PARITY and EXPANSION: good or bad for professional sports

Why does free-agency lead to a level playing field?

I kind of like the oz salary cap idea in rugby league. It's created a great season where it seems anyone can win against anyone on their day.

team loyalties are almost a thing of the past because sports has become big-time big business here.

players and coaches are expendable when teams don't reach their goals.

philosophies and strategies change from year to year as personnel changes.

player agents inflate the value of their "clients" so that they wind up going to the highest bidder.

the end result is a collection of mostly non-descript teams in all major american sports...

Hi Region

I still don't quite understand why free agency leads to non-descript teams, are you saying it's because the salaries are so high no team can afford more than one decent player? Seems unlikely to me - wouldn't supply and demand force prices to a 'reasonable' level?

hingehead,

i'm still trying to formulate this idea -- please bear with me



come to think of it, expansion is as much of a culprit as free agency.

its simple supply & demand.
there are a finite number of good players in a league.
when the league adds new teams there are fewer of these players available, so teams fill out the roster with lesser talented players...

Yeah, that sort of works for me. Do you have teams rolling in cash that suck all the good players up and make leagues very unbalanced from the best to worst teams?

In Premier Leaguge football that would be the charge laid at Chelsea and Manchester United.

In Oz rugby league (NRL) there are traditional 'silvertail' clubs but the salary cap system seems to have averted massive imbalances in team quality - and we're just about to complete arguably one of the best seasons seen.