In the high stakes world of professional sports, one laden with multi-million dollar television contracts and astronomical merchandise revenue, it has become increasingly difficult for professional leagues to foster fair competition while boosting public interest and the money that follows. The question of parity, or “equal opportunity” for all competitors, is not a new one, and the concept of salary caps and luxury taxes has lost its novelty, but the problem now seems to extend beyond the financial details of professional competition.
The question of parity itself, regardless of its causes, is still a point of contention. On the one hand, parity promotes the time-honored values of fairness and gentlemanly competition; on the other, it robs the sport of the excitement of having dominant teams or rivalries. No one can question that people are excited by the prospect of records being broken or the clash of two top teams, but few would consent to undermining the integrity of the sport or promoting dominance through artificial means that have little or no relevance to the sport itself. Regardless of team affiliations, the same people that couldn’t turn their televisions away from ESPN when the Patriots were attempting to go undefeated are also the ones that lament the unfairness of the New York Yankees’ $200 million payroll. Clearly, the idea of being able to buy sporting success is contrary to most peoples’ sensibilities, but where is the line drawn?
Further muddling the decisions of sports commissioners worldwide is the seemingly paradoxical relationship between parity and public interest. The National Football League (NFL), one of the most successful and popular sporting leagues in the world, also happens to be a paragon of parity. In fact, the league is notorious for its “everybody has a shot” reality and numerous upsets. But as seen through the examples of the Patriots’ near-undefeated season and the heyday of the National Basketball Association (NBA) when the league was dominated by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz, a sport’s popularity skyrockets when there is a clear hierarchy of superior and inferior teams.
Even more frustrating is that these imbalances of power aren’t simply a question of financial disparities, thus clouding what had previously been a problem with a clear moral choice. The present exemplification of this is the skill imbalance between the Eastern and Western conferences of the NBA. While the Eastern conference boasts the team with the best record in the league, only three of the current playoff contenders in the conference would even have a record good enough for the eighth and final seed of the Western conference. Moreover, the number of playoff teams with a losing record in the Eastern conference could ultimately constitute half of the conference’s playoff seeds. While this situation brings a lot of excitement and interest to the league, it also hurts many worthy teams in the West who certainly would have been contenders in the East and rewards subpar teams who just happen to be in the easier conference. This is an especially tough situation for the NBA, which seems to be emerging at long last from the shadow of the Michael Jordan years and is enjoying unprecedented growth at home and abroad. The idea of simply taking the top 16 teams, regardless of conference, has recently been raised by observers of the league—but sadly, it faces extremely unfavorable odds of being implemented.
The problem is that while commissioners are willing to combat the obvious wrong of buying success, the lure of dynasties and dominant franchises is too strong for any sort of comprehensive promotion of fair competition. So long as conference and division imbalances continue to provide high profile matchups and news stories, there is little incentive for any change. As the managers of what is in part a corporation, commissioners can’t truly be faulted for wanting to maximize revenue; even as guardians of their respective sports, their intentions are well-placed in wanting to ensure that their charges remain popular and receive as much exposure as possible. But lost in all of this is that even though these commissioners are essentially sovereign over their own sports, they are collectively a part of the superstructure of sports—that is, they are all representatives of the institution of sports. Consequently, they have an obligation beyond the health of their own leagues, one that precludes the lack of action in addressing anticompetitive playoff or tournament structures.
As silly as it may sound, sports are a transmission and socialization mechanism for those who follow or play them. While listening to your Little League coach extol the virtues of hard work, dedication and perseverance may have been torturous as a child, the truth is that, because of these lectures, many of us internalize and draw causations between these attributes and the attainment of just rewards. When these classic examples of hard work paying off no longer hold true, the incentive for effort in sports, or any other endeavor, suffers as well. Aside from academics, an arena that is not quite as compelling to most people, sports present a rare venue for healthy competition.
With sports becoming increasingly visible and accessible to millions of people around the world, major league commissioners should take advantage of this boon to reinforce positive messages to their fans—not one that says success can only come through popularity and sensationalism. Ultimately, the leagues themselves stand to suffer, as feel-good success stories are replaced by artificial rivalries.