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I've never understood all the claims of parity in the NFL. Fundamentally, the so-called parity is a function of small sample size. If each baseball team played only 16 games, anything could happen. I'd rather see them distinguish themselves over the ups and downs of 162 games.

Melody, there's a kernel of truth there but you vastly overstate your case. Yes, there's some noise in an NFL team's 16-game record, but not as much as there would be in 16 baseball games.

Good baseball teams win 60 percent of their games (97 wins), great ones about 65 percent (105 wins), very rarely approaching 70 percent (113 wins). Good football teams win almost 70 percent of their games (11-5 = .688) and great ones closer to or even over 90 percent (14-2 = .875, 15-1 = .938).

So yeah, small sample size can alter the standings a little from a team's true quality, if there were a way to figure out what such a thing was, but it's not like lousy teams go 11-5 or good ones go 5-11.

Also, baseball results are much less consistent because every team is really five different teams. A team with its ace starter going is much better than they are when the No. 5 guy takes the ball. Even championship teams are often sub-.500 clubs when that last guy is starting, and even bad teams are sometimes winning teams when their best guy is. So in a 16-game stretch, a bad team with one good starter can go 4-0 in his starts, and then play over their heads a bit to go 7-5 in the other games, and viola, they're 11-5 and in the NFL playoffs.

That's not how teams actually make the NFL playoffs. If you looked at the baseball standings every year after 16 games, you'd have a great idea immediately which teams in playoff position were frauds, with no chance of being there late in the season. The NFL might have the odd crummy team sneak into the playoffs because of a combination of easy schedule, lucky breaks and weak conference (see both Seattle and St. Louis last year), but it's not like you can look at the playoffs every year and spot a bunch of frauds.

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Ergos, you seem to be saying Jamal Lewis is a steroid case and that's why he's declined. Maybe, I suppose. But there are certainly a lot of other perfectly reasonable explanations: Age, injury, a lousy offensive line and no passing game, though of course they've never had a passing game.

Carsten, I didn't say soccer was boring. I love soccer and watch Valencia FC any chance I get on GolTV. It's just that the season outcomes are too predictable. Lets take the EPL as an example. At the beginning of this season we knew which 3 teams had a realistic chance of winning the championship: Chelsea, Arsenal and Man U. in that order. (British bookmakers William Hill gave Chelsea 1/4 odds on winning the championship before the first game was even played.) We know roughly which 6 teams are in the most jeopardy of being relegated. And there is everyone else who is playing just to remain in the middle. A technically sound side like Middlesbrough can play very well here and there. But over the long slog of the EPL season, plus FA cup, etc. they will steadily fall behind a team like Chelsea, because they simply do not have the resources to replace injured and fatigued players, whereas Chelsea can probably field 2 or 3 unique, competitive starting lineups.

Here is FIFA president Sepp Blatter's take on this issue: http://sport.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2080542005.

Wellington Mara's legacy is that his foresight has placed the NFL in the position that it can forestall many of these problems. Jones and Snyder, who incidentally are both filthy rich already, should think twice about bringing instability to the NFL's financial structure. BTW, I'd be interested in Malcolm Glazer's take on this, as he has a foot in each camp these days.

Non sequitur, I know, but...

I was watching the sequence on Jamal Lewis in the pre MNF show, and was trying to decipher whether I have a really, really twisted mind of whether ESPN was full of it.

If Barry's body is synthetic, what can be said about a lot of these NFL bodies? Jamal Lewis - need to pick on someone - is a great case in hand. And how bizarre is it that the 2,000 yards rusher now seems to have lost it so badly in such a short amount of time, after spending time in custody, and post the BALCO bust?

But ESPN goes on and on talking about these performances and, apparently, finds no surprising element. Do I have a twisted mind?

All you can talk about is parity, when the Niners blew my prediction out of the water? "On any given Sunday..." even the Niners don't suck that badly.

The Yankees are big outliers, yes, but so are the Washingtons in the NFL.

MLB

Yankees $264

Red Sox $201

Mets $180

Mariners $173

Cubs $170

Roughly 3 teams per $10M below that.

http://tinyurl.com/7h85c

NFL

Washington $287

Patriots $236

Cowboys $231

Eagles $216

Texans $215

Roughly 5 or 6 teams per $10M below that

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/30/Revenues_2.html

Melody asked: "You name the Yankees as the highest-grossing baseball team-- not surprising. But who is second, and how close are they? Are the Yankees as much of an outlier as the Expos?"

If you look at a histogram plot of the total payroll of all mlb teams, the extent of the imbalance in payrolls becomes clearer, I think. All teams except the Yankees follow a standard bell curve, centered around 60 million, with a standard deviation of about 20 million. On the other hand, the Yanks are sitting at over 200 million, more than three times the average (excluding the Yankees), seven standard deviations above the mean. A gross statistical abnormality.

So there are two questions to ask about the distribution of wealth among baseball teams: 1. how unfair is this one freakish outlier team, and 2. is the standard deviation of the rest of the bunch too large.

I think that putting the analysis only in terms of the Yankees compared to everyone else exaggerates the extent of the imbalance.