FOOTBALL, BASEBALL AND ECONOMICS
I just saw “Moneyball”, a great movie about the game of baseball and how the Oakland team began a shift in how teams are managed. As I watched that, I remembered a recent 60 Minutes program about football and how that league is managed. And of course, since we are just past the Superbowl, I thought this would be a good time for this little ditty.
Pause for a moment, and think about which sport is more popular and successful in our country at this time? I would say, without a doubt, that football far surpasses baseball. I can not remember the last time I saw a world series game or who won one. It does not even make prime time TV anymore. But everyone has a favorite football team (of course not everyone!) and has the jerseys and hats to prove it. So what happened to the “great American pastime”? I see it as killed by traditional capitalism. And football has survived and thrived by socialism. How un-American can I get???
Baseball was the unchallenged leader of sports for generations, until baseball became “big business”. Then, all the owners and the governing league decided that an open and unregulated system was best. After all, that what business was about. In this world, the rich franchisees bought all the best players, dominated the game, won most of the playoffs, and pretty much killed the game. In the quest of being a “winner”, the self centered owners used their money in the way of pure capitalism. And that is by the golden rule. “Those with the gold, rule”. Baseball became a yearly contest between a half dozen or so big market teams and then the “also rans”. This was great for the Yankees and a few others, but outside those markets, people quit going to games, quit buying season tickets, and even quit televising most of the games. It began the decline of the whole sport.
Football, on the other hand, was the lowly stepchild to baseball as I grew up. It was a second hand sport of brutes. Somewhere along the way, the owners and commissioners of the game, realized that if they went the way of baseball, there would be only a few profitable franchisees and an overall decline in the sport. So, they set up a “socialistic” approach to the game. What it meant was that the overall system of pro football, was more important than the success of the individual team. They put in salary caps, spending restrictions, and other rules to level the game. They wanted to create “parity” so in any given year, any team had a shot at the big show. It was about coaching, teamwork, team building, strategy, loyalty, and many intangibles. It was trying to take the “its all about money” feature out of the game. And look what has happened.
I think this is a great example of one of the great struggles in human world. And that is between the system and the individual. Pure capitalism and the “free market” is the extreme side of the individual, and communism and governmental control is the side of pure system. But the real effective approach is in the middle world of “both/and”. Football has become a great example of this. The overall system is controlled and regulated to a point so as to not allow the overarching power of wealth to distort the game. And at the same time, not regulating the individual away from achieving personal excellence. This is the fine balance I sought to help create in world class businesses. A system that creates the infrastructure for competition based on talent and ability, not on how much money and control one player or team has. It is the balance between the potential of the individual and a system that is not going to favor the few and the rich. Tlane 2/6/12
