MattM Posted July 2, 2011 Posted July 2, 2011 (edited) Slightly OT perhaps, but there is a football lesson here-- http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/03/magazine/03statsofsummer.html?ref=magazine Very interesting graph showing the impact of payroll on odds of winning the World Series. From my count, in 8 of the last 16 years, a team in the top 3 of payroll won it all. More daunting is the fact that only twice in that period did a team from the bottom half of the League in payroll win the WS (and one of those two times the winner had the 15th highest payroll out of 30). So I guess if you're a fan of a team perennially in the bottom half of the payroll structure then you've got to wait about 60 years on average between championships, assuming an even distribution among that group. If you're in the bottom third, I'd wager it's more like once in 90 or so years. Keep this in mind as football shifts more and more in this direction in terms of unshared revenue over the coming years. I used to love baseball as a kid, spending my Sunday mornings poring over the stats looking for my favorite players. Over the last twenty years that slowly died. It's now rare for me to watch a game or go to one, and I live a stone's throw from two major league parks and have young kids I could (and probably should) take. I spend little time and almost no money following this sport. Apparently I'm not alone, as over the course of that period the sport's ratings have tanked. I'm hoping that the NFL owners are smart enough not to make the mistake that baseball made and kill the golden goose of parity that helps keep their sport popular, but with greedy egos like Snyder's, Jones', Kraft's, et al. involved, I have my strong doubts..... Edited July 2, 2011 by MattM
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