Agree or disagree!! "Put an end to fans sense entitlement"

I saw this earlier, but the effect of what he is arguing would really ensure that Boston and LA win the title every single year because there would be no salary cap or limit to negotiations, and those teams are willing to pay the most. The league is already much easier for high payroll teams. Why not just raise the salaries of the kids in the draft by a lot, keep the draft, and incorporate Latin American players as well?
 
Disagree. I'm failing to see how "many" of these guys are getting exploited, aside from college players. And it's absolutely correct that without caps, teams in larger markets would rule. We already see it a little in the MLB.

What he's suggesting would water down the overall talent and product, imo.
 
the NFL became the giant it did by balancing the field to make pretty much any team that doesn't have a **** front office a playoff contender. it's built to make everyone 8-8 essentially (unless you are the browns)

that and fantasy football made the popularity skyrocket

mlb needs caps and better wealth sharing to make the whole market way more competitive imo. while we are at it, get rid of the ****ty owners the awful old commish allowed to acquire teams as assets and not as a goal to try to win too
 
goldfly said:
the NFL became the giant it did by balancing the field to make pretty much any team that doesn't have a **** front office a playoff contender. it's built to make everyone 8-8 essentially (unless you are the browns)

that and fantasy football made the popularity skyrocket

mlb needs caps and better wealth sharing to make the whole market way more competitive imo. while we are at it, get rid of the ****ty owners the awful old commish allowed to acquire teams as assets and not as a goal to try to win too
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The last part is particularly true. The Atlanta Braves are not going to win anything until they're not viewed by "ownership" as simply a real estate asset.
 
goldfly said:
the NFL became the giant it did by balancing the field to make pretty much any team that doesn't have a **** front office a playoff contender. it's built to make everyone 8-8 essentially (unless you are the browns)

that and fantasy football made the popularity skyrocket

mlb needs caps and better wealth sharing to make the whole market way more competitive imo. while we are at it, get rid of the ****ty owners the awful old commish allowed to acquire teams as assets and not as a goal to try to win too
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See the counter to that would be the NBA's success. The data actually shows that lack of parity actually makes the ratings go up. For whatever reason, people like powerhouse teams as far as them watching is concerned. I don't get it because I'm always a fan of the underdog and/or competitive balance. But unfortunately the data shows that more people watch when teams like the Yankees or Dodgers are absolutely loaded
 
The whole "competitive balance" idea is just sports communism and really never works anyway.

Look at the NFL. While teams CAN rise up and compete, dynasty clubs still remain and thrive year after year.

Salary caps are an artificial limit to insure that those who run their teams badly still make money. Nothing more.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
The whole "competitive balance" idea is just sports communism and really never works anyway.

Look at the NFL. While teams CAN rise up and compete, dynasty clubs still remain and thrive year after year.

Salary caps are an artificial limit to insure that those who run their teams badly still make money. Nothing more.
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You know, as a libertarian leaning person I actually agree with this. I often find my sports brain and my political brain in conflict with one another over these issues
 
Why people equate competitive balance in sports with communism, I'll never understand.

Teams within a league are not competing against each other for a bigger piece of the pie. The whole league is competing against other forms of entertainment. The NFL is the product, not each individual team. Same with all the other leagues.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
The whole "competitive balance" idea is just sports communism and really never works anyway.

Look at the NFL. While teams CAN rise up and compete, dynasty clubs still remain and thrive year after year.

Salary caps are an artificial limit to insure that those who run their teams badly still make money. Nothing more.
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Those clubs do it with strong management and good fortune rather than payroll domination. A lot of movement up and down in the NFL.

the dynasties tend to be QB driven which is drafting for the most part.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
The whole "competitive balance" idea is just sports communism and really never works anyway.

Look at the NFL. While teams CAN rise up and compete, dynasty clubs still remain and thrive year after year.

Salary caps are an artificial limit to insure that those who run their teams badly still make money. Nothing more.
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Well, in baseball, the bottom five teams in payroll in the MLB are basically always terrible, while the top 5 do extremely well. Contrasted with the NFL where it is all about finding a good QB, and I think it's safe to say baseball is thoroughly unbalanced. Heck, even the NBA has much better potential for balance since high draft picks have a much higher chance of panning out (not right now because of star players deciding to be on the same team versus making an appropriate amount, but that's a different problem - basketball should probably not limit salaries to try to counteract this so that some team can be crippled financially by trying to buy Durant or Lebron if they start caring about money).
 
Managuarantano's Volunteers said:
Well, in baseball, the bottom five teams in payroll in the MLB are basically always terrible, while the top 5 do extremely well. Contrasted with the NFL where it is all about finding a good QB, and I think it's safe to say baseball is thoroughly unbalanced. Heck, even the NBA has much better potential for balance since high draft picks have a much higher chance of panning out (not right now because of star players deciding to be on the same team versus making an appropriate amount, but that's a different problem - basketball should probably not limit salaries to try to counteract this so that some team can be crippled financially by trying to buy Durant or Lebron if they start caring about money).
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This isn't true. A Harvard sports think tank did an analysis of each sports league to show a "Gini Coefficient" for each league, which is usually used to determine the economic equality among countries. Its basically a scale from 1-100 where in a 1 you have perfect equality and everyone has the same amount of money, and in a 100 one person would have all the money in the country. They used it to measure the competitive balance (equality/parity) in each league. The NBA had a ridiculously high gini of 65-75 across 7 seasons. European soccer leagues were the only leagues to have higher ginis. The NFL and MLB had basically the same amount of parity, with the NFL's just being a smidgen higher most seasons. But both were below a 50 in every season that they did an analysis on.
 
BeanieAntics said:
This isn't true. A Harvard sports think tank did an analysis of each sports league to show a "Gini Coefficient" for each league, which is usually used to determine the economic equality among countries. Its basically a scale from 1-100 where in a 1 you have perfect equality and everyone has the same amount of money, and in a 100 one person would have all the money in the country. They used it to measure the competitive balance (equality/parity) in each league. The NBA had a ridiculously high gini of 65-75 across 7 seasons. European soccer leagues were the only leagues to have higher ginis. The NFL and MLB had basically the same amount of parity, with the NFL's just being a smidgen higher most seasons. But both were below a 50 in every season that they did an analysis on.
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Ah, thanks for the info. Can't argue with Harvard. Was mostly thinking about teams like the Pirates, Padres, Brewers, etc. and how inefficient drafting is for MLB. Have any guesses on why baseball has more parity? Do you think it's because big money free agents are usually a bad idea, unlike in the NBA?

Interesting to see the thought in your link about NBA max contracts and how that might throw off parity. NBA max contracts are essentially a joke in that average players get them and nobody cares - in the spirit of the OP, I agree they should be abolished and are solely for owner protection.

Well scratch that question about the NHL having the best parity, I should have read both posts. Thanks for the answer.
 
Managuarantano's Volunteers said:
Ah, thanks for the info. Can't argue with Harvard. Was mostly thinking about teams like the Pirates, Padres, Brewers, etc. and how inefficient drafting is for MLB. Have any guesses on why baseball has more parity? Do you think it's because big money free agents are usually a bad idea, unlike in the NBA?

Interesting to see the thought in your link about NBA max contracts and how that might throw off parity. NBA max contracts are essentially a joke in that average players get them and nobody cares - in the spirit of the OP, I agree they should be abolished and are solely for owner protection.

Well scratch that question about the NHL having the best parity, I should have read both posts. Thanks for the answer.
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Yeah no problem man, I remember reading that a while back and thinking it sounded counterintuitive. The article seems to think that analytics have something to do with the parity in baseball, which makes some sense, but in all honesty I have no idea. If I had to guess I would say its because the NBA is so reliant on superstars and the NFL is so reliant on QBs for success. If you can find one of those, you can pretty much count on being one of the "haves" and if you don't you can count on being a "have not" for a good while. I think since baseball is more reliant on a large group of individuals, and because someone's statistics can fluctuate dramatically year to year, that creates parity. I think it overcomes the lack of a salary cap. But like I said that is just my guess
 
BeanieAntics said:
For those wondering, the NHL is the most parity driven sports league. The MLB has seen a significant dip in their gini coefficient since teams began adopting a more analytical approach, kinda proving the point that if you aren't a major market team you better get with the times and adapt to analytics or you will be left in the dust.

http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2016/12/which-sports-league-has-the-most-parity/
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He ran his study based on pre-season title odds and now I have to think about whether that is a good proxy for parity or not for awhile.

My first thought is that big market teams largely dominate baseball but my guess is that baseball also allows for the smallest payroll teams to compete of most any league because of the extremely generous to team's labor system for young players.

This is out of my ass, but I would bet the big market teams make up a large percentage of the playoff and WS appearances, but that baseball might also, counterintuitively, offer the best opportunity for very low payrolls to make a splash.

Thus Cleveland last year. Royals in their first appearance. If you draft well for a time and acquire prospects for runs you can chug along at pretty low payrolls for a brief time. Astros too maybe? Not sure where their payroll was when they turned the corner.
 
smootness said:
Why people equate competitive balance in sports with communism, I'll never understand.

Teams within a league are not competing against each other for a bigger piece of the pie. The whole league is competing against other forms of entertainment. The NFL is the product, not each individual team. Same with all the other leagues.
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It's very obviously both competing with one another AND competing with other sports. If they weren't competing with one another you wouldn't have the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" or the Baltimore vs Washington lawsuit or the rest of the ML clubs ganging up to end WTBS national broadcasts. I can't see how you can say that's not the case. It's not just attendance, local TV, national TV but also parking, concessions, apparel and above all appraisal franchise value.

What you have is a history of guys like Bud Selig buying a team in a small (relatively) city bordering a large market with one historically successful team (in terms of revenue) in the Cubs and another less successful club in the White Sox and then complaining that they make more money than he does which leads to less money he can pocket (unsaid) and less money he can put back into the team (said loudly and often). But he knew that going into the acquisition. It's not like Milwaukee shrunk from a Chicago sized market to its current size after he bought the team. And, BTW the purchase value of the franchise was developed by the fact that it was where it was instead of in the NY or LA markets.

If Bill Gates suddenly developed an interest in baseball and decided to buy Milwaukee there is nothing that says that he couldn't spend $500M a year on his team if he so desired. He would never make Milwaukee a large market club but he might make it a St. Louis type club with smart management and enough historically good play.

Owners want people to think that a salary cap will somehow improve every team's chances of winning and it doesn't do that. It just establishes everyone's limits and guarantees profits even for those clubs that are badly run. No one makes a team owner spend money now. They could choose to impose their own salary cap internally. It's called a budget. The problem with that is that it opens those owners to fan criticism for not caring as much as the owners of other teams. Someone mentioned Houston before. They have a top 5 MSA in America and have a huge latino population who generally prefer baseball. There's no reason that they shouldn't be spending at the top of the scale for ML clubs. But they historically haven't done that because they choose not to. Someday they may choose to.
 
The cap isn't all people want, it's enforcement of a minimum or having severe consequences. The NBA forces teams to spend 90% of the cap, for instance. If you set the cap around the area of the Dodgers payroll and forced teams to spend even 70% of it, that would be a big deal for most teams.
 
Managuarantano's Volunteers said:
The cap isn't all people want, it's enforcement of a minimum or having severe consequences. The NBA forces teams to spend 90% of the cap, for instance. If you set the cap around the area of the Dodgers payroll and forced teams to spend even 70% of it, that would be a big deal for most teams.
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So, what are you going to do next? Are you going to tell the players they can't get private endorsements? That they can't choose where they want to play based on State income tax situations? That gray and dreary Detroit must be considered in the players mind as nice as San Diego?

If you have a cap then all those things will come into play, especially the non-baseball income, to drive the best players to the markets that can provide those extra incentives that can't be regulated.

Want to make movies Shaq? Come to LA. Hey, LeBron you want to max your endorsement deals come to LA or come to NY.

Hey Tom Brady you like a good steak? Come to Kansas City. Doesn't have quite the same effect and never will.

The stated intent of a salary cap (parity) has never been the goal. It has always been an effort to guarantee costs and insure profits.

I am of the opinion that a meritocracy is the best way to go. If you run your business well then you should reap those rewards. If you do it poorly then you should reap those rewards.

But don't buy a small market club at a small market price then try to change the rules to insure you get equal profits. You knew in advance what you were buying.
 
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