The realities of money

The NFL… does it ever make sense? My favourite team, the Dallas Cowboys, expected to do nothing, now a game away from the play-offs, playing amazing, before laying an egg against Philadelphia on Thanksgiving.

It’s a demoralising feeling.

But that leads to a point that I’ve been mulling over for a while now. I feel bad for sports fans in the UK.

In the US, nearly every sport, besides baseball, has a salary cap. This “caps” teams on how much they are allowed to spend on their roster from season to season. Everybody gets the same amount to spend. When teams are capped, it makes them stretch their dollars, making it hard for one team, or a few, to spend more than everyone else and finish at the top every year.

This is in stark contrast to football in Europe, and UEFA’s financial “fair play” rules. Essentially, all this says is teams need to break even. Simply not spend more money than they have.

So, if you are a rich club you can spend all the money that you have. But, if you are a poor club, you have your meagre pennies to spend and still try to field a competitive side. That leads to things like the Premier League, where fans know the big four (Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U) are going to finish near the top. It’s a foregone conclusion. They have the money to spend and they flaunt it, making for the same story lines every season.

Which one of the big four will win it this year? Which team that came up is going down?

With the salary cap system in the US, teams can go from cellar to championship in one season. Then back the next.

What more can a sports fan ask for than to be surprised from year to year?