Basketball has basically totally artificial parity (everybody makes the playoffs, but the list of teams with rings is pretty damn short and repetitive) and seems to be doing just fine. Competitive balance is good for individual markets, but likely not that important for success as a whole.

mucksandgravs

MORE LIKE SUCKS AND GRABS AMIRITE?

yeah totally. i definitely care enough about the french language to add in the proper accents. DEFINITELY. good one.

The stench of multiple brain farts has permeated the Pol forums in recent days. My pre-response to "whoever smelt it dealt it" is "whoever denied it supplied it."

fyp

I will say, one of the glorious features of the ipad is the ease of which you can use accents of all varieties.

:thumbup: lol

Can't polish a turd tho.

Pour le record, I suis tres competent. Tu as la mentalitie de l'idiot tu idiot mothaire ****aire

deuces, your girlfriend - WOOF.

je sui gro, a alor

say skeladi

excusem moi? guest gu say?

This is largely a feature of a huge variance based post-season and expansion of the playoffs to include more luckboxing.

an underrated advantage of the soccer system is there's much more to play for, even for those that cant win the title.

avoiding relegation, winning your derby/derbies, bettering last year, a good cup run, European places and so on.

in the US it seems like its more all or nothing, where as in Europe its about doing the best with what you have. It's not about the American dream and winning it all. It's just about doing better than your annoying peasant neighbour.

it also avoids teams tanking for a better draft pick which must be the most depressing thing ever.

How would a draft work in European football anyway when there are many leagues with a similar status?

less soccer, more pensions

You unify in some fashion, or you claim a monopoly on people from certain areas (Spanish Leagues can draft anyone in Spain, and the player can choose to play there, or find another league). There's an MLS draft right now, even though those players theoretically could play in Europe or Mexico or wherever.

Drafts basically are just ways to bar players from signing with any team in the same league other than the drafting team.

You have Champions League, so there already is some bit of cooperation between different national leagues. How you decide if the last place La Liga or last place Serie A or Premeiership team gets the first pick is of course another tricky thing, but this was done in baseball before interleague play, so there certainly are ways for it to be done.

Rivalry games are still important in the US. Relegation obviously is something that would be not so fun to sweat, but important.

The worst part in American Sports is the proliferation of playoffs to include so many crap teams. Basically you have a beautifully meaningful season, then toss it aside so everyone can get a second chance. It does keep fans interested for longer (although the stakes are lower - "omg, are we gonna get a 6 seed or 7!"), which is why it's done. The NFL does it right, 6/16 teams in each conference make the playoffs, and the top 2 teams get a significant advantage. NBA is bad with half the teams making it, and NHL is LOLBAD with so much variance and MORE THAN HALF the teams making the playoffs.

College football has the other problem, where you have WAY too many teams in the top division, then a playoff of 2 (soon to be 4!). NFL is only one that really gets it right. College basketball has 68 teams out of 300+ making it. It's really weird.

And yes, the American mindset of "all or nothing" is pretty lame for sports, which dictates a lot of dumb things we have, like stupidly big playoffs, tanking, etc... There are joys in following consistently top teams, but you can even enjoy following a mediocre team because when they do go on a good run, its that much more exciting. One of the reasons I prefer college football to all sports.

NBA is by far the worst playoff structure. It's like a million games long.

bad daddy!

One of these days I will go on a full ****** anti-basketball rant, but not today, not today.

Stay calm.....calm..........that's better.

Same amount of teams make the playoffs in the NBA and NHL. 16 out of 30.

you spelled best wrong

NBA is all around the worst sporting league.

NHL is worse than the NBA if we are talking about the leagues themselves.