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Football. Championship teams come and go quicker than the other 2.
Seeing what has happened with the Detroit Tigers, having the worst record in baseball a few years ago, and getting to the World Series this year made me think.
Which sport out of the big 3 (football/baseball/basketball) is the most difficult to build a le contender? What are some issues at hand that make one more or less difficult than the others?
Discuss.
Football. Championship teams come and go quicker than the other 2.
Football would be the hardest. There are 11 men on the offense and 11 on the defense, if there is "a weakest link" then your team will have a hard time contending. Also, by the time you fill all positions with quality players, they are starting to get old ... Its a tough thing.
In baseball - a team could be made with 7 players (3 starting pitchers, one reliever and the number 2-3-4 hitters) all other pieces can be "serviceable players" and the team could contend.
In basketball - Champions have been built with two great players, though most would say it takes a three headed monster. Basket ball would be the easiest.
football. they have the largest teams, and the most strict salary cap. its incredibly hard to win a le in football, and these days, any team can find their way in the Super Bowl. perfect example of that is the Panthers. one year, they were 1-15. the next year, they were 7-9. then the next year, they were in the Super Bowl. things change very quickly in the NFL.
Baseball....without a doubt...although it's gotten easier with the addition of the Wild Card.
Prior to the Wild Card, just making the playoffs in baseball was one of the most difficult things in pro sports.
Anyway...it's still the most difficult because it has the fewest teams making the playoffs..plus you need pitching(7 minimum), and hitting(9-11 minimum)...two completely different skill sets.
It's also got the longest season and most games played.
And pretty much tied with basketball for having to win the most games to actually sieze the championship.
And one guy makes less of a difference in baseball than any other sport...
Because there's pitching, and hitting.
In football a QB can make the difference.
Without a doubt it's baseball...
EG, the Philadelphia Philles have been around in one form or another for 140 something years...they've won exactly one world series(and people think Pete Rose doesn't belong in the Hall).
Cubs haven't won in over 100 years. WhiteSox and RedSox hadn't won in 90...
Indians haven't won in 60..and so on and so forth.
Rangers have never even made it out of the first round of the playoffs, in nearly 35 years.
Football...of salary caps and "Franchise Player" designations.
It's incredibly hard to win a le in football, and these days, any team can find their way into the Super Bowl...
Ponder that for a second....
The most difficult to build a le contender is the NBA. In football, there is so much parity that it's just a matter of staying healthy and playing well at the right time. In baseball, you just have to have the money to go buy the talent. If you have money, you have a huge advantage over everyone else.
In basketball, going into each year you know who the le contenders are. There hasn't been a huge surprise champion in I don't know how long. Right now everyone on earth knows that the champion will be the Spurs, Mavs, Heat, Suns or Pistons. In baseball and football, there's no way you could list off five teams and be nearly as confident.
So to rank the sports, I'd say:
1. NBA
2. MLB
3. NFL
To keep a le contender from year to year, I'd say the order from hardest to easiest would be:
1. NFL
2. MLB
3. NBA
As a small market team, baseball would be by far the hardest... the salary cap (or lack thereof) means that it is very hard to compete with the big boys like the yankees. Basketball, well, that doesnt seem to apply (see knicks, 90's Blazers). The NFL's hard cap probably makes it the hardest league to maintain a championship team in.
This is some of the worst logic I've ever seen out of you. Half the time you are arguing baseball is the tougher sport and the other half you aren't even arguing the question that is being asked.Baseball....without a doubt...although it's gotten easier with the addition of the Wild Card.
Prior to the Wild Card, just making the playoffs in baseball was one of the most difficult things in pro sports.
Anyway...it's still the most difficult because it has the fewest teams making the playoffs..plus you need pitching(7 minimum), and hitting(9-11 minimum)...two completely different skill sets.
It's also got the longest season and most games played.
And pretty much tied with basketball for having to win the most games to actually sieze the championship.
And one guy makes less of a difference in baseball than any other sport...
Because there's pitching, and hitting.
In football a QB can make the difference.
Without a doubt it's baseball...
EG, the Philadelphia Philles have been around in one form or another for 140 something years...they've won exactly one world series(and people think Pete Rose doesn't belong in the Hall
Cubs haven't won in over 100 years. WhiteSox and RedSox hadn't won in 90...
Indians haven't won in 60..and so on and so forth.
Rangers have never even made it out of the first round of the playoffs, in nearly 35 years.
It'd be tough to build a championship in baseball if you had like $15M to spend or whatever the Marlins have, but if you have an above average amount of money to work with and you have a decent management team, you have a damn good chance to make the playoffs.
The Rangers have sucked forever and that has clouded your judgement.
Ponder for a second that if any team can find their way to the Super Bowl, you just proved that it's the easiest to build a le contender
I'd say football. You have to put together the most people, there's the most potential for losing key players to injury, and with so few games and single elimination playoffs, one bad game can be the end of it. And of the three it's the one where weather can have the most impact.
The NFL is not the hardest...
The oldest team that hasn't won a championship is the Minnesota Vikings, a mere 46 years old...and they've been in 4 SuperBowls.
The longest Championship drought is 59 years by the Cardinals...
There's only one team that has never made the playoffs(The Texans), and they're also the only team that's never made it past the first round.
And there are only 6 teams of 32 that have not played in the Superbowl...Cardinals, Saints, Browns, Jaguars, ans and Lions....and actually, the Browns have played int he Superbowl. as the Ravens...
3 of those teams...the Lions, Browns, and Cardinals...that everyone thinks of as the perennial losers of the NFL...have 10 NFL Championships between them..
Browns and Lions have 4 apiece and the Cardinals have two.
Football is not the most difficult...in fact after looking at it more closely...it's the easiest. It's an inevitability in the NFL.
Ponder for a second that if any team can find their way to the Super Bowl, you just proved that it's the easiest to build a le contender
It was a quoteof the quote. Read the quote in that post.
Sincerely,
The Chicago Cubs.
And it's only gotten easier since they added the wild card and expanded the divisions...
Up until 1990 there were only two divisions in each league with no wildcards...
I think you have to further define "toughest." Toughest as in, it requires the most luck, it's the least probable to win with everything else being comparatively equal?
Or do you mean "toughest" as in, building a championship team requires skilled managers and coaches with knowledge of the game?
Also, is this question to assume that you are starting with a categorically mediocre team, or is the team already well-established?
If it was the first, and assuming the team in question is your typical middle-of-the-road, I would say it is football. You have to be lucky with injuries all season long. There are only a few games so a loss will really hurt, and the playoffs are single-elimination.
But, if you mean "toughest" as in it requires skilled managers, scouting, etc. I would vote basketball. There is a reason this sport has dynasty teams. There is a reason the same top 3-5 teams keep appearing amongst championship predictions, year after year. If you are starting as a mediocre team, it will be very, very difficult to break into this upper echelon of teams.
It's an intriguing question, but you need to clarify the boundaries a bit.
Football. In addition to the need for some super hosses at the skill positions, the fact that you have to have 22 players, plus their backups, playing with skill, relative health and efficiently as a team in all kinds of weather and surfaces makes the sport more demanding.
there is a major parity in the league. therefore, any given team can make one or two adjustments and be a contender. but it doesnt mean they will win it all. when you gotta deal with 9 or 10 other teams that can be le contenders, as well as a lot of very good teams that are 1 or 2 players away from being a contender, its kinda hard to be guaranteed to go far. at least in basketball, there are only 3 or 4. true contenders.
That is an excellent post, Samr. Let me try to answer it (and give clarity to my original post) at the same time.
I'm looking it this challenge for a sports team, as starting from the point where you are the worst team in the league. And what needs to be done from top to bottom (along with all of the obstacles that have to be overcome on various fronts) to become the best team. So in a way, that encompasses both luck, along with having the proper management/talent available/constraints put on by the league (salary cap, for example)/etc.
My favorite football team is the San Francisco 49ers. I'm almost as obsessive about them as I am about the Lakers. But the 49ers have been awful for the past several years, ever since we jettisoned TO, let go of Jeff Garcia, Garrison Hearst, and others. And despite managements new direction, we still suck.
Here is why, initially, I thought football would be the most difficult. You have the largest number of starting players to field at any given time (11 on offense, 11 on defense). The shelf life of these players is very limited, so you have to just hit things right as soon as your star players hit their "prime". Or you might lose out. (example: Terrell Davis of the Denver Broncos. It wasn't even a couple of years after he was the MVP of the league and won back to back les with Denver, that his knee was done and he had to retire.) And not to mention the salary cap.
But looking on the flip side, there is so much parity in the NFL, that really even the best teams aren't all that good. The difference between the best team and the worst team is not a large gap, that can't be bridged by some smart moves, good club house atmosphere, good coaching, and a couple of good years in the draft. So looking back at the NFL, it might actually be the EASIEST to construct a championship team.
And look at what has happened in recent years in MLB. Yes, small market teams are at a disadvantage. But even if you're outside the Yankees/Red Sox equation, teams are still finding a way to come out of the depths and win les. The Marlins, on a limited budget and owners that don't want to even keep the team together, have won two (2) les in the past 10 years. Each one built completely from scrap. Look at the White Sox and the Tigers (even though the Tigers lost this year). In baseball, having star power does not necessarily equal championships by any means. You just have to have smart management (again), a good farm system, and have key pitching and good fielding defense and make the "fundamental plays", and *viola*, you have a le! I mean, look at the Diamondbacks...they went from an average team (and they're another expansion team in recent memory, by the way), got two great pitchers on their team who were in form, and they were nearly unbeatable that season when they beat the Yankees in the Worlds Series back in 2001.
And now we come down to basketball. On the surface, one would think that basketball would be the easiest. You only have 12 players on the team, you only need 5 competent starters. If you have a couple of superstars, then you're good to go, right? Plus, there is only a "soft" salary cap in the NBA, so if a team truly has enough money, they can buy their way to the top, like in baseball. Right?
Well, TimVP's post brings a lot of things to light the need to be considered. First, when you really look at the NBA, there might truly only be a handful of players in the league that you can truly call franchise player *superstars*. I mean, there may only be 3 or 4 at best. And more often than not, that player is usually a center. Superstar centers are very difficult to come by. Tim Duncan, Shaq in his prime, and maybe Yao Ming (if he lives up to the hype). Outside of Shaq and Timmy, the one other player that I think you can truly build a championship team around on his own is Lebron James. That kid is just freaking unbelievable. Other players like Kobe, D-Wade, T-Mac, are going to appreciably be more difficult to build around on their own.
So now lets say you have one of those top 3. You had better hope that things fall you way, and you're able to get another of the top 7 or 8 on your team, or life is going to be rough in your championship hunt. That's why the Lakers were able to win 3 in a row, because they had Shaq in his prime, along with the up and coming Kobe. But to get both of those players, the timing was absolutely critical back in 1996 (the Lakers basically scrapped their entire team to land Shaq, and basically swindled the Charlotte Hornets to get Kobe all in the same summer). A couple of GM's and execs being a little more hardheaded that summer would have made the Shaq/Kobe pairing a pipe dream.
Another example would be the San Antonio Spurs, getting Tim Duncan with the number one pick, while they still had David entering the twighlight of his prime. If David had not been injured back in 1996, they Spurs wouldn't have had one of the worst records in the league, and would not have gotten Timmy. And even with having Timmy, it has taken very careful and plotting mangement, making the absolute correct moves, to bring in Tony Parker and Manu. That is a lot of "ifs" that have to go your way.
And even though Dwayne Wade carried the Heat to the le this past spring, them winning the le truly would not have been possible if they didn't orchestrate the trade for Shaq. Shaq, even as his game deteriorates, still commands a lot of attention from the other team. I would surmise that if Shaq was not there, you would basically have D-Wade on a team, taking a lot of shots, and them being an average to below average team at best.
So, in hindsight, and taking into account what TimVP said and what I've noted above, I think basketball in the NBA is the most difficult to build a championship team around. If you don't have one of the 3 or 4 true "superstars" in the league, don't have the complimentary star player, etc., then you had better have a super deep, solid team overall (example: Detroit Pistons in 2004 and 2005). Which is VERY difficult because that balanced team has to have ingredients that help overcome the weaknesses that each player on the floor has (since they are not great players). And even then, you're limited to "sneaking up" on the rest of the league and catching them offguard.
NBA(30 Teams):
Founded: 1946
Longest Championship drought: 51 years(Kings)
Oldest Team without a championship: Clippers 41 years old
Number of Teams that have never made the playoffs: 1(Bobcats)
Numer of Teams that haven't won the championship: 12
Number of Teams that haven't played in the finals: 8
NFL(32 Teams):
Founded: 1920
Longest Championship drought: 59 years(Cardinals)
Oldest Team without a Championship: Vikings 45 years old
Number of Teams that have never made the playoffs: 1( ans)
Number of Teams that haven't won the championship: 10
Number of Teams that haven't played in the finals: 3
MLB(30 Teams):
Founded: 1876
Longest Championship drought: 98 years(Cubs) *It took the Phillies 97 years to win their first championshp.
Oldest Team without a Championship: 45 years(Rangers) * 44 years(Astros)
Number of Teams that have never made the playoffs: 1(Devil Rays)
Number of Teams that haven't won the championship: 8
Number of Teams that haven't played in the finals: 5
Ok...first let's just end debate about whether or not the NFL is the hardest...
MLB has got a 45 year head start on the NFL, there are two more NFL teams than MLB teams, and yet there are still more MLB teams that haven't played in the final than there are NFL teams. In that extra 50 years only two different teams in MLB won championships.
MLB has a nearly 80 year head start on the NBA, add to that the fact that since 1977 the NBA has added about 10 expansion teams...
In that extra 80 years only 3 different teams made the finals...only 4 won championships.
It is routine in MLB to have championsip droughts of 80- 90 years...it is routine for teams to be in existence for 40 years before making their first final.
And it's still harder to make the post season in baseball than any other pro sport. Fewer opportunities to make the post season mean a diminished chance of winning it every year.
Finally...
Longest streak of making the playoffs:
NBA 22 years in a row.
MLB 15 years....
I don't know what it is in the NFL so it, I already proved it's easier to win the Superbowl than the World Series.
MLB is the toughest...and it's the sport where one player makes the least amount of difference...that's why no one cares about their draft.
Those numbers don't mean anything. What happened in 1904 has nothing to do with the current atmosphere in those sports.
Look at today. Take an average MLB, NFL and NBA team and tell me which is closest to winning a championship. For example, let's take the Chicago Cubs, Washington Wizards and the Minnesota Vikings. Each are about average teams in their sports.
Now all you have to do is pick which one is least likely to win the championship. First of all, you can wipe out the NFL right away. With parity, a team like the Vikings could actually with the Super Bowl this season. This time last year, nobody thought the Steelers were doing anything.
The next you have to go with the Cubs. They add some healthy pitching, a couple bats and they could be right there. If not for Bartman, they probably win a couple seasons ago. Also, look at the Cardinals. They weren't too far over .500, limped into the playoffs and then got hot at the right time.
You would never see that happen in basketball. There's no 42-40 team that comes out of nowhere to win it all. And a team like the Wizards has no chance in to win a championship, even though they had one of the better records in the league last year. You could play this season 100 times and a team other than the Big 5 maybe win one championship. Maybe.
Imagine if you are the GM of the Seattle Supersonics. You could do anything you want with that roster and you aren't winning a championship anytime soon. You could make the playoffs every year but that won't mean anything.
It's tough to win a World Series, much tougher than a Super Bowl, but easier than an NBA Championship.
I hear where you're coming from on MLB Whott. And I'm sure we could sit here all night and argue this back and forth. You make a lot of excellent points about why MLB is so difficult, and they all have a lot credence.
I still think that the NBA might be the most difficult in my opinion, from the points that I stated above (along with what TimVP said). And the one thing that I can think of to counter your MLB argument is that we have, in recent memory, two "expansion teams" in baseball that have won three (3) les in the past ten years. While, in the NBA, out of the 6 expansion teams that have come into the league since the late 80s (Heat, Hornets, Raptors, Grizz, Bobcats, Magic), only two have made the NBA Finals, and out of those two, only won actually won it. And the common denominator between those two teams (Magic in 1995 and Heat in 2006) is Shaq. Who is one of the 3 to 4 players who I mentioned that a team must have in order to accomplish this.
So, just like in the business world for a business to penetrate a new market and succeed, there are *high* barriers to entry into the "championship contender" market. The biggest barrier being that you have to be smart/fortunate/cunning enough to land one of these aforementioned superstar players. That isn't easy by any means, and these kind of players don't grow on trees and aren't always around.
Like I said before, the Marlins were able to put togther a championship team in 1997, for all intents and purposes they deconstructed the team immediately after that due to a cheap owner, and rebuilt a team on the fly and won it again in 2003! I mean, the Marlins do a lot of things that one would think would PREVENT a team from achieving championship contender status, yet they have won two les! Yes, there are also teams like the Cubs and Indians that haven't won les in what would seem almost a century. I mean, in the end, its probably difficult to some degree for every sports league to get to the promised land. But playing in Miami doesn't seem to be the choice destination for baseball players, yet they were still able to win les. In basketball, if you're not one of the franchises/cities that players would fall over themselves to go play for (Utah Jazz and Toronto Raptors come to mind that have this difficulty), then life is going to be very difficult! Heck, Utah was only able to make it to the NBA Finals two years in a row because two draft picks of theirs back in the mid 80s that many other teams wouldn't give the time of day just happened to turn out to be two of the greatest players at their positions in NBA history. And even then, it was still a nightmare to get the right players to WANT to play in Utah to build around them.
Both the NBA and MLB have their challenges. No doubt. But thinking it over carefully, I'll have to side with the NBA on this one.
Last edited by adidas11; 11-02-2006 at 03:05 AM.
Feh...
I'd say if you want to win a championship in the NBA the first thing you do is hire Larry Brown, Phil Jackson, Pat Riley or maybe Pop...
Not exactly brain surgery...it's also not brain surgery saying that landing Shaq or Duncan exponentially increases your chances of winning one, and attracting other talented players to your team...
It's also not that hard to get them if you have the money to do so...just ask the Lakers how they strongarmed teams out of Kobe and Shaq.
The path to winning an NBA le is pretty clear...
And it's pretty clear in the NFL too...
The path to winning the World Series is not clear...
You can have a line up of all stars and get bounced by a ing team that has 1/10th of your payroll and no discernible stars...
Even the best managers get clueless...
Which pitcher do you get? Well, getting one isn't enough...you need 3 good ones...which ones are they?
Baseball is the hardest...there's no debate about it...even if you have money, and a high IQ for the game, and all the talent in the world...you have absolutely no gurantees of winning...3 good pitchers might be enough....9 all stars might not.
Everything about baseball is more complicated than the other sports...including winning it's championship.
This is the way it is.
Hmmm...ask the Orlando Magic and Chicago Bulls how their cap space clearing exoduses worked when they tried to land Tim Duncan in 2000.
Yes, if you have the cap space and cash to bring in the superstars, then you're halfway there. But the superstar has to WANT to play for your team. And if he is already under contract, the team that has him has to WANT to trade him to you. When the Lakers "traded" Shaq to Miami, every team in the Western Conference (minus the Spurs, probably) contacted the Lakers to swing a deal. Especially the Mavericks. But the Lakers were never going to trade Shaq to another western conference team. Imagine a team like the Mavericks, and instead of Erick Dampier or Diop in the middle, you have Shaq instead.
But in general, those are just "ifs". And the "ifs" tend to only happen to a select few.
If by complicated you mean lucky, then you have a point. What magic formula did the Cardinals solve to win the World Series? What did the White Sox do last year that solved their World Series woes?
The answer is nothing. The teams got hot. They got some lucky bounces here and there. Any of the top 10 or 15 teams could win a World Series each year if they get hot at the right time.
Same can't be said for the NBA.
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