against Kevin Johnson in his day, and see whose are better. Then tell me Nash isn’t overated. Johnson wasn’t even All-NBA in his era.
There’s no way he or Dirk deserved the MVP. I think if you look at that honestly, you will come to the same conclusion. When you can tell me that, if you were going to start a team from scratch, either would be your first pick, I would say you are lying.
People don’t watch the Spurs because they are boring. I think that is a whole different issue. It’s like why that Giants/Ravens Superbowl was so ho-hum. Two boring teams. Yay.
Ray Lewis not killing those guys was the best part about that Superbowl
Until he got to Phoenix, Nash averaged about 14 points and 7 assists per game. As a Sun, he’s bumped that up to about 18 and 10–in a system that emphasizes scoring. He’s got some pretty good numbers, now, but he’s hardly great. And, he doesn’t do defense.
I think the NBA’s CBA is actually pretty good. I bet the NFL would love to adopt their salary scale for rookies. It totally takes the pre-camp hold-out out of the picture. (The NBA just had their draft last month and already have the rookies playing in the summer league. How many NFL draft picks have even been signed after 3-4 months?) Your salary for the first 3 years–I think it’s only 2 years if you don’t go in the lottery–is set by where you go in the draft, period. For those taken outside the first round, no guarantees that you’ll get anything unless you’re invited to camp. Plus, no signing bonuses. Of course, they’d have to accept guaranteed contracts, at least for the first few years.
I think that there’s also a cap for players’ salaries in the NBA now, but players who had contracts under the old CBA (such as Garnett, Shaq, Kobe, Kidd, etc.) can still earn over the individual cap–which I think is about $15-16 million. The NFL would probably love to have a cap on individual player salaries. Just as a business practice, it would be helpful for estimating expenses from year to year.
I think Lewis didn’t murder those guys the year before that Super Bowl.
See, I think it’s the guarateed contracts that kill teams. I can’t make up my mind about salary caps ( or salary bottoms for that matter). I do like the slotted salaries that NBA rookies get, but it’s obvious their CBA cripples teams. Granted, it seems to cripple the dumb ones primarily, but it’s still lousy. NFL teams seem to be able to dump salary much easier. And in the end, the teams are more important than the players, when it comes to the overall good. I think we all saw what happened when the NBA tried to get by on it’s marquee players, only to have them all retire.
Ray Lewis didn’t murder those guys every year.
Salary caps are a great thing. otherwise, the Redskins, Cowboys, Patriots, and Eagles would become the Yankees, and teams like the Vikings, Cardinals, Raiders, and Chargers wouldn’t be able to sign anyone.
NFL Team Values
If that is the case, then I am pro salary caps. But I am intrigued by salary floors too. Like saying a team has to spend x amount on salaries each year. I think that’s what gets baseball in trouble. They even have revenue sharing, but you don’t see that helping a team that wont spend – like Kansas City.
That would be a case of what is good for the owner (saving $) not being good for the fan or the team, right?
Which is why revenue sharing is bad news. But it doesn’t mess up my original issue of giving the owners more clout than the players, when it comes to guarateed contracts. Revenue sharing is bad. But so are guaranteed contracts.
Kansas City is an exception. You don’t hear about teams like the Saints and Bills not wanting to pay their players the big salaries. You do hear it about the Chiefs, though, come to think about it. FFS pay Larry his money. Wait, were you talking about the Chiefs? or the Royals? I don’t follow baseball that closely. Do the Royals not want to pay players either?
Damn now i look like a fool
I suggest you Nash doubters actually watch him play. He is as skilled as anyone in the league and simply dominates games.
Look up the Suns record when he’s injured. How about last year when Stoudemire went out and Nash kept them afloat almost by himself?
Would you feel different about him if they would have won the whole thing this year, which they would have, if the league wouldn’t have kicked Stoudemire out?
I don’t understand revenue sharing. It seems like a great idea, but it’s obvious that some teams can take advantage of it. So, then, what is the deal with the Royals? The same Forbes list has them only making $8.4 million per year–if I’m reading that thing right. Does that include what they get for revenue sharing? Also, is revenue sharing why the same list shows the Yankees operating with a $25.2 million deficit?
Did Steve Nash get better when he cut his hair?
Kent, No he didn’t.
Dave, would you rather have Nash or LeBron? Or better yet, put Nash on the Cav’s and Lebron on the Suns. Which team would you rather have?
Dennis, I’m with you. That list was confusing.
I’m not sure comparing LeBron and Nash is fair. But I’d rather have Nash than any other point guard in the nation. Wsatch next year when his numbers decline but the Suns win it all. He’s smart and knows what he has to do to win.
Let’s compare LeBron’s numbers against the Spurs compared to Nash’s.
Nash is better than he used to be, but there are other PGs I’d rather build a team around, if only because they’re cheaper/younger. Deron Williams or Chris Paul would be both (for now). Although not any cheaper, I would also take Parker, Arenas, or Billups over Nash. If you replaced any of those players with Nash, only Utah might improve. He really wouldn’t fit well any where else, and the Wizards and Pistons would actually get worse.
Even with my limited basketball knowledge, I feel confident in saying that LeBron James is better than Steve Nash. Judging solely from TV commercials and articles in ESPN the magazine, that can be the only conclusion. To say otherwise feels to me like arguing that Tom Brady is better than Peyton Manning.
So we can agree that Nash isn’t the player that LeBron is. Yet he won back to back MVP’s. WTF? He is white and non-threatening. So is Dirk, despite the fact he is German. And honestly, I had an easier time with Nash’s first MVP than I had with Dirk’s. I mean that guy is is a one dimensional scorer, and a decent defensive rebounder. He is sub-par in every other facet of the game. At least Nash brings an excitement to the game.
I’m not sure if I would take Arenas over Nash, but everyone else is at least as good as him.
How did this go from CBA to Steve Nash?
threadjack?
At least we all found out that Dave only likes family-friendly NBA players.
I can’t speak for US sports other than football as I’m not familiar with them. However, I can offer a perspective from a UK soccer point of view. Over here, anything goes. This means that every year, only 3 clubs realistically have a chance of winning the Premiership (the top league in England). Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. Liverpool may join that club this year as they’ve just been bought by a couple of American guys who are supposedly loaded. These 4 buy all the best players because they can afford to and do spend HUGE amounts in salaries. Football will always be the most popular sport over here, but many people are getting bored of the dominance (me included). Many clubs have gone bankrupt and are still going bankrupt trying to emulate and buy success.
I think a salary cap is essential for the wellbeing of the sport, and the NFL is a shining example of how it should be.
I think Eva has done wonders for the NBA.