Oh, and a major reason for hockey parity is the hot goalie thing. The hardcap does help a lot but hot goalie is huge.
Nice post. Your last paragraph pretty much describes the present-day NBA. Should be a concern to anyone who is more than a casual NBA fan. It has become the worst professional sport in terms of competition and parity by miles and miles.
You know nothing about the Palmer trade. He didn't demand more money. He was willing to retire and lose something like $30-50 million. He would rather be out of the NFL than suit up for the Bengals. He took a pay cut for the trade to go through. It was never about the money. And race has nothing to do with the situations you brought up.
You may be correct to some extent, but notice that you referred to most of the league but only mentioned four players. You can easily find black franchise guys. Cam Newton, Ray Rice, Arian Foster, Calvin Johnson, RG3, Mike Vick, Patrick Willis, Ray Lewis, Lesean McCoy, etc. People are putting too much thought into this subject. The NFL is the most successful league because football has become America's favorite sport, at every level. That's why you see high school football broadcasted on national television more often than all other sports combined. That's why football recruiting is a bigger deal than recruiting in other sports. Furthermore, the specialization of the different positions could play a part. In football, you don't have to be the most athletic person on the field to play certain positions. In basketball, everyone must be more skilled. Everyone must handle the ball and be able to pass, shoot, dribble, etc. Football appeals to the athletic skill players, aggressive defenders, and hard-working linemen. A wider variety of athlete can find a role in football.
What would his race have to do with anything? What an idiotic thing to say. If Tom Brady was behind the dog fights, and not Michael Vick, do you think everyone would overlook it just because he is white? If Jeff Foster had ran in to the stands at the Palace instead of Ron Artest, would we just laugh it off a a silly white guy thing? I'm not oblivious to racism still existing to an extent today, but the race card is played way too much these days.
College Football is a lot less "competitive" than the NFL in that the same few schools win a lot more than everyone else combined, but it's still very popular. I don't think parity is the answer.
a hardcap would help the NBA though, as well as a 2 year age requirement in college. Its already doing wonders for these kids who spend 1 year in college
I'm not really buying it. I don't think the NFL is mainly popular because of parity or race or violence, though those things may have their contributions. I think it's popular because it's a compelling game that has a nice balance of identifiable stars and team-play; a good pace that has enough scoring to keep things interesting (unlike hockey), but not so much that scores are cheap (like in the NBA); and a sustained drama where games are still up for grabs until the end more often than in other sports. Parity helps in keeping victories from being foregone conclusions; white players might help with having identifiable stars; and violence and cheerleaders may help by appealing to our base instincts; but, it's primarily the structure and rules of the game that set the conditions. But, I still like basketball better.
Big ben raped two girls, but it pretty much died down. Kobe is still the rapist. I am not saying race is the reason the NFL is so popular, but I believe it is a reason. Football players get into trouble way more than NBA players yet we don't hear the NFL is the thug league.
I disagree with the bold section. I've never heard anyone say, the hard cap and parity are the reasons for the NFLs popularity. I think the NFL by design lends itself to more of an event type of entertainment than any other sport. Baseball and basketball play games all throughout the week. You can watch your favorite baseball team every single day in some weeks and your favorite basketball team 4 or 5 times in some weeks. An NFL game is a once a week event. In the 70s when the leagues popularity sky rocketed you had 2 days a week you could watch football. On Sunday you got the main course and Monday Night you got the grand finally. The remainder of the week was the build up before the game; excitement, anxious, eager... hurry up and please get here Sunday! If your team won you had a week to puff out your chest and if they lost the next week sucked. In baseball or basketball euphoria or pain might last less than 24 hours. There was not sports talk radio or ESPN, our sports talk was done live at high school, college and work amongst our friends. Monday Night Football in prime time was huge in the rise of footballs popularity in the 70s. If your not at least 40 years old you probably don't remember life with out cable TV but in the 70s you were watching ABC, CBS or NBC with very few exceptions. On Monday night everyone was watching the NFL with Howard Cossell, Frank Gifford and Don Maridith. There is no way that Monday Night Football could ever creat that type of hype again because of people now have 100s of channels and many many different types of entertainment to choose from including computers and gaming consoles. The 70s were so huge in the development of the NFLs popularity that I don't think it's possible to overstate how important that decade was in the rise of the leagues popularity because in the 60s, baseball was still king. I also agree with your assumption that people just naturally love gladiator sports although I don't agree with your white QB theory, I absolute would have agreed with it a decade ago but not anymore. So there are 3 things IMO that created the NFLs popularity: 1. The once a week games that creat an event type of entertainment 2. The 70s 3. Gladiator style of sport
But football can score in one big play. Momentum can turn around in just one key event. I think that's what makes football so compelling. And I think the individualism in basketball is both an advantage and disadvantage as selling point. In basketball, star power is everything. So you sell the stars. In football, one or two stars cannot make a contender. You have to have the whole team, every part of the system strong. That makes parity a lot easier to achieve.
Same thing with hockey. Football thrives because it's the best TV sport, it's once a week, and it's easy to bet on.
How does that work as an argument against the NHL? Seems to me like the only major sport in which fans seem more interested in seeing players get into fights than the actual game...
