RSSDown and Distance
There’s a concept that the NFL has been moving toward for the past decade or longer, from around the time the inception of the salary cap, that became a buzz word under Roger Goodell’s reign as league commissioner. The word: parity.
Parity is the idea that, on any given Sunday, any team in the league can beat any other team in the league. It’s not rooted in the concept of universal mediocrity, or of stripping teams of their stars to keep things even- just that, if everyone has roughly the same resources, then any team can make adjustments, which will keep them competitive against any other team. The point is to avoid dynasties and to make any game worth watching, because there’ll never be a truly unbalanced powerhouse team funded by some ambitious billionaire who wants to put together a force of doom to stomp across the NFL like the Russian army rolling through Georgia.
For years the concept has been called into question. Well, hell. How could it not be, if the parity-focused league has perennial powerhouses like the Patriots, Colts, and Chargers continually dominating every season?
2008 is the year that parity finally proved its worth. Look at what’s going on in the NFL after this week’s games. The undefeated teams are the Cowboys and the Giants in the NFC- not exactly a set of surprises, but check the AFC. The Brady-less Patriots went down to Miami, after giving up more points to the Dolphins than the team had put up since the 2003 season. The Colts and the Chargers both are off to 1-2 starts, as are last year’s playoff contenders in Jacksonville, while everybody’s sleeper hope in Cleveland wallow at 0-3. The powerhouses in the AFC are apparently the Broncos, the Bills, and maybe Tennessee… The Ravens are still undefeated at 2-0, but none of them are likely to hold their records for much longer. It’s league-wide parity, achieved at long last. And it does make things interesting. Finally, the most successful organized sports league in America is operating exactly as designed. This is the year that everybody has a chance, and even a longtime loser like the Dolphins can run wild over a leaderless New England team.
[what does all this get us?] It means that, if you’re a fan of a particular team, there’s a reason to keep your chin up. This year even Kansas City and St. Louis have potential, if only because they may well be capable of beating the hell out of Indianapolis or San Diego. It means that any team that turns out to be dominant- whether it’s an NFC leader like the Giants or the Cowboys or maybe one of the AFC underdogs currently riding high- does so because they’re playing the game better than anyone else on a weekly basis, and not because the deck was stacked in their favor. In short, parity in the NFL makes the game worth watching for anyone who isn’t just hoping to see how badly the Patriots beat their opponent this week.
For some reaction to this, let’s turn to, I dunno, maybe the conservative blogosphere?
[naturally...] Here’s an awesome analogy by noted reactionary goofball, Glenn Beck, explaining why seeking economic equality and championing programs that favor the poor over the rich would never work, via an NFL metaphor. Responding to a weak-willed, whiny liberal straw-man that he made up who says, “I’m just talking about leveling the playing field, to give everyone an equal chance.”
Here’s Beck:
So am I. In fact, next, we’ll take on the NFL. How many SuperBowls have the New England Patriots won? Too many, that’s for sure. They don’t NEED all of those Super Bowl championships. We need to level the playing field. The NFL needs to take Patriot QB, Tom Brady, and give him to the Houston, Texans, who’ve NEVER been to a Super Bowl. We’ll also take Randy Moss, Laurence Mulroney and Ted Bruschi from the Patriots, and put them on the Texans, too. And because all the Patriots games are sold out, we’ll take 52% of their gate revenue, and just keep it at NFL headquarters to help build League parity in years to come.
Now, the dateline on the column this appeared in is from August 25, before the season started and Brady went out with the knee injury, but that doesn’t change anything about why it’s one of the most idiotic things written this year.
(A quick aside to political writers who want to talk about sports, or sportswriters who want to talk about politics: know your shit, both metaphors, or you will say something really damn stupid. This is week three of Down and Distance, and if I haven’t said something stupid yet, just hang in there, we’ve got fourteen weeks, plus the post-season, left to go, and I’m sure I’ll blow it somewhere along the line.)
Why is this so effin’ stupid that I’m devoting column space to it when I could be relentlessly mocking the Green Bay Packers for a humiliating defeat at home to the Cowboys that exposed Aaron Rodgers as every bit the straw-man as the one Glenn Beck made his stupid argument against? Because what he describes with sarcastic derision is exactly how the NFL works.
The most successful sports league in America succeeds because of the existence of the salary cap, which serves the exact purpose that Beck mocks—it ensures that no team has too many megastars, so a team funded by Dan Snyder can’t just outspend the entire league. It results in big star players leaving the teams at which they made their careers because their previous club could no longer afford their salary. It redistributes talent throughout the league precisely in order to keep the playing field level. And what has this done for the NFL? It’s built it into a $7 billion dollar a year industry. That’s a billion dollars more a year than Major League Baseball, which is famously free-market in its approach to spending.
Furthermore, the NFL wholeheartedly embraces wealth redistribution, as well as talent, in order to keep the league itself functioning properly. Beck snickers over the idea of taking 52% of gate revenue from the owners, but check it– the league actually takes closer to 80% of what each team takes in, both at the gate, as well as via merchandising and TV, for redistribution. The more successful teams do pay for the down-market ones, and it has built the league to the point where everyone makes more money.
All of which makes for an interesting conclusion: while conservatives like Beck relentlessly make fun of the “whiners” who espouse what they describe as “Marxist principles”, the most financially successful league in the country quietly manages its empire under those same principles. Since it actually works, one could assume that, hell- maybe Beck was being serious? Viva Che Beck! Long live the people’s league!
[all right, settle down] And all of this is interesting because, um, have y’all been watching the news? Socialism is big right now in America. Check it out, we bought an insurance company! This is our time, comrades! Surely we can redistribute the wealth now among the people, as it is our tax money that has purchased this institution… Or, what the hell, let’s just let the people currently running things keep the profits, while we take on all the risk. Parity is a fine concept for a game like football, but when it comes to real life, we’d better stack the deck in favor of the financial giants, if not the New York Giants. The type of socialism practiced by the NFL, in which the most well off franchises share profits to negate risk among the rest of the league, has proven its viability as it’s caused the league to grow at an unprecedented rate. The type of socialism currently being contemplated in Washington, in which every taxpayer shares the risk to encourage profits for the most well-off, seems like it’s got the model completely backwards.
This is the thing about all the bailouts, as the country’s financial situation grows shakier and shakier, wrapped up neatly in a football metaphor so simple that even Glenn Beck could follow it: offering to put the taxpayers on the line for the poor choices of the financial institutions who built the current mess while gifting the people who guided those institutions with the opportunity to make even more money off of their mistakes is like replacing Peyton Manning with a retarded monkey and having him poop into his hand and fling it at a blindfolded Marvin Harrison, while Reggie Wayne rides a unicycle toward his own end zone and Joseph Addai walks on his hands across the artificial turf of Lucas Oil Field. It’s a goddamn circus, and the same people whose ideology causes them to mock a model as successful as the NFL’s are the first one in clown outfits to explain why they can’t wait to see the show when it gives a second chance do-over to the people who caused the problems in the first place, even if it comes at the expense of all of us.
It makes the concept of parity sound pretty damn compelling, you have to admit.
20 Comments, Comment or Ping
TROUBLMan
While I love your argument there are some real flaws with both the salary cap anf proposed wealth distribution models. First, the salary cap kills loyalty. Remember when your favorite player stayed with one team his whole career. I do. But now, teams swap players like Diddy swaps his artist. I’m not with the whole here today gone tomorrow nonsense. I hate it when a player goes from one team to playing for their rival.
Take Terrell Owen for instance he started in San Fran with the 49ers but now he’s in Dallas. I mean, damn, that basically renders the whole celebration on the star worthless. Wouldn’t it feel cheap if Tom Brady became a Colt…
What I also hate about the cap is that it makes building a team more about finances than about chemistry. Some players work well together simply because they share a bond, but with the cap this fact is irrelevant. Instead, teams are put together with one consideration: how much do we have left to spend.
In terms of social wealth distribution, Im not against it. Those at the top should help those at the bottom. My only problem with most wealth distribution models is that they degrade those at the bottom and make them dependent. In my mind wealth distribution should take place in the schools and at banks. By this I mean poor communities should be afforded with the luxuries that richer school districts have. At the bank, poor people should be able to get loans. Why not? As we can now tell with this whole financial crisis, rich people mismanage money also. Lots of it.
[Reply]
Dan Solomon reply on September 24th, 2008 8:05 pm:
The cap is a tricky thing, but you can’t deny that it’s been a major force in the league’s unprecedented growth. I understand your arguments, and I don’t disagree with them, but speaking strictly in terms of the league’s economic growth, the salary cap and other “socialist” measures have been hugely successful.
But yeah- it is weird and kind of disappointing. It’d have been heartbreaking to see Walter Payton retire with another team. But I have to wonder how competitive a team like Buffalo or Cleveland could possibly hope to be in a league with teams with pockets as deep as those of the Redskins and the Patriots, etc. It’s a trade-off. Maybe I’ll explore it a little more further down the line.
–d
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M.S. reply on September 26th, 2008 7:39 pm:
So, the problem with the salary cap is that the star player who leaves his team because they can no longer afford to pay him the huge sums of money he demands isn’t the one being disloyal? That’s a problem with the team? Loyalty on the condition of getting ever larger paychecks ain’t loyalty at all. It would be one thing if these guys were getting paid, I dunno, fifty thousand dollar salaries, or something like that. But they aren’t. Many make more in one season than most people will make in their entire working lives.
Mind you, i’m not up on the details of the salary cap, and am not at all what you might call a sports fan. But i do understand loyalty, I think, and it hasn’t got much to do with Getting Paid.
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TROUBLMan reply on September 27th, 2008 11:37 am:
I used to share your sentiment on players’ salaries until I realized how much owner are making. Once I realized what each team and the league takes in as a whole, I began to understand the players’ argument. They deserve what they make as they’re the ones sacrificing their bodies. If the business is making tons of money and I’m putting my health on the line, I better see a fair share. Plus, non of the contracts are guaranteed, which means I can go out their, literally brake my back, get cut because I’m injured and don’t see a dime. It’s hard for most fans to realize but pro football is big business, a realm where loyalty rarely exists.
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Dan Solomon reply on September 27th, 2008 11:42 am:
The loyalty has to go two ways, especially because this is such a short-career game. Stars do well, and there’s a solid middle-crop of players who go on to be veterans, but there are also a lot of guys who play for a year or two for a couple hundred thousand, get hurt, and are washed up in their twenties without much in the way of saleable skills. A couple hundred thousand sounds like a lot, but agent and management fees eat into that, and while they’re certainly not, you know, broken and destitute, they do deserve more from a league with a 7 billion dollar annual bottom line.
–d
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TROUBLMan reply on September 27th, 2008 3:05 pm:
I agree. Loyalty goes both ways, but when players are shuffled through the system, starting in high school, it goes deeper than loyalty. Respect and pride come in to play as these men have put their all into football.
In college, the players themselves are to blame for not focusing on their educations, but the universities are also. They recruit kids from communities where education is looked down on and sports are celebrated; communities where father’s are absent and money is low. They are sold sports celebrity their whole life so it’s no surprise that they go all out when it comes to football.
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TROUBLMan reply on September 27th, 2008 3:10 pm:
The same can be said for kids who pursue careers in business or on Wall St. They’re taught that the bottom line is all that matters and people are just a means for wealth. They too forsake loyalty also, which is why we see so many lay offs, outsourcing of jobs and overall corrupt dealing. Our culture has bred this into our business character. At the end of the day, being a banker or a running back is a job.
[Reply]
Lag
I see what you’re saying about how ridiculous the concept of the taxpayers digging into their already-shallow pockets to bail out the people who made millions on almost crashing the stock market. It makes no sense, if you look at it from a justice point of view. But if those companies - hell, the entire finance industry - doesn’t get money poured into it soon, even those of us with the shallowest pockets will feel it in a much less pleasant way later on. If the government lets the free-fall of the finance world go without helping them out, BAM, we land in another Depression. If they DO help them out, the money has to come from somewhere, either from the American taxpayers or via borrowing from other countries. We’re already billions and billions in debt to the international community - particularly China and Japan. If we borrow too much more, the dollar will take a plunge and even if our stock market rebounds, the money we put into it will mean nothing, resulting in - you guessed it - another Depression.
I’m not saying the bailouts are perfect, and hopefully the kinks will be worked out before they pass Congress, but… there’s not a whole lot of choice here.
[Reply]
Dan Solomon reply on September 24th, 2008 5:32 pm:
Oh, I get the importance of taking action to keep things from sinking further, absolutely. My problem is the idea that we’re all going to be liable for the debt and the risk, and have no possibility of benefiting from the rewards. If the $700 billion bailout turns this whole thing around, then the people who are going to get richest off of this aren’t the people who paid for it. It’ll be the same people who fucked it up.
Check out this bit from an anonymous Democratic congressman who is looking for ways to make this more fair- they exist, like requiring banks to modify the mortgages of people currently in foreclosure to allow them to keep their homes, and adding some real teeth to the predatory lending bill.
But the real problem here for me is that, under a capitalist system, those who take the risks are able to reap the rewards. If you invest in a system, and it becomes profitable through your investment, you benefit financially from its success. This isn’t that. This is investing the people’s money in the form of our tax dollars, and then not giving us the benefits. The US government owns 80% of AIG, and yet the profits AIG makes go to the corporation, not the government. If we bought it, I figure we should get to reap the benefits of ownership. Instead we’re giving the money back to the people who fucked us over in the first place. That’s my problem with it. I have no beef with rushing in to keep the country’s largest businesses viable, but if we’re buying it, we should own it.
–d
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M.S. reply on September 26th, 2008 7:43 pm:
One should also consider that there are huge sums of money out there in the world that could be brought in to fix the problem, a lot of it privately held hands. Huge equity firms that aren’t publicly traded with very deep pockets are currently sitting back and watching all this go down, and waiting to see how they can make more money out of it. This is what has got so many of the Republicans in the House riled (the old school conservative types), and why they are trying to put up a plan that requires the involvement of these private money sources.
And I totally agree with Dan below. I have no problem with the country owning stuff, but I, as a taxpayer, want to see the stuff I own part of give me some returns.
[Reply]
"A Mom"
Everyone one should have a fair chance. We need to look at other countries where people don’t have a society like ours. Where education, benefits, housing etc. are available equally for everyone. Our country stands on “everyman for himself” and “if you snooze you lose”. I’m not saying things should be handed to us, but come one.
Also greed should not be rewared.
[Reply]
Dan Solomon reply on September 25th, 2008 7:01 pm:
While I agree in theory, I have to admit that I have no idea what country has education, benefits, and housing available equally to everyone. There’s just degrees of imbalance, as far as I can see, and those that keep things most balanced do so at the cost of new immigrants- try to get a Visa to live and work in Iceland, you know?
–d
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"A Mom" reply on September 25th, 2008 7:39 pm:
I do agree with you also, but our country seems to be so one sided. It is too the point of self destruction. What needs to be done? We seem to have the “Needy or the Greedy”
[Reply]
Dan Solomon reply on September 27th, 2008 11:43 am:
Ma’am, I’m just a football writer. I wish I knew what needed to be done. Culturally, a lot of this stuff is human, not American. Make better humans, I guess?
–d
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"A Mom" reply on September 29th, 2008 1:51 pm:
I understand your a writer. My question is to everyone who has an opinion. It’s about talking. No one has all the answers, but we all have opinions.
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Dan Solomon reply on September 29th, 2008 11:08 pm:
Oh, I know you weren’t expecting, like, the answer, I was just being silly. I’ll stand by “make better humans” as my opinion, since nothing else seems to have any real effect.
–d
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"A Mom" reply on September 30th, 2008 10:08 am:
I like what your doing. Keep it up.
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TROUBLMan reply on September 27th, 2008 12:00 pm:
In my eyes, America is a good example of government should operate, but even with that said we get a lot of shit wrong. The problem exist because of the trickle down mentality that the people in power have. According to them, America can only run soothly when those at the top are doing well enough to help those at the bottom. This mentality persist because it’s the only one that guarantees the people on top stay at the top.
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StuporMundi
Nice job, Dan. Sure, every metaphor breaks down at some level where the two things being compared aren’t the exact equivalent (in which case there would be no need for the metaphor to begin with). And, sure, every idea and system may be argued against because it provides no perfect solution where there is no downside. But the point is to optimize things — find the balance that is accepted by general, if not ever unanimous, consensus. So as a nation we can’t do something that makes good horse sense because some troublemaking whistledick calls it “socialism.” And, of course, no one is allowed to retort by saying that the whistledick is an idiot because he supports “capitalism.”
Aristotle told us that there is a virtuous mean approximately midway between a vice of deficiency, on the one hand, and excess, on the other. So America’s most successful sports league (which I assume makes it one of America’s most successful corporations) achieves its wild success and rabid fan loyalty by striking an approximate balance between raw competition and Aquarian communalism. Hard for me to understand why only one young dude in Austin can properly articulate this self-evident reality. I wonder if Bernie Sanders is a Patriots fan.
[Reply]
Reply to “Down and Distance”
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