The Problem With David

If David and Goliath had fought a series of 16, or 38, or 82, or 162 contests, do you really think David would have won every time?

Here's the problem with sports and the question of parity--the little guys can pull off a Cinderella moment in a one-off encounter or a short run through the NCAA tournaments, but over the course of the season, the big guys tend to win out. Look at soccer, for example. Teams like Manchester City, the nouveau riche of the Premier League, have such depth of talent that they can withstand the rigors of a long season, letting stars rest, and can overcome red card suspensions or injuries more easily than smaller clubs. It isn't that they are inherently better as a club, or at least that is not the only reason; they also have more resources.

The resource question is important. Newcastle United started off the season brilliantly, but are now running into some trouble. They lost to Man City three weeks ago, which was not unexpected, then managed to secure a controversial draw with Man United. Last week, fickle fate attacked. Chelsea's defender David Luiz should have been sent off in the fourth minute for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity, but escaped with a yellow card. That could have changed the entire match, and Chelsea went on to win 3-0. Even worse, Newcastle's star defender Steven Taylor was lost for the year. The media implied that now Newcastle will have to scramble for points the rest of the way to ensure safety, that being the only realistic option.

Today's match indicated this might be the case. Traveling to Norwich, Newcastle were thumped 4-2, having Dan Gosling sent off for a red card. I'm not too familiar with Norwich, but I would say that if Newcastle had serious ambitions of qualifying for Europe this year, Norwich is exactly the sort of team that Newcastle must beat.

It's funny how quickly results can turn. The small teams, the Cinderella stories, tend to fade away over the course of a long season. I was reading World Soccer the other night, in which articles were raving about the surprising starts of promoted Novara in the Italian Serie A and Real Betis and Levante in Spain's La Liga. I do get the magazine a bit late, as it comes all the way from England. This was the magazine on sale in October that I got in November. After reading the articles, I checked the standings, and all three teams had slipped wayyy down the tables. And look at the story of Blackpool last year in the Premier League: they came racing out of the gates as the darlings of the media, playing attractive soccer and getting some great results. But then, things started to not go their way, and they faded, and they ended up with relegation back to the lower division and lost their star Charlie Adam to Liverpool.

The Cinderella teams in the short tournaments become the Flavor of the Week in a long season. Big teams that start slowly--such as Arsenal this season--do recover. Dust tends to settle and cream rises to the top, which is the problem at the heart of the question of competitive parity: there is too much dust, not enough cream to go around. Any chef will tell you it is crucial to get the dust-to-cream ratio just right.

How do you ensure parity without relying too much on artificial restrictions? That's a problem that none of the major professional sports have really figured out once and for all. Salary caps help, so the NFL is ahead of a lot of the others, I would say. Baseball, for instance. Small-market teams benefit from revenue sharing, but that doesn't mean they can or will spend money, and it isn't entirely clear how legitimate some of the claims of necessary frugality from teams like the Pirates and the Marlins really are, especially in light of the Marlins splashing around cash on free agents this off-season like a kid doing a cannonball into a pool. And then you have the Angels owner, Arte Moreno, attacking the Yankees and Red Sox for doling out massive contracts, only to turn around and spend $250 million to lure Albert Pujols away from St. Louis. And in Spain, it never feels like there is a genuine chance for anyone other than Barcelona or Real Madrid to win the championship. The last team to do so was Valencia in the 2003-2004 season, which in the age of Twitter is so long ago that, realistically, it never happened. Is there a solution?

Michel Platini's Financial Fair Play movement seems a good first step to prevent the biggest clubs from taking on massive, destabilizing debt to outspend all comers and monopolize the best talent. There are loopholes, and we will have to wait to see how this works, but I like it in theory. Of course, just because a team is spending within its' means doesn't ensure parity, as some teams are meaner than others. I mean, they have more means than other teams.

Maybe this is just evolution, survival of the fitter, in terms of competition for resources. Maybe this is just a by-product of free-market capitalism or some other similar economic terms. Is the question of fairness in sports simply a myth? We talk about how there is always hope for any team at the start of the season, but it doesn't seem realistic. Without hope, what's the point of playing the games?

Of course, there would be no point, because, yes, things can happen that are unexpected. The Giants were not expected to win the World Series in 2010, and the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox all failed to win it last year.

I would hope for more idealism in sports, even in the financial side. I know it is a business, but I would hope that results in sports would be primarily based on more than the bottom line. I think this is why I would much rather the 49ers stayed in SF, built a new stadium in Hunter's Point--which could attract business and jobs to that area--rather than fleeing to the suburban comforts of Santa Clara and a parking lot next to the Great America theme park. Spread the joy and resources, I tell you, even if Santa Clara can offer you more revenue. Santa Clara and Silicon Valley have a lot of resources as it is. But that's not going to happen. The Niners will go to Silicon Valley, and when they do, I'm done with them. Not that they would care.

The reality is that life isn't fair, so maybe sports don't have to be entirely fair either, even if they are supposed to be a sublimation for our frustrations with the unfairness of life. To paraphrase Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes, not John Calvin), the world seems to rarely be unfair in our favor. Still, just because reality is unfair, that is no reason not to try leveling the pitch for all parties. I just have no idea how to do so.