NFL Has What Other Sports Need
Competitive Balance
By Mike Prisuta

Football has it all over baseball for a number of reasons, not the least of which is no baseball team ever ran out of a tunnel minutes before the opening kickoff.

Come to think of it, no basketball or hockey team ever has, either (hockey teams amble out of a runway that leads from the locker room to the playing surface and then hit the ice flying in single file, but somehow it's not quite the same).

Come to think of it, the NFL has it all over those sports, too.

So what does the NFL have that the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and especially Major League Baseball don't?

What is it besides a 10-hour or so pre-game show prior to the championship game that separates the NFL from all the rest?

Two words: Competitive Balance.

Hockey still has that to a certain extent, as a moderately competitive Stanley Cup final between the Detroit Red Wings and their monster payroll and the have-not Carolina Hurricanes established. But the NHL is headed down a road that leads to labor relations Armageddon as the gap between large and small markets widens and salaries skyrocket faster than revenue can be generated.

Another surprising characteristic of the Cup final was that the league decided to actually enforce its rules for a change. The NHL's perennially fluid interpretation of what's a penalty and what isn't and when is what consistently prevents it from attracting more fans and higher TV ratings and making more money for everyone, but that's beside the point.

And as long as basketball has Shaquille O'Neal, who is simply bigger and stronger than anyone else, competitive balance in the NBA is out of the question. No less an authority than Charles Barkley has insisted that the Lakers will keep winning championships until O'Neal either gets injured or becomes bored.

And then there's baseball, a sport that features a few cannons and a great deal of cannon fodder. It's a sport that's an unforeseen blown save by Mariano Rivera away from the New York Yankees having bought and paid for yet another World Series title. And last but not least, a sport that's so confused and delusional it has no idea what its biggest problem is, let alone how to solve it.

Why is baseball on course to re-enact its periodic version of "Operation Shutdown?" Because its owners are insisting upon something to at least partially level the playing field, competitive balance-wise, and its players don't want any part of it.

Consider this recent assessment from Pirates first baseman and player representative Kevin Young:

"You're going to always have teams better than others, regardless of how you look at it. I don't know if having every team equal in the type of talent they have and having an equal amount of money is good for the game or not."

When you hear something such as that, it makes you want to drop to your knees and thank the powers that be for the NFL's salary cap.

Yes, the cap is complicated. Yes, it's a tiresome distraction for fans that are constantly trying to figure out its significance and understand its impact when they'd rather be dissecting the relative merits of players based on their ability to block, tackle, run, throw and catch. And yes, all that roster shuffling induced by the salary cap each offseason is confusing, to say the least.

But the payoff for all of that is that no team in the NFL is more than a couple of years away from seriously competing for the league's championship if it plays its cards right.

As recent seasons have shown us, you can go from nowhere to the Super Bowl and even win it in a hurry. The days of dynasty and dominance by a Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Dallas or San Francisco, meanwhile, are easily recalled only because of the fine work done by the people at NFL Films.

In today's NFL, anyone can win it all, even the Cincinnati Bengals (if not today than perhaps tomorrow).

Baseball's initial solution to the annual disparity of the teams with the highest payrolls dominating the postseason and everyone else watching on TV was to contract a couple of its bargain basement operations.

Even the courts wouldn't by that one.

That would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting.

The NFL has no such problems because its players and owners realized a while back that partnership was much more preferable and much more profitable to trying to screw the other side out of every dime. It took a strike to do it, and a few years to iron out the loopholes in the basic agreement thereafter, but finally the NFL has stumbled upon a system that works for everyone.

Baseball should take a lesson and get with the program.

And maybe come up with a way to replace running out of the dugout with running out of a tunnel.

Mike Prisuta covers the Steelers for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and is the sports director for WDVE-FM in Pittsburgh.