The only thing I’ve said on this issue that’s something other than a fact is the estimate of an average of 1 or 2 additional Distasteful Games in the NFL per season under an 18-game schedule. That was a guess, but one which might be nearly correct. Or perhaps not, I don’t really know. The number is greater than 0, however.
The logic (math, really) of this is inescapable: Team A has a quantifiable advantage over Team B; as the two teams play more and more games against each other (and/or against third parties of roughly equivalent quality), Team A’s advantage will necessarily *tend *to express itself in the form a larger absolute lead in games won and lost, which in turn necessarily means Team A will tend to have a greater number of meaningless games at the end of a season as that season grows in length.
I’ll go and look at the numbers in the NFL for 14 vs. 16 game seasons, but unfortunately we’re going to run into the problems of limited sample size and outside variables (specifically the radically different level of parity during the 14-game era). I already know what might queer the deal: there were like a half dozen consecutive seasons in the 70s wherein the Steelers, Vikings, Rams, and Raiders just curb-stomped their divisions. They didn’t win by 5 games every year because they only played 14 games in a season; they did it because they were worlds better than their opponents, to a sustained level which is impossible to achieve today.
What it boils down to me is that there’s two groups (owners + NFL vs the players) and each is trying to get as much money as they can. No matter what anybody says about winning or losing, it’s always about money. In my heart of hearts, I don’t think either side is stupid enough to skip a season.
What I don’t like are the abuses. There’s always a handful of bad owners (e.g. that guy in Oakland) and bad players (e.g nearly all heisman winners, haynesworth) who game the system and take much more than they should. Then, there’s a bunch of “nice guys” who were in the right place at the wrong time and got screwed out of millions (aaron rodgers, peyton manning.)
Personally, I would like to see:
A rookie salary cap like the NBA. Let them prove it before they get paid more than pro bowlers.
Better protection for players: owners can always nullify a bad deal by simply cutting the player, and they can’t be sued for it. Even guaranteed money can get refunded. However, guaranteed contracts like the NBA is not the way to go. I don’t have the answer, but they need to find a way to make owners more accountable for their own mistakes instead of punishing players.
Fewer total games: this will never happen, but around week 10, most teams couldn’t even be good NCAA Div I teams, while some couldn’t even qualify for DII because of injuries.
I heartily agree. And I don’t think the players will have a big problem with it either; they won’t be giving up their own money, after all.
Unless I am badly misinformed, they can already do that. Unlike the other major pro sports, the NFL does not have guaranteed contracts. That’s one reason some players want so much money upfront - they know they could blow out an ACL in the preseason and never see another penny of their five-year contract.
Then it’s not guaranteed. Maybe the owners could put a limit on the guaranteed money in a contract and use more incentives.
Ooh, actually, a more elegant solution, one that corrects for almost every variable, is to treat every 16-game season as both a 14 and 16 game season. That is, we measure the average difference between the division lead at Week 14 and the lead at Week 16 in the same season. This solves the problems of having to compare across radically different eras or dealing with ties. Just two problems:
I don’t know of an efficient way to look up the NFL standings after 14 games in a given season, and I’m not going walk these things back manually. Ideas? Maybe profootballreference has a feature?
The numbers will be influenced by the very phenomenon that we’re trying to measure: games in which a locked-in teams sit their starters will artificially tighten some division races. Probably this is a pretty small warping effect, though. Certainly it’s smaller than comparing the dynasties of the '70s to the parity of the '90s.
This is dumb. Owners increase prices based on what the market will bear. Theoretically adding an additional home game in every stadium would keep prices down because it increases the supply of tickets by 12.5%. What makes ticket prices go up is when player salaries, the single greatest cost by a wide margin, goes up. The players and owners share revenue, both share culpablility in raises in ticket prices and players are primarily driving up costs, not owners.
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Which is it? Do owners increase prices based on what the market will bear, or are those increases caused by player’s salaries increasing? You can’t argue it both ways.
I’m not sure if this info is of much value. I think you’re under estimating the impact of how many week 16 games are meaningless. Those week 15 an 16 numbers are going to be really skewed. Granted, I suspect that that flaw would bolster my argument since real leads are apt to reduce as a result so maybe that’s OK.
It’s the market. The salary cap is tied to the league’s revenues, so the players’ salaries don’t increase unless the owners have the money to pay them.
It goes both ways. They are pressured to raise prices by escalating salaries. They are pressured to keep them down by the market. The crux of the argument is that those two forces have converged to pinch the owners profit margins. It’s business 101.
In fact you could treat each season as not just 14 and 16 games, but 10, 11, etc. as well. Maybe some patterns would emerge. This would avoid most of the problem you’re describing as well.
He’s not fucking with you - you’ve got cause and effect backwards. The salary cap (well, when there was one) was calculated as a percentage of revenues. It was gross revenue (as defined by the CBA) before 2006, and total revenue after that year. So when a team started increasing ticket prices, it was entirely predictable that salaries would later go up.
The owners aren’t pressured to raise prices by escalating salaries - they were pressured to increase margins. Now they’re looking to further increase those margins by paying out a lower percentage of their revenues.
Right, it would better to measure the difference between Weeks 12 and 14 than Weeks 14 and 16 (pretending bye weeks don’t exist here, of course).
There might be some fluctuations between odd and even weeks, because only after even-numbered weeks can you have ties (leads of 0) — or maybe not for all I know. Other than that, though, is there any reason the average division lead should tend to do anything other than rise every week?
I also want a rookie salary cap…and Peyton Manning never got screwed out of anything. The guy has if not the, one of, the richest contracts in the NFL…EVER. And deservedly so.
The salary cap is based off the league’s total revenue. The salary cap is the same for all the teams. You seem to be implying that every team earns an equal share of that total which isn’t the case. Teams like the Cowboys, Redskins, Giants, Jets and Patriots earned a ton of money and boosted the salary cap through the roof. Teams like the Raiders, Packers and Jaguars didn’t grow revenue at a pace on par with the big spenders but they are subject to the same salary cap.
For a team like the Jags they had to raise ticket prices beyond what the market would bear in order to pay for a salary cap that is based on the league average, not their earnings. Every team would like to set ticket prices based on what the market will allow, sometimes the math of the CBA means that costs exceeds that ideal for lower market teams.
There might be something with strength of schedule. Teams in the same division play mostly the same set of opponents, so if team A plays an easier early schedule, then they should play a harder late schedule.
Again, you don’t have the business part right. Raising prices beyond what the market will bear decreases your revenue. This is business 101. The NFL in each city is a quasi-monopoly, which means they set prices at the point of maximum profit. Since the NFL teams have no real way of increasing the supply of their product, this means they will set prices at the point which they think will maximize revenue. It doesn’t matter if the players made $1 each or a billion each. The prices would be the same.
I imagine that Superhal’s point was that Manning was drafted #2, after Ryan Leaf, and got a smaller initial contract than Leaf did. Aaron Rodgers was a more extreme example, because many thought he would be the first pick of the draft, but the 49ers opted for Alex Smith, and Rodgers fell to the #24 pick.
Maybe the owners could put a limit on the guaranteed money in a contract and use more incentives.