While realizing that I am far from the first person to explore a subjective ranking system for NFL teams (and honestly, I’m probably closer to the millionth than the first to explore this option), I’ve decided to go for it nonetheless. However, what I’d like to do is take a little bit of a longer view and instead of focusing on how each team is doing right now I’d like to rank the NFL franchises by their overall outlook.
The first line of numbers you’ll see under each team name is the win-loss record from the past three seasons (2009-2011) and the average point differential per game. The second line is the win-loss record and the point differential from the 2012 season. For some teams (see #1) it shows the remarkable consistency that they have had over the past several years. For others (#’s 3, 7, and 30) it shows how far they’ve come or fallen in the last year or two.
My attempt in ranking the teams is to take a bit of a longer view of the league and each franchise. I don’t want the rankings to be a of-the-moment style power rankings because that can be contingent upon what key players had for breakfast before a big game. Essentially, I’m answering the following question; if I could take over the day to day operations of any franchise, which would I choose? On top of that, once I did take over the franchise, how much work would need to be done to shape the franchise into a long-term contender.
Without further delay, the rankings:
SUPER BOWL CONTENDER DIVISION
1 – New England Patriots
37-11, 10.79
12-4, 14.13
The reasons for this ranking are simple; Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Brady may not be as young as he once was (he’s 35) but the core of skill players around him are very young (top five receivers are, on average, 27, and the leading rusher this year, Stevan Ridley, is 23). As long as Brady is at his distributing best, this offense will be incredibly dynamic.
On the other side of the ball, the Patriots invested heavily in the last few drafts and their defense isn’t a complete joke. If they can continue to improve on the defensive side of the ball while simply maintaining their level of performance on the offensive side of the ball, they will continue to be in the short list of Super Bowl contenders for several more years to come.
2 – San Francisco 49ers
27-21, 3.31
11-4-1, 7.75
The 49ers are the most complete team in the league without question. In an era of explosive offenses, they have a solid, dependable defense. Their running game, led by Frank Gore, is physical and bruising but neither of those are the reason that they are the best team in the league right now. In the minds of many people, including myself, the only thing holding them back from true greatness was the quarterback position. Alex Smith has played very well the past two years but there have always been doubts about his ability to take the team on his back and lead them to victory. Even after his spectacular game against the Saints in the 2011 playoffs, those doubts persisted. While the returns are still very early, Colin Kaepernick looks like the kind of quarterback that can take this team to new heights.
The main issue is the inevitable growing pains with a new quarterback. At times Kaepernick has been brilliant but at times he has looked like a new starter. If you look at this category of teams, all have a dependable, Pro-Bowl level quarterback (Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, and Matt Schaub). The odd man out is clearly Kaepernick. The fact that I’m ranking them number 2 is a testament to the rest of this roster and if they continue to get improvement from their second year starter, the sky is the limit for this team.
3 – Denver Broncos
20-28, -4.29
13-3, 12.00
Of all the teams I’ve put in this first category, the Broncos had the worst record from 2009 to 2011 by five games. This is what Peyton Manning can do for a team.
Last year, they did go 8-8, win the AFC West, and win a playoff game playing a style that would have made the service academies proud. They even won a game completing two passes while attempting eight. I watched it and I couldn’t believe it. Everyone spent so much time talking about Tim Tebow that not nearly enough credit was given to the defense and the special teams who played spectacularly through their seven game winning streak.
Most of that same defense is back and they have played extremely well this year. In addition, with Peyton Manning under center, the offensive line is getting its due. They could afford to upgrade at running back (even though Willis McGahee has done very well for Denver) but to find any serious deficiencies in this team requires some serious nitpicking.
4 – Green Bay Packers
36-12, 10.69
11-5, 6.06
As of week 16 of the season, the Packers have 14 players on injured reserve and two key contributors (James Starks and Charles Woodson) who are out indefinitely but won’t go on injured reserve so they can be eligible to come back this season. On top of that, they basically had a win taken from them by the replacement refs in Seattle. Despite all of that, they won the NFC North again and it’s all because of Aaron Rodgers.
Their defensive personnel will change over the next few years, their personnel in the running game will change, and their receivers and tight ends will change. They will always be a threat to make a January run to another Super Bowl title because Aaron Rodgers is their quarterback and he just turned 29.
I initially had them ranked a little but higher but as long as their defense is this banged up (and when banged up, this bad) I have no choice but to drop them down some. A quarterback can only do so much to make up for the sins of their defense.
5 – Houston Texans
25-23, 2.52
12-4, 5.31
Remember when Gary Kubiak was on the hot seat every year? Last year he did a great job of coaching through various injuries to Matt Schaub, Arian Foster, Andre Johnson, and Mario Williams. Even missing their starting quarterback, they won a playoff game and very nearly went to the AFC Championship Game with their third string quarterback.
The future looks very bright for this franchise but they have not shown an ability to play from behind and depending on your opponent, that can be a major problem. I see this team going as far as Matt Schaub can take them.
I’m inclined to believe that the end of the season (as well as the first few games of the season) were aberrations at both ends of the spectrum caused by small sample sizes. The issue is that the playoffs are the ultimate small sample size and if I had to re-rank teams just for the playoff season, I’d put the Texans much lower. They have a good running game and a great defense anchored by one of the best defensive players in the NFL in JJ Watt. No matter how far the Texans go this year, the future is bright.
DIVISION CONTENDER DIVISION
This is a group of teams that for various reasons are not in the Super Bowl contender category. Obviously, any one of these teams could get hot and win a Super Bowl but unless something changes, I don’t see it happening in the next few years. When I say something needs to change, it might just be a mental block that a team has on playing in the playoffs (see team #6) or it might be that they are on the downslide after a long string of Super Bowl contention (see team #15).
6 – Atlanta Falcons
32-16, 4.50
13-3, 7.50
The Falcons are a team that seems poised to burst onto the scene and become a perennial Super Bowl contender any day now but before they can do that, they need to do something first; win a playoff game. Not make it to the Super Bowl or a conference title game, they have to win a single game in a win-or-go-home playoff atmosphere.
Their last two playoff losses have both been to the eventual Super Bowl champions but they have been in devastating fashion. Two years ago Aaron Rodgers was 31-36 for 366 yards and 3 touchdowns in the Packers’ 48-21 demolition of the Falcons in Atlanta. Last year, the Falcons’ offense put up exactly zero points in a 24-2 loss to the Giants.
This team has it all. They have a good defense, great skill players, and a very good and smart quarterback. They are on the cusp of great things but before they can win the Super Bowl, they have to win a playoff game.
7 – Seattle Seahawks
19-29, -4.19
11-5, 10.44
Everyone ridiculed the Seahawks for spending a third round pick on Russell Wilson. For all of his faults (and by that I mean his height), Wilson is a guy who has won and played well wherever he has played. In a league where the all-time leader for passing yards in a single season is Drew Brees, it’s beyond ridiculous that Wilson should have fallen so far in the draft because he wasn’t tall enough.
The Seahawks are a team with a very good defense and a great running game led by Marshawn Lynch. Adding a good decision maker at quarterback elevates this team even further but the biggest reason they crack my top ten has nothing to do with anything that happens on the field.
The 12th man. The Seahawks have an unbelievable home-field advantage right now. With the team they currently have, going 7-1 or 8-0 at home isn’t an unreasonable assumption which means if they only win half their games on the road, they will be able to get to 11 or 12 wins which increases the likelihood of playing playoff games at home. I’m not sure if they can win the Super Bowl as they are currently constructed but they are definitely a team on the rise.
8 – Indianapolis Colts
26-22, -0.65
11-5, -1.88
I’m sure there are 31 teams in the league that were a little miffed at the Colts this past year. Now, I’m not at all insinuating that the Colts tried to lose intentionally in order to secure the number one overall pick. Last year showed just how good Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck are and how much they can add to a team and make the players around them better.
This is a young team with a budding superstar at quarterback. The sky is the limit for this franchise and it looks like they replaced one all-time great with another. From last year to this year, 37 of the 53 roster spots were turned over with new additions from free agency and the draft. As this group of players becomes more familiar with each other and they add a key contributor here and there, it appears that the Colts might be right back at the top of the AFC South where they’ve spent much of the last fifteen years.
9 – Washington Redskins
15-33, -4.67
10-6, 3.00
It would be a completely legitimate question to ask how I can rank the Redskins ahead of 21 teams that have won more game the past three years (only the Browns and Rams have a worse record from 2009-2011) and the answer is very simple; Robert Griffin III.
This team hasn’t been relevant for a long time but this past April they saw a chance to change the direction of the franchise. While the Rams might end up building a good team around Sam Bradford with the picks they got, there is no doubt that the Redskins are now a threat to make the playoffs and/or win the NFC East as long as RGIII is healthy…
But that’s the ultimate rub. He needs to learn how to protect himself. Yes, Kirk Counsins has shown that he is a competent back-up but there’s a big difference between a back-up or even a starting quarterback and a superstar. RGIII is a superstar and the fortunes of the Redskins will be tied to his health for the near future.
10 – Dallas Cowboys
25-23, 1.90
8-8, -1.50
One of these days, I might figure out the Cowboys. They have a very good quarterback, they have excellent skill position players, and they have a decent to good defense. Many have pointed to the culture of the franchise starting with owner Jerry Jones as the main culprit for the failings of the Cowboys over the past, well, 20 years. It’ll be interesting to see if he will be willing to take a step back for the good of the franchise. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it and as long as Jones runs the whole show, look for this team to underachieve.
11 – New York Giants
27-21, 0.33
9-7, 5.31
From 2009 to 2011, the Giants only made the playoffs one time and that season they were 7-7 with two games to go. They then won six straight including their second Super Bowl win in five years. To be brutally honest, I don’t trust this team. I have seen some truly brilliant and dominating performances from this team followed immediately by games where their practice squad showed up instead of the starters. Because of their recent success, I wanted desperately to put them in the first category but couldn’t bring myself to do so. Sure enough, in week 17, with their odds of making the playoffs being very slim indeed, they played brilliantly in a 42-7 win over the Eagles. Until they can play more consistently, I’d have a very hard time moving them up into the Super Bowl Contender category.
12 – Cincinnati Bengals
23-25, -0.79
10-6, 4.44
There is a lot to like about the Bengals on the heels of back-to-back playoff appearances. Their defense is good and the combination of Andy Dalton and AJ Green has done wonders for this team. If there is one thing I don’t trust about the Bengals franchise, it’s owner Mike Brown. For years, various players have talked about how bad it is to play for the Bengals and for this franchise to take a step forward, that perception will need to change.
Having said that, they are on the uptick at the right time. The Steelers and Ravens are both on the downswing for various reasons so the AFC North is there for the taking. The Bengals won’t be handed anything but they are a promising looking team for the next few years.
13 – Chicago Bears
26-22, 0.25
10-6, 6.13
The Bears started 7-3 last year and 7-1 this year and both times, they looked like one of the most complete teams in the league. The second half of both seasons has shown this isn’t necessarily the case. Can they overtake the Packers to win the division and make sure they play at home in the playoffs? Is Jay Cutler a Super Bowl level quarterback? Lovie Smith took this team to the Super Bowl several years ago with Rex Grossman at QB but can he take them back there?
There are a lot of questions surrounding this team but not many answers.
14 – Baltimore Ravens
33-15, 6.85
10-6, 3.38
Only three teams won more games from 2009-2011 than the Ravens’ 33; the Packers (36), and the Saints and Patriots (37). How can I possibly rank them this low?
Last year looked like it was going to be the breakout year for the Ravens. If one play had gone differently, they would have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl instead of the Patriots. Joe Flacco outplayed Tom Brady for most of the game but as a team they just couldn’t quite get over the hump. This year, the Ravens have taken a huge step back. Flacco is inconsistent and that’s the nice way to put it. They have one of the best running backs in the game in Ray Rice and they seem to be unable to give him the ball. Their defense, which once upon a time won them a Super Bowl, is old and injured and doesn’t instill the fear it once did.
Their offense can take this team far as presently constructed but their defense is going to need a serious overhaul in the near future and that will determine the viability of this franchise going forward.
15 – Pittsburgh Steelers
33-15, 5.94
8-8, 1.38
This is a team that has won two Super Bowls already but the last few years they haven’t gotten any younger and they just can’t stay healthy. Ben Roethlisberger is beyond deadly on third down but for all of the good players and good coaches associated with this team, their offensive line has been downright dreadful for years. On top of that, their most important defensive player (Troy Polamalu), the one who allows Dick Lebeau to do all of his crazy things has been battling injuries for years.
Like the Ravens, their defense is also getting old and needs to be retooled if they want to compete for another Super Bowl with Big Ben at quarterback.
16 – New Orleans Saints
37-11, 9.46
7-9, 0.44
I firmly believe that the Saints will be one of the more fascinating teams to watch over the next couple years. Three years ago, the Saints were the toast of the league in winning the Super Bowl. Last year, they were the focal point again as their offense set numerous records. This past offseason, they were up front and center yet again for all the wrong reasons with the bounty situation.
This season is showing everyone how much a head coach can mean to a team. Sean Payton is the single biggest missing piece this season and they went from a perennial playoff team to a mediocre team at best. You also can’t forget that they have a new defensive coordinator this year who has had troubles adjusting to the new personnel. If Sean Payton comes back to New Orleans and Steve Spagnuolo continues to progress with this defense, there’s no reason why they can’t move back up these rankings in the next couple years.
THE CURSED MIDDLE DIVISION
In professional sports, the middle is a horrendous area that you never want to be in. If you are in the upper third of the league, you are winning and that means that getting free agents to come play for you will be easier. It also means that you are a more complete team and you are more in need of role players than superstars. If you’re in the lower third of the league, you have lots of needs but the good part is that will lead to losing records which puts you into the top portion of the draft and that way you’ll be more likely to get a once in a generation player (see Luck, Andrew). You have many needs but it’s easier to get that cornerstone player.
The middle is a more difficult position than either one of those. You don’t have a terrible team but you have lots of holes. You’re going to be picking somewhere between 11 and 21 (in the NFL at least) and while you can definitely find good players, you’re never going to be selecting those surefire Pro-Bowlers. While the middle is a more precarious position in the NBA, it’s still difficult in the NFL.
17 – Tampa Bay Buccaneers
17-31, -7.08
7-9, -0.31
The Bucs have the misfortune of playing in a brutal division; one which I would say is one of the best in the league. Finishing third in this division isn’t too much of a knock given what the Saints and Falcons have done the past few years.
Apparently Greg Schiano can have some success in the NFL. He took a team that looked truly pathetic in losing the last ten games of the 2011 season and instilled some pride in it. Josh Freeman looks like he can be a good NFL quarterback and Doug Martin looks like an incredibly dynamic back. The process of building a winning franchise can be lengthy but if they stay the course, they have a good chance of becoming a playoff contender.
18 – Cleveland Browns
14-34, -5.83
5-11, -4.13
Despite their record, the Browns haven’t been a complete pushover this year. They have good young dynamic players on both side of the ball and it’s possible that a new ownership group will bring more winning experience to the franchise (the new owner is a former executive for the Steelers).
As with many teams, the fortunes of the Browns seem to be tied up in the status of Brandon Weeden. He has played well this year but given that he is not a conventional rookie (he’s 29 years old) their window for success with Weeden at quarterback is potentially much shorter than with your typical rookie.
Given the sorry state of the franchise since it came back into the league in 1999, the arrow is definitely pointing up for the Browns. While I don’t think they’ll be playing in the Super Bowl soon, I could potentially see a reversal in the AFC North in the next few years with the Browns and Bengals competing for the title and the Steelers and Ravens having some down years.
Having said that, the past ten years of management of those four franchises says to me that that won’t happen.
19 – St. Louis Rams
10-38, -10.71
7-8-1, -3.06
The Rams are hoping that they found their franchise quarterback a couple years ago in Sam Bradford. They went all-in on that theory when they auctioned off the number two pick in the draft this past year (which became Robert Griffin III).
Jeff Fisher has come in and the Rams are playing better but the single biggest problem they have is that Sam Bradford has very few good players to get the ball to. Stephen Jackson has been the consummate professional through the losing years and just passed 10,000 career rushing yards but he’s 29 and if the past decade has taught us anything, 30 is the end or near the end of productivity for NFL running backs.
Right now they are in the wrong division at the wrong time. The 49ers and Seahawks are poised to compete for playoff spots for the next several years so for the next several years, the best the Rams can hope for is a strong third place, keep developing their young players, and get some offensive weapons around Bradford. If they are able to do that, there’s no reason to think they won’t be able to become a playoff team in the future.
20 – Miami Dolphins
20-28, -1.54
7-9, -1.81
The Dolphins spent a first round, top-ten pick on a quarterback just last year and they’re hoping that Ryan Tannehill is the answer to the question that has plagued Miami since 1999; can we please find a quarterback who will adequately replace Dan Marino?
There’s a lot to like about this team with Reggie Bush having a bit of a resurgence in Miami but if they are going to be successful with Tannehill, they need good players for him to throw the ball to. The Dolphins have famously given up on both Wes Welker and Brandon Marshall in the past several years and those are the type of decisions they can’t make if they want to have any chance of dethroning the mighty Patriots in the AFC East.
WE NEED A QUARTERBACK DIVISION
Quarterback in the NFL is the single most important position in professional sports. It is possible to hide a suspect quarterback for a game and sometimes even for a season but in this era of offensive football, the only way to win and to win consistently is to have stability and excellence from the quarterback position.
21 – Minnesota Vikings
21-27, -0.38
10-6, 1.94
Adrian Peterson is simply phenomenal and he is being wasted with Christian Ponder at quarterback. As I said in the lead-in to this section, you can hide a suspect quarterback with a good running game and defense and that’s exactly what the Vikings have done in 2012.
To put the issue in as stark relief as is possible, the one year out of the past five that they’ve had good quarterback play, they went 12-4 and played in the NFC title game with Brett Favre at quarterback. Given how well Peterson is running, it wouldn’t take much to turn their offense into a serious threat but Ponder does not appear to be the answer.
What Peterson has done this year is truly amazing but I cannot consider them legitimate contenders for the NFC North title until they get more competent play from their quarterbacks. With all of the failings of Chicago and Jay Cutler, he has Pro-Bowl level talent and if they can put it together with the passing game, they will leapfrog the Vikings in the standings. That is the main reason why the Bears are #13 in these rankings and the Vikings (a 2012 playoff team) are just outside the top 20.
22 – Buffalo Bills
16-32, -5.67
6-10, -5.69
The Bills tried to make a big splash in the offseason by acquiring Mario Williams via free agency but they have once again fallen flat and won’t have a winning record for an eighth straight year and they will miss the playoffs for the thirteenth straight year.
Ever since receiving a huge contract extension, Ryan Fitzpatrick has been nothing special and despite some dynamic offensive playmakers, they haven’t beaten a single team with a winning record. Like the Dolphins and Jets, the Bills have the current misfortune of competing with the Patriots during one of the more impressive streaks of sustained success in pro sports history.
23 – Arizona Cardinals
23-25, -2.73
5-11, -6.69
I have the sneaking suspicion that coach Ken Whisenhunt has called Kurt Warner (who turned 41 back in June) at least once this year asking how much he really likes his new job with the NFL Network.
The Cardinals quarterback play has been historically bad this year and one of the truly great receivers is languishing on a terrible team. Having said all of that, I believe they are a good quarterback from once against being a threat in the NFC West. The road to the playoffs is far more difficult now than several years ago with the emergence of Seattle and the dominance of San Francisco but that doesn’t mean they can’t make it.
They have several holes but nothing bigger than the quarterback position. It is the falling tide that is sinking all boats (I know that’s not the saying and it doesn’t make sense but that’s what’s happening in Phoenix this year). A better passing game would lead to a better running game and with their defense, they could be a dangerous team with someone else under center.
24 – Oakland Raiders
21-27, -4.52
4-12, -9.56
The Raiders thought Carson Palmer was the answer but clearly that is not the case. Darren McFadden has been healthy this year but that’s all you can say that’s positive about his season. One could easily argue that there are far more issues than just Palmer (such as a bottom-5 defense) but the fact is that they were 5-3 at the time of the trade and in the driver’s seat in the AFC West.
Carson Palmer has always been a bit overrated as an NFL quarterback but he hasn’t been terrible. The Raiders overpaid for him hoping that he was going to be able to go back to his 2005 form and they got burned for it. Given all they gave up for him, they’ll be paying for this mistake for several years and given the ascendance of Peyton Manning in Denver, don’t look for the Raiders in the playoffs for several years to come.
25 – Tennessee Titans
23-25, -0.48
6-10, -8.81
Chris Johnson rushed for 2,000 yards and since then, he’s been one of the more overpaid players in the entire league. His statement that he can rush for 2,500 yards in a season is beyond ridiculous. I don’t want to focus my wrath on Johnson alone but the Titans were 9-7 last year and were in the mix for the final playoff spot and the fact of the matter is that Johnson is not the same player that he was when he rushed for 2,000 yards in a season. Granted, some of that blame belongs to the passing game and some belongs to the offensive line but whatever the case, he is not the same back and he is certainly not performing as he should be given his salary.
But the quarterback position is also an issue. Jake Locker has had periods of brilliance but he has also not yet shown that he is the long-term answer at the position. Matt Hasselbeck stepped in and played well last year and despite having some good play left in the tank was benched this season (he’s at the top of my I’m-shocked-he’s-not-starting-somewhere list).
Hasselbeck can still be a serviceable starter and Locker has shown flashes of why they drafted him in the top-ten. What the Titans needs is better play around the quarterback position and stability within it.
LOST IN THE WOODS DIVISION
Some teams just need to blow up the roster and the front office and start over again. Very few franchises in any sport are able to compete year in and year out and even they have years here and there when they need to focus on rebuilding their roster, sometimes from the ground up. Only four teams made the playoffs each year from 2009 to 2011, the Saints, Ravens, Packers, and Patriots. Sooner or later, every team has an off year and needs to address some need here or there.
26 – New York Jets
28-20, 3.94
6-10, -5.88
Rex Ryan came into town and made all sorts of bold proclamations. He even made it to the AFC Championship Game in back-to-back years with Mark Sanchez outdueling Peyton Manning and Tom Brady in back-to-back weeks at one point. The past two years have been a train wreck and they added to the ridiculousness by adding Tim Tebow and then not doing anything with him.
The roster is nowhere near as deep as it was several years ago and Mark Sanchez desperately needs a change of scenery. Rex Ryan and their front office have done a terrible job of maintaining the success they had in Ryan’s first two years and it just shows that they are not the answer long-term to run this team. The only thing that’s harder to understand than the performance of the team and the decisions made by the front office are the decisions made by their owner and that’s the one thing that nobody can change.
The Jets need wholesale changes all over their roster and their front office and all the while, the Jets’ nemesis, Bill Belichick, has retooled the Patriots with younger players to supplement his first ballot Hall of Fame quarterback. The Dolphins have a promising young quarterback and the Bills look like they are finally fed up with losing. The Jets, meanwhile, owe Mark Sanchez $8.5 million next year.
On top of it all, Rex Ryan emphatically said he is the man for the job with the Jets. That really says about everything you need to know about the level of dysfunction with the Jets.
27 – Detroit Lions
18-30, -3.17
4-12, -4.06
There are many reasons why I feel like this team should be ranked much higher than this. Matt Stafford is one of four quarterbacks to throw for more than 5,000 yards in a season. Calvin Johnson just set the single season record for receiving yards. The Lions defensive line is one of the best in football. When you put all that together, how can you get a bottom five ranking?
I believe the tone of a franchise starts from the top and while Jim Schwartz has brought a much needed edge to this team, it has led to a lack of discipline that has shot them in their collective foot numerous times in the past two years.
This is a team that could become a top ten team if they became more disciplined and developed more of a running game. It would also help if Matt Stafford could develop a more consistent throwing motion but one thing at a time. Last year they were a dynamic offense with Jahvid Best but once Best sustained his last concussion, the Lions appeared to abandon the running game and haven’t been the same since. Now, they are reduced to Stafford throwing the ball to Calvin Johnson and seeing if Suh can get to the quarterback without kicking someone after the play. That is no way to build a team.
28 – Carolina Panthers
16-32, -4.75
7-9, -0.38
This team was 2-14 in 2010 and got to draft Cam Newton number on overall. In his rookie year, they showed great promise in improving to 6-10 and this year, the Panthers were a popular pick to make the leap to becoming a playoff contender.
What they have done is fall flat on their face. Newton has shown his immaturity in dealing with adversity and these losses have shown that they had more holes than just at quarterback in going 2-14.
Overall, the arrow is pointing up for the Panthers because they have a dynamic quarterback who, with any luck and health, will only get better. However, they have a long way to go before they can be considered serious playoff contenders, especially in the same division as the Falcons, Saints, and improved Bucs.
29 – San Diego Chargers
30-18, 5.88
7-9, 0.00
The acquisition of Peyton Manning shifted the balance of power in the AFC West and it won’t be reshuffled anytime soon (I’d say until Manning retires). Phillip Rivers has put up great numbers and many regular season wins in his career but that hasn’t translated to any sort of postseason success. As veteran offensive players have either moved on (LaDanian Tomlinson and Vincent Jackson) or been injured (Antonio Gates), Rivers has been somewhat exposed as the caretaker of a great offense instead of the reason for it.
On top of that, Norv Turner has one again showed that he doesn’t belong as a head coach in the NFL. He took over a team that was at the crest of the wave and had just gone 14-2. They have since fallen very far very fast and the future is bleak for the Chargers.
30 – Philadelphia Eagles
29-19, 4.63
4-12, -10.25
The Eagles immediate future will most likely be tied to who their head coach is next year. Coaching changes always lead to a certain amount of turmoil and except for one notable example (Jim Harbaugh with the 49ers) they lead to a regression in on-field performance as the players have to learn a new system.
Nick Foles has played well but given that he’s a rookie, there’s no way to know how he’ll turn out. The Michael Vick era is clearly at an end in Philadelphia. The Eagles have an overabundance of dangerous skill position players between DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, and Jeremy Maclin but the problem they’ve had the last few years is who gets the ball to all of them?
Given the progress made by the Redskins, the overall talent in Dallas, and Eli Manning, it appears that the Eagles are several years away from serious contention.
Originally, I had the Eagles significantly higher than this but then the news has come out that Andy Reid will be fired after the season. It’s far from confirmed but with a very good accomplished head coach, this team drastically underachieved the past two years. It will take a very special personality to be able to come in and get good results out of this team and if I had to bet on it, I’d say it won’t happen.
31 – Kansas City Chiefs
21-27, -4.50
2-14, -13.38
Romeo Crennel is a good defensive coach but has had little to no success as a head coach. Given that he’s only coached the Browns and the Chiefs, this isn’t all that surprising.
Jamaal Charles has had a great season coming back from injury but that’s about the only bright spot for the Chiefs this year. It’s gotten so bad that the home fans infamously booed Matt Cassell when he got hurt (in one of the more classless moves in the NFL this year).
This year has been a trainwreck for the Chiefs and it starts with the front office. Big changes are needed which means the Chiefs won’t be very competitive for several years to come.
32 – Jacksonville Jaguars
20-28, -5.04
2-14, -11.81
What does it tell you when the Jaguars are doing so poorly to fill the seats in their stadium that they’re considering bringing in Tim Tebow? When you put selling tickets ahead of winning on the field, it says all you need to say about the state of the franchise.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Election 2012
On November 6th, 2012, the world will not change. However, on January 20th, 2013, it might begin to change drastically because, let’s be honest, in the 75 days between Election Day and inauguration day, there’s only so much a president-elect (or president, perhaps) can do. It has been a fascinating several months to say the very least and has left many, many Americans (including myself) conflicted over what to do on that fateful Tuesday. There is an absurd amount of numbers that I could throw at you in this post to try and make you think one thing or another but if this election cycle has proven one thing once and for all, it’s that statistics can truly be spun to make or break almost any argument. Unfortunately, this post will not be completely devoid of statistics but I will try to present them in an objective light and let you make the decision for yourself. I came into this election cycle almost entirely sure (maybe 95%) of who I was going to vote for but after hearing more and more, I wavered. I’m as close to 100% as I’ll be before I walk into the voting booth on November 6th and what follows is some of the major pieces that came together to help me make my decision.
THIRD PARTIES
Very quickly, I narrowed my field to the Republican and Democratic parties. I’ve heard many good things about politicians from other parties this year (especially Gary Johnson) but I can’t bring myself to vote for one of them. The fact of the matter is that this year, it is a wasted vote. There are many legitimate reasons for voting for a third party but I don’t believe that “I’m too fed up with Republicans and Democrats” should be one of them. I am way too fed up with Republicans and Democrats right now but the fact of the matter is that they will govern this country for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, disagree with me… I dare you.
Some systems can be changed from the outside and unfortunately, I don’t believe Congress and the White House are included in that group. Therefore, the only alternative is to attempt to change it from the inside, finding the candidates that you believe are good for the party and for the country and doing everything you can to get them elected. Granted, this is becoming more and more difficult but I still believe that it is easier to get an unconventional Democrat or Republican elected than it is to get a Green Party candidate elected.
Say whatever you want about being more informed or more thorough for looking at all the candidates and not just the top two. Your vote accompanies no risk whatsoever. No matter what, on November 7th your candidate will wake up unemployed. You don’t have to worry about voting for the winning party and having to defend your candidate through successes and failures for the next four years. You get to lob shots from complete safety, saying that your candidate could have done better in the White House despite the fact that your candidate will receive exactly as many electoral votes and you and I do. I’m sorry if this sounds overly harsh, I truly am. Not everyone who votes for a third party is like this and in fact, very few are. Just don’t you dare look down on me for choosing between the two main parties. Besides, if you read the rest of this post, I will hopefully prove to you that I am indeed making an informed decision.
REPUBLICAN VS DEMOCRAT
I’ve voted in two presidential elections before now but never has there been this large of a partisan divide. The insults being thrown from one side of the aisle to the other are uglier than many of the things I heard in locker rooms growing up. Much of this can be attributed to the anonymity of the internet. The most shocking part is that the people who are involved in politics for a living, politicians, political pundits, and political reporters, are also guilty of the horrible tone of politics today. According to popular opinion, Barack Obama is going to turn the United States into a socialist country and Mitt Romney will outsource it to China and India and soon the only jobs available in the US will be in the military. Politics has always had an ugly side but in the past four years, ugly has become mainstream and civility has been marginalized. This has caused the average voter to become seriously disenfranchised with potentially disastrous repercussions. The rest are so adamant in their conviction that they are right and that the other guy is wrong that they have become fanatical with one purpose in mind; beat the other guy. Not “win”, but “beat the other guy.” It sounds like the same thing but it definitely is not.
With their supporters becoming more fanatical, it seems that the parties are following suit. Perhaps it’s the other way around but one way or another, the main political parties that have the burden of representing over 300 million people have moved farther and farther from the center of the road. On the political spectrum, I firmly believe that Americans roughly fit a bell curve. For those of you who don’t know, a bell curve is an even distribution around the middle and the key points are you move farther away are measured in standard deviations. If you go one standard deviation from the middle (only looking at half of the graph), you’ve covered 34.1% of the population. The second standard deviation covers an additional 13.6% and the third covers another 2.1%.
This would imply that 68.2% of Americans are within a reasonable distance of the middle of the road and if you include the more liberal and conservative, that number goes up to 95.6%. The fringes are occupied by only 4.4% of people (accepting my theory). The main problem is that the Democratic and Republican parties aren’t representing the inner 34.1% in their platforms. They’re representing the 13.6% or the 2.1% and then they’re waging an all-out war for the first standard deviation.
I know this isn’t a perfect analogy but I firmly believe that’s what politics are about these days. The graph might be skewed slightly to the left or the right depending on the issue or the year or the candidate but overall, most people are somewhere in the middle. To add some clarity to this decision, now is the time to delve into the issues that face our nation over the next four years.
ECONOMY (REVENUE)
This is really all the Republicans want to talk about in this election cycle so we might as well start there. We stand today at a very interesting crossroads where we are still a dominant economic force around the world but our status as such is in some jeopardy. From 2002-2011, the federal government spent $6.49 trillion more than it took in in the form of taxes and a deficit of over $1 trillion is projected for 2012. The fact that we have a ludicrous budget situation is not a partisan issue; both parties are at least partially to blame for our current situation and I’m not going to get into the semantics of who is more to blame. Blaming other people does not help move us towards a solution and I’m not about to do it here.
Why is this a big deal? Simply take a look a Europe. They are finding out what happens when borrowing to fund your nation’s economy no longer becomes an option. At that point, huge fiscal and monetary reforms are usually necessary and they will almost certainly come along with a severe recession or a depression. So how can we avoid this future and what steps are the candidates taking to assure our nation’s prosperity?
In short, Mitt Romney’s plan relies on an expectation and Barack Obama’s plan is more realistic. Both candidates favor a reform of the tax code and frankly, who can blame them? Both say that loopholes and deductions need to be limited and considering that these disproportionately favor wealthier Americans, it seems logical and prudent.
Where they differ is where they go from there. Governor Romney wants to reduce tax rates by 20% from that point. Much has been made of Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut that nobody knows how he’s going to pay for because he’s been a bit short on specifics. It’s possible that closing loopholes and deductions would be able to pay for the decrease in rates and then some (estimates are that all deductions and loopholes account for $1 trillion annually, double the lost revenue of Romney’s proposed tax cuts). Interestingly, if we take Governor Romney at his word, it is possible for him to lower tax rates on everybody, widen the tax base (specifically on wealthier Americans) and have the whole thing be revenue neutral. If this is indeed the case, it would be a good plan for our economy.
Now for a little economics background. Our nation’s saving rate is roughly 4% (and has fluctuated from less than 1% in the booming times of the 2000’s to 14.6% in May of 1975). That means that of people’s disposable income, they save 4% and spend 96%. From this we can develop the “simple tax multiplier” which is simply the inverse of the marginal propensity to consume (-0.96) divided by the marginal propensity to save (0.04) and this gives us a result of -24 exactly. This means that if you were to reduce the income tax rate on consumers by $1, aggregate production of the economy will increase by $24. This is an astounding number and begs for serious tax reform.
President Obama wants to limit deductions and loopholes as well but without the serious cut in tax rates that Governor Romney proposes. In my opinion, his tax plan is more of a combination of increasing growth while reducing the deficit all at once. Since these loophole closures will disproportionately affect wealthier Americans, it is possible that Obama’s plan will reduce the tax burden on the middle class (which is most important to our economy) while bringing in additional revenue from the wealthy, thus reducing the deficit in two ways.
This is where Romney’s “expectation” comes in. He expects that with his tax reforms, the economy will grow more and thus will create more tax revenue for the government to reduce the deficit. Obama’s approach is hoping for the same thing but it taking a more proactive approach to deficit reduction on the revenue side.
ECONOMY (SPENDING)
The flip side of the deficit coin is government spending which accounts for nearly 25% of the nation’s economy (as measured by GDP). Both candidates agree that spending restraint is needed but they would go about it in different ways. Truth be told, I’m not sure what federal spending Governor Romney wants to cut; every plan from the Republican ticket that I’ve come across is shockingly low on specifics. In general though, Romney would increase defense spending by about $200 billion per year (on average over the next ten years) while cutting about 20-25% from every other federal agency.
During the Republican primaries, candidates made a big deal of which executive departments they were going to cut and they were lauded for their bold plans. The only problem is they were suggesting the elimination of the Departments of Education, Energy, and others that make up an incredibly low portion of federal spending. The fact of the matter is that the only places that you can cut $1 trillion of federal spending are welfare programs, entitlement reform, and defense spending. Romney wants to actually increase one of those three so if he was serious about balancing the budget, the other two programs would have to take serious hits.
President Obama seems to have a more balanced approach to cutting federal spending (as part of the Budget Control Act which he incorporated into his budget plan for 2013 and beyond). The big difference is that he would cut significant spending from defense.
The biggest issue on the spending side of the ledger isn’t in the next one or even four years. It’s ten years down the road when programs like Medicare and Social Security will be accounting for an enormous chuck on the federal spending pie. Serious reform is needed and unfortunately, there isn’t a political will amongst the people to get that done. Young voters aren’t worried about Social Security because they’re still 20-40 years away from eligibility and so they don’t vote with that in mind and they don’t pressure their representatives to get things done. People who are receiving Social Security benefits have a vested interest to make sure their benefits don’t ever go down. Therefore, you have a huge block of voters that only want Social Security spending increased and another huge block of voters that aren’t thinking about Social Security. This has helped shape the budget conundrum we’re currently mired in; people don’t think ten or twenty years down the road and this is one of the great failings of our nation.
SOCIAL ISSUES
This is a section where I cannot be completely objective but I also don’t believe I need to be. When it comes to the key issues, I don’t need to tell you where Republicans and Democrats stand. I do see a difference between the two parties and before you send me hate mail, realize that this is simply my observation and my opinion.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are very secure in their faith; I think that’s obvious. The part of their social agenda I do not agree with is the part where they think that everyone should life the same sort of lifestyle that they do. I believe that the Republican Party, specifically their leaders in Congress and the Party’s de facto leader Mitt Romney, seek to impose their religious beliefs about lifestyle on the rest of the American people.
The Republican Party is against gay marriage and abortion largely for religious reasons and because of that, they believe that nobody should be able to have an abortion or should be able to marry a member of their own gender. Simply put, this is not an example of a free society. This is a government telling its citizens who they can and cannot marry or what they can do with their own bodies*.
*At this point, I’m not going to get into a debate about when life begins. According to the laws of our land, abortions are legal under the right to privacy and this implies to me that the Supreme Court views an abortion as a decision made by the mother alone without regard for the fetus.
The government puts laws into place to restrict what we can and cannot do with our lives. Many Republicans believe this is the opposite of freedom and yet they seek to enact laws that would impose their religious beliefs upon people who do not believe the same things and I believe that telling someone else how they should live their life is just plain wrong.
The interesting flip side of that coin is the government’s role in the economy but in this case, the roles are reversed. Democrats believe in more regulation from the government when it comes to the economy but less when it comes to social issues. Here’s the big difference between the two stances. Regulations on businesses or the economy are often put in place because something a company is doing is harming society at large. The Clear Water Act, Clean Air Act, and numerous restrictions put in place by the EPA protect us every day even though we might never set foot in an industrial plant. These are good laws to have in place because it prevents a plant from having a negative effect on another person. A ban on gay marriage is ludicrous because two gay people getting married has no effect on anyone else.
It’s a very broad sweeping generalization but my view of what Democrats and Republicans think government should do is essentially this; Democrats want government to help provide a certain standard of living for its citizens (through a social safety net, regulations on business, Social Security, etc.) while Republicans feel government should defend the nation and make sure everyone leads good Christian lives.
THE VOTE
Neither candidate has run a particularly good campaign. Governor Romney has made several missteps and I believe one in particular (47%) will eventually cost him the election. It’s very difficult to hear him say that and then hear him say he cares about 100% of Americans in a debate and take him seriously… especially when it’s common knowledge that his personal worth is estimated to be about $250 million. When he says he cares about all Americans, he sounds like a member of a royal family saying he cares about all his subjects and then can’t wait to get away from them.
Having said that, I do believe that Governor Romney and the true rising star of this election cycle, Representative Paul Ryan, are the best ticket to tackle the economic problems of the next four years. I’ve read Ryan’s economic plan and if you’re able to get past the partisan rhetoric, it’s a brilliantly written document with many good ideas and good points. Frankly, the only thing I disagree with is his stance on military spending (he says increase, I say no). The Republican Party would prefer I stop my analysis right then and there. After all, “it’s all about the economy.”
Except it isn’t.
One of the things that make the United States the envy of many parts of the world is our economy and our wealth but another large part is our society and the freedoms we enjoy. In this nation as a woman, you won’t get shot in the head by your own countrymen for pursuing an education. In this nation you are free to write or say whatever you want about even one of the most powerful men in the world. In this nation I can say or write whatever I want about a deity and do not have to fear any repercussion from my government.
In the end, my decision in 2012 is simple. I’m not sure where we’ll be in four years economically with either Romney or Obama as president but I think that Romney’s economic policies are better for where our country is and what our country needs. However, Republican social policies and agendas, as set by leaders in Congress and their nominees for the highest offices in the country, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, make me feel ashamed to call myself an American.
THIRD PARTIES
Very quickly, I narrowed my field to the Republican and Democratic parties. I’ve heard many good things about politicians from other parties this year (especially Gary Johnson) but I can’t bring myself to vote for one of them. The fact of the matter is that this year, it is a wasted vote. There are many legitimate reasons for voting for a third party but I don’t believe that “I’m too fed up with Republicans and Democrats” should be one of them. I am way too fed up with Republicans and Democrats right now but the fact of the matter is that they will govern this country for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, disagree with me… I dare you.
Some systems can be changed from the outside and unfortunately, I don’t believe Congress and the White House are included in that group. Therefore, the only alternative is to attempt to change it from the inside, finding the candidates that you believe are good for the party and for the country and doing everything you can to get them elected. Granted, this is becoming more and more difficult but I still believe that it is easier to get an unconventional Democrat or Republican elected than it is to get a Green Party candidate elected.
Say whatever you want about being more informed or more thorough for looking at all the candidates and not just the top two. Your vote accompanies no risk whatsoever. No matter what, on November 7th your candidate will wake up unemployed. You don’t have to worry about voting for the winning party and having to defend your candidate through successes and failures for the next four years. You get to lob shots from complete safety, saying that your candidate could have done better in the White House despite the fact that your candidate will receive exactly as many electoral votes and you and I do. I’m sorry if this sounds overly harsh, I truly am. Not everyone who votes for a third party is like this and in fact, very few are. Just don’t you dare look down on me for choosing between the two main parties. Besides, if you read the rest of this post, I will hopefully prove to you that I am indeed making an informed decision.
REPUBLICAN VS DEMOCRAT
I’ve voted in two presidential elections before now but never has there been this large of a partisan divide. The insults being thrown from one side of the aisle to the other are uglier than many of the things I heard in locker rooms growing up. Much of this can be attributed to the anonymity of the internet. The most shocking part is that the people who are involved in politics for a living, politicians, political pundits, and political reporters, are also guilty of the horrible tone of politics today. According to popular opinion, Barack Obama is going to turn the United States into a socialist country and Mitt Romney will outsource it to China and India and soon the only jobs available in the US will be in the military. Politics has always had an ugly side but in the past four years, ugly has become mainstream and civility has been marginalized. This has caused the average voter to become seriously disenfranchised with potentially disastrous repercussions. The rest are so adamant in their conviction that they are right and that the other guy is wrong that they have become fanatical with one purpose in mind; beat the other guy. Not “win”, but “beat the other guy.” It sounds like the same thing but it definitely is not.
With their supporters becoming more fanatical, it seems that the parties are following suit. Perhaps it’s the other way around but one way or another, the main political parties that have the burden of representing over 300 million people have moved farther and farther from the center of the road. On the political spectrum, I firmly believe that Americans roughly fit a bell curve. For those of you who don’t know, a bell curve is an even distribution around the middle and the key points are you move farther away are measured in standard deviations. If you go one standard deviation from the middle (only looking at half of the graph), you’ve covered 34.1% of the population. The second standard deviation covers an additional 13.6% and the third covers another 2.1%.
This would imply that 68.2% of Americans are within a reasonable distance of the middle of the road and if you include the more liberal and conservative, that number goes up to 95.6%. The fringes are occupied by only 4.4% of people (accepting my theory). The main problem is that the Democratic and Republican parties aren’t representing the inner 34.1% in their platforms. They’re representing the 13.6% or the 2.1% and then they’re waging an all-out war for the first standard deviation.
I know this isn’t a perfect analogy but I firmly believe that’s what politics are about these days. The graph might be skewed slightly to the left or the right depending on the issue or the year or the candidate but overall, most people are somewhere in the middle. To add some clarity to this decision, now is the time to delve into the issues that face our nation over the next four years.
ECONOMY (REVENUE)
This is really all the Republicans want to talk about in this election cycle so we might as well start there. We stand today at a very interesting crossroads where we are still a dominant economic force around the world but our status as such is in some jeopardy. From 2002-2011, the federal government spent $6.49 trillion more than it took in in the form of taxes and a deficit of over $1 trillion is projected for 2012. The fact that we have a ludicrous budget situation is not a partisan issue; both parties are at least partially to blame for our current situation and I’m not going to get into the semantics of who is more to blame. Blaming other people does not help move us towards a solution and I’m not about to do it here.
Why is this a big deal? Simply take a look a Europe. They are finding out what happens when borrowing to fund your nation’s economy no longer becomes an option. At that point, huge fiscal and monetary reforms are usually necessary and they will almost certainly come along with a severe recession or a depression. So how can we avoid this future and what steps are the candidates taking to assure our nation’s prosperity?
In short, Mitt Romney’s plan relies on an expectation and Barack Obama’s plan is more realistic. Both candidates favor a reform of the tax code and frankly, who can blame them? Both say that loopholes and deductions need to be limited and considering that these disproportionately favor wealthier Americans, it seems logical and prudent.
Where they differ is where they go from there. Governor Romney wants to reduce tax rates by 20% from that point. Much has been made of Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut that nobody knows how he’s going to pay for because he’s been a bit short on specifics. It’s possible that closing loopholes and deductions would be able to pay for the decrease in rates and then some (estimates are that all deductions and loopholes account for $1 trillion annually, double the lost revenue of Romney’s proposed tax cuts). Interestingly, if we take Governor Romney at his word, it is possible for him to lower tax rates on everybody, widen the tax base (specifically on wealthier Americans) and have the whole thing be revenue neutral. If this is indeed the case, it would be a good plan for our economy.
Now for a little economics background. Our nation’s saving rate is roughly 4% (and has fluctuated from less than 1% in the booming times of the 2000’s to 14.6% in May of 1975). That means that of people’s disposable income, they save 4% and spend 96%. From this we can develop the “simple tax multiplier” which is simply the inverse of the marginal propensity to consume (-0.96) divided by the marginal propensity to save (0.04) and this gives us a result of -24 exactly. This means that if you were to reduce the income tax rate on consumers by $1, aggregate production of the economy will increase by $24. This is an astounding number and begs for serious tax reform.
President Obama wants to limit deductions and loopholes as well but without the serious cut in tax rates that Governor Romney proposes. In my opinion, his tax plan is more of a combination of increasing growth while reducing the deficit all at once. Since these loophole closures will disproportionately affect wealthier Americans, it is possible that Obama’s plan will reduce the tax burden on the middle class (which is most important to our economy) while bringing in additional revenue from the wealthy, thus reducing the deficit in two ways.
This is where Romney’s “expectation” comes in. He expects that with his tax reforms, the economy will grow more and thus will create more tax revenue for the government to reduce the deficit. Obama’s approach is hoping for the same thing but it taking a more proactive approach to deficit reduction on the revenue side.
ECONOMY (SPENDING)
The flip side of the deficit coin is government spending which accounts for nearly 25% of the nation’s economy (as measured by GDP). Both candidates agree that spending restraint is needed but they would go about it in different ways. Truth be told, I’m not sure what federal spending Governor Romney wants to cut; every plan from the Republican ticket that I’ve come across is shockingly low on specifics. In general though, Romney would increase defense spending by about $200 billion per year (on average over the next ten years) while cutting about 20-25% from every other federal agency.
During the Republican primaries, candidates made a big deal of which executive departments they were going to cut and they were lauded for their bold plans. The only problem is they were suggesting the elimination of the Departments of Education, Energy, and others that make up an incredibly low portion of federal spending. The fact of the matter is that the only places that you can cut $1 trillion of federal spending are welfare programs, entitlement reform, and defense spending. Romney wants to actually increase one of those three so if he was serious about balancing the budget, the other two programs would have to take serious hits.
President Obama seems to have a more balanced approach to cutting federal spending (as part of the Budget Control Act which he incorporated into his budget plan for 2013 and beyond). The big difference is that he would cut significant spending from defense.
The biggest issue on the spending side of the ledger isn’t in the next one or even four years. It’s ten years down the road when programs like Medicare and Social Security will be accounting for an enormous chuck on the federal spending pie. Serious reform is needed and unfortunately, there isn’t a political will amongst the people to get that done. Young voters aren’t worried about Social Security because they’re still 20-40 years away from eligibility and so they don’t vote with that in mind and they don’t pressure their representatives to get things done. People who are receiving Social Security benefits have a vested interest to make sure their benefits don’t ever go down. Therefore, you have a huge block of voters that only want Social Security spending increased and another huge block of voters that aren’t thinking about Social Security. This has helped shape the budget conundrum we’re currently mired in; people don’t think ten or twenty years down the road and this is one of the great failings of our nation.
SOCIAL ISSUES
This is a section where I cannot be completely objective but I also don’t believe I need to be. When it comes to the key issues, I don’t need to tell you where Republicans and Democrats stand. I do see a difference between the two parties and before you send me hate mail, realize that this is simply my observation and my opinion.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are very secure in their faith; I think that’s obvious. The part of their social agenda I do not agree with is the part where they think that everyone should life the same sort of lifestyle that they do. I believe that the Republican Party, specifically their leaders in Congress and the Party’s de facto leader Mitt Romney, seek to impose their religious beliefs about lifestyle on the rest of the American people.
The Republican Party is against gay marriage and abortion largely for religious reasons and because of that, they believe that nobody should be able to have an abortion or should be able to marry a member of their own gender. Simply put, this is not an example of a free society. This is a government telling its citizens who they can and cannot marry or what they can do with their own bodies*.
*At this point, I’m not going to get into a debate about when life begins. According to the laws of our land, abortions are legal under the right to privacy and this implies to me that the Supreme Court views an abortion as a decision made by the mother alone without regard for the fetus.
The government puts laws into place to restrict what we can and cannot do with our lives. Many Republicans believe this is the opposite of freedom and yet they seek to enact laws that would impose their religious beliefs upon people who do not believe the same things and I believe that telling someone else how they should live their life is just plain wrong.
The interesting flip side of that coin is the government’s role in the economy but in this case, the roles are reversed. Democrats believe in more regulation from the government when it comes to the economy but less when it comes to social issues. Here’s the big difference between the two stances. Regulations on businesses or the economy are often put in place because something a company is doing is harming society at large. The Clear Water Act, Clean Air Act, and numerous restrictions put in place by the EPA protect us every day even though we might never set foot in an industrial plant. These are good laws to have in place because it prevents a plant from having a negative effect on another person. A ban on gay marriage is ludicrous because two gay people getting married has no effect on anyone else.
It’s a very broad sweeping generalization but my view of what Democrats and Republicans think government should do is essentially this; Democrats want government to help provide a certain standard of living for its citizens (through a social safety net, regulations on business, Social Security, etc.) while Republicans feel government should defend the nation and make sure everyone leads good Christian lives.
THE VOTE
Neither candidate has run a particularly good campaign. Governor Romney has made several missteps and I believe one in particular (47%) will eventually cost him the election. It’s very difficult to hear him say that and then hear him say he cares about 100% of Americans in a debate and take him seriously… especially when it’s common knowledge that his personal worth is estimated to be about $250 million. When he says he cares about all Americans, he sounds like a member of a royal family saying he cares about all his subjects and then can’t wait to get away from them.
Having said that, I do believe that Governor Romney and the true rising star of this election cycle, Representative Paul Ryan, are the best ticket to tackle the economic problems of the next four years. I’ve read Ryan’s economic plan and if you’re able to get past the partisan rhetoric, it’s a brilliantly written document with many good ideas and good points. Frankly, the only thing I disagree with is his stance on military spending (he says increase, I say no). The Republican Party would prefer I stop my analysis right then and there. After all, “it’s all about the economy.”
Except it isn’t.
One of the things that make the United States the envy of many parts of the world is our economy and our wealth but another large part is our society and the freedoms we enjoy. In this nation as a woman, you won’t get shot in the head by your own countrymen for pursuing an education. In this nation you are free to write or say whatever you want about even one of the most powerful men in the world. In this nation I can say or write whatever I want about a deity and do not have to fear any repercussion from my government.
In the end, my decision in 2012 is simple. I’m not sure where we’ll be in four years economically with either Romney or Obama as president but I think that Romney’s economic policies are better for where our country is and what our country needs. However, Republican social policies and agendas, as set by leaders in Congress and their nominees for the highest offices in the country, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, make me feel ashamed to call myself an American.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Relievers and the Cy Young Award
2012 CY YOUNG RACE
(Note: all statistics are as of August 21st)
Earlier this month, Jayson Stark of espn.com wrote a column advocating that Aroldis Chapman, despite being a reliever, deserves the National League Cy Young award. In principle, I am opposed to the idea of relievers getting the nod for the Cy Young and my reasoning is simple; overall contribution.
Once upon a time I wrote, when comparing two candidates for pitching’s highest honor, would you rather have 250 innings from a pitcher with an ERA of 2.50 or 200 innings? If you had to give one of them an award, which would you give it too? All else being equal, the decision is easy, you give it to the guy who threw more innings. He matched the ERA of the other pitcher across a larger sample size and in my book that always equals a better performance.
However, in the case of Chapman, all else is not equal. His numbers this year have been quite otherworldly:
1.33 ERA
0.72 WHIP
4.3 Hits allowed per 9 Innings
16.5 Strikeouts per 9 Innings
Should he be considered? Absolutely. Should he win the award? That’s what I need to find out.
A while ago I developed a metric to attempt to quantify the best pitching performance in a season. It was based upon three components; Bill James’ Game Score, ERA+, and innings pitched. The first problem I had to overcome was the Game Score; it’s designed for starting pitchers and doesn’t work for relievers. My first iteration of my new and improved metric just plugged in relievers numbers as if they were starters. The results, predictably, were not good.
So I started fiddling (very technical term) with the Game Score metric and came to a method that I like quite a bit. Essentially, I removed all of the rewards for innings pitched and I took out the constant of 50 points that a pitcher starts with. Basically, all that was left was this:
Hit = -2 points
Unearned Run = -2 points
Earned Run = -4 points
Walk = -1 point
Strikeout = 1 point
At the point the next problem is that if we look at all of these statistics on a gross basis or on a per game basis, starters will fare far better than relievers. I solved this problem by calculating how many of each of those stats that a pitcher accumulates per 9 innings pitched and then I did the above calculations with those numbers.
If you crunch a few of those numbers, you’ll realize that for the vast majority of pitchers, that resulting number will come out to be negative. I then took this resulting number and compared it to the best and worst figures league-wide; this gives me a percentile rank of each pitcher. At this point, I calculated my metric by multiplying the percentile rank, the ERA+ value (divided by 100), and innings pitched. The results, to say the very least, were fascinating.
If the Cy Young voting went according to this metric, a reliever would win the National League Cy Young award… and the American League Cy Young award. These are the top five scores from the NL:
195.20 – Aroldis Chapman
183.88 – Johnny Cueto
158.51 – Clayton Kershaw
158.07 – R.A. Dickey
148.32 – Cole Hamels
And in the American League:
236.36 – Fernando Rodney
204.48 – Justin Verlander
193.82 – David Price
187.98 – Felix Hernandez
150.60 – Chris Sale
At this point, I feel the need to widen my gaze by quite a bit. Does this new method unfairly favor relievers over starters? The only way to look at that is to look at many, many more seasons and see how some of the best seasons of all time stack up against each other using this new method.
THE CY YOUNG ERA
The first Cy Young Award was handed out to Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers and since then, 101 awards have been handed out for pitching excellence and thus far, only 9 of them have gone to relievers. To see how well my formula does over the course of Cy Young voting, I applied the above method to all seasons where a pitcher threw 50 or more innings from 1956 to 2011 and while some results were surprising, others were exactly what I expected them to be.
To give you an idea of what kind of numbers this formula produces, the overall average for all of the 15,125 pitchers in the Cy Young era was 81.24. The following are where a pitcher would have to perform in order to make it into various percentiles.
Top half (50th percentile) – 81.24
Top quarter (75th percentile) – 107.57
Top 10% (90th percentile) – 159.50
Top 5% (95th percentile) – 194.41
Top 1% (99th percentile) – 280.46
Below is a graphic representation of where this formula (cleverly named the “Murphy Score”) calculates all pitchers to be. My reason for this is simple; when I say that a reliever posted a score of 250.0, quickly referring to this chart will show you that that season was in about the top 500 of the Cy Young era. While that doesn’t sound great, remember that this sample has 15,125 data points which means a score of 250.0 would be better than 98.2% of pitchers in the past 56 years.
You will also notice while perusing this chart that there are a few data points on the extreme high end. Only 23 pitchers had a season that produced a Murphy Score of over 400 and of those, only 3 broke 500. The overwhelmingly vast majority of pitchers fell into the lower end of the scale while a few had truly transcendent performances and frankly, that’s about what you should expect.
But the question that I want to examine is how do relievers stack up against starters? To separate the relievers from the starters, I simply looked at the percentage of a pitcher’s appearances that were starts. If that was over 50%, I considered him a starting pitcher and if it was under 50%, he was a reliever. It’s a bit on the simplistic side but I had to draw the line somewhere.
As you can imagine by simply looking at my formula, the numbers will be heavily skewed towards starters. Of the 684 pitchers who produced a Murphy Score in excess of 200, 93.1% of them were starting pitchers. Say whatever you want, I believe that equal performance over more innings should be considered a better performance. Therefore, if two pitchers rank in the 80th percentile on the rate stats and both have an ERA+ of 150, the one that throws 200 innings should have a better Murphy Score (240.0) than the one that throws 50 innings (60.0).
BEST SEASONS EVER
Now that I’m finished on my high horse, let’s take a look at the best seasons in the Cy Young era. This table shows the top 20 seasons according to Murphy Score (MS) in the past 56 seasons with some of the more traditional stats that people are accustomed to.
As you can see, there is only one season from a reliever in the top 20 and it’s not even the one you might expect. Dennis Eckersley won the AL Cy Young award in 1992 but he led the league in Murphy Score two years earlier with one of the most dominant pitching performances of all-time. In fact, in 1990 Eckersley was one of just four relievers to ever lead the league in Murphy Score but none of those four won the Cy Young. However, of the nine relievers to win the Cy Young, only three finished in the top ten in Murphy Score and Steve Bedrosian in 1987 finished 96th that year.
One can easily poke fun at my methods and say that they are flawed but many analysts have looked at the Cy Young voters and found flawed (or outright missing) logic, at least as far as statistics are concerned. Recently there has been a bit of a shift in thinking amongst the voters and this analysis agrees; in the past three years, the Cy Young winners have finished first and second in Murphy Score.
THE VERDICT
Do relievers deserve to be considered for the Cy Young award? Yes, I believe they do. However, I personally will always give a nod to a starter for the sheer sample size. As far as I’m concerned, a reliever has to be great (or beyond great) in a season where no starting pitchers are dominating. The problem for both Fernando Rodney and Aroldis Chapman is the fact that there are starting pitchers (Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, David Price, and Johnny Cueto) who are pitching extremely well.
When handicapping the Cy Young races down the stretch, you need to also remember that the margin of error for a starter is much larger. If Rodney goes out and gives up three runs in an inning (hardly a stretch for a closer), his ERA would jump from 0.78 to 1.23, an increase of 57%. If his ERA+ were to go down 150 points (about where Aroldis Chapman is right now), his Murphy Score would go from 236.36 to 157.89. Justin Verlander would have to have a bad month for his rate to go down 79 points.
Relievers deserve to be considered but that doesn’t mean that they should be winning every other year. I just can’t support a guy who throws less than one out of every 18 innings his team plays.
(Note: all statistics are as of August 21st)
Earlier this month, Jayson Stark of espn.com wrote a column advocating that Aroldis Chapman, despite being a reliever, deserves the National League Cy Young award. In principle, I am opposed to the idea of relievers getting the nod for the Cy Young and my reasoning is simple; overall contribution.
Once upon a time I wrote, when comparing two candidates for pitching’s highest honor, would you rather have 250 innings from a pitcher with an ERA of 2.50 or 200 innings? If you had to give one of them an award, which would you give it too? All else being equal, the decision is easy, you give it to the guy who threw more innings. He matched the ERA of the other pitcher across a larger sample size and in my book that always equals a better performance.
However, in the case of Chapman, all else is not equal. His numbers this year have been quite otherworldly:
1.33 ERA
0.72 WHIP
4.3 Hits allowed per 9 Innings
16.5 Strikeouts per 9 Innings
Should he be considered? Absolutely. Should he win the award? That’s what I need to find out.
A while ago I developed a metric to attempt to quantify the best pitching performance in a season. It was based upon three components; Bill James’ Game Score, ERA+, and innings pitched. The first problem I had to overcome was the Game Score; it’s designed for starting pitchers and doesn’t work for relievers. My first iteration of my new and improved metric just plugged in relievers numbers as if they were starters. The results, predictably, were not good.
So I started fiddling (very technical term) with the Game Score metric and came to a method that I like quite a bit. Essentially, I removed all of the rewards for innings pitched and I took out the constant of 50 points that a pitcher starts with. Basically, all that was left was this:
Hit = -2 points
Unearned Run = -2 points
Earned Run = -4 points
Walk = -1 point
Strikeout = 1 point
At the point the next problem is that if we look at all of these statistics on a gross basis or on a per game basis, starters will fare far better than relievers. I solved this problem by calculating how many of each of those stats that a pitcher accumulates per 9 innings pitched and then I did the above calculations with those numbers.
If you crunch a few of those numbers, you’ll realize that for the vast majority of pitchers, that resulting number will come out to be negative. I then took this resulting number and compared it to the best and worst figures league-wide; this gives me a percentile rank of each pitcher. At this point, I calculated my metric by multiplying the percentile rank, the ERA+ value (divided by 100), and innings pitched. The results, to say the very least, were fascinating.
If the Cy Young voting went according to this metric, a reliever would win the National League Cy Young award… and the American League Cy Young award. These are the top five scores from the NL:
195.20 – Aroldis Chapman
183.88 – Johnny Cueto
158.51 – Clayton Kershaw
158.07 – R.A. Dickey
148.32 – Cole Hamels
And in the American League:
236.36 – Fernando Rodney
204.48 – Justin Verlander
193.82 – David Price
187.98 – Felix Hernandez
150.60 – Chris Sale
At this point, I feel the need to widen my gaze by quite a bit. Does this new method unfairly favor relievers over starters? The only way to look at that is to look at many, many more seasons and see how some of the best seasons of all time stack up against each other using this new method.
THE CY YOUNG ERA
The first Cy Young Award was handed out to Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers and since then, 101 awards have been handed out for pitching excellence and thus far, only 9 of them have gone to relievers. To see how well my formula does over the course of Cy Young voting, I applied the above method to all seasons where a pitcher threw 50 or more innings from 1956 to 2011 and while some results were surprising, others were exactly what I expected them to be.
To give you an idea of what kind of numbers this formula produces, the overall average for all of the 15,125 pitchers in the Cy Young era was 81.24. The following are where a pitcher would have to perform in order to make it into various percentiles.
Top half (50th percentile) – 81.24
Top quarter (75th percentile) – 107.57
Top 10% (90th percentile) – 159.50
Top 5% (95th percentile) – 194.41
Top 1% (99th percentile) – 280.46
Below is a graphic representation of where this formula (cleverly named the “Murphy Score”) calculates all pitchers to be. My reason for this is simple; when I say that a reliever posted a score of 250.0, quickly referring to this chart will show you that that season was in about the top 500 of the Cy Young era. While that doesn’t sound great, remember that this sample has 15,125 data points which means a score of 250.0 would be better than 98.2% of pitchers in the past 56 years.
You will also notice while perusing this chart that there are a few data points on the extreme high end. Only 23 pitchers had a season that produced a Murphy Score of over 400 and of those, only 3 broke 500. The overwhelmingly vast majority of pitchers fell into the lower end of the scale while a few had truly transcendent performances and frankly, that’s about what you should expect.
But the question that I want to examine is how do relievers stack up against starters? To separate the relievers from the starters, I simply looked at the percentage of a pitcher’s appearances that were starts. If that was over 50%, I considered him a starting pitcher and if it was under 50%, he was a reliever. It’s a bit on the simplistic side but I had to draw the line somewhere.
As you can imagine by simply looking at my formula, the numbers will be heavily skewed towards starters. Of the 684 pitchers who produced a Murphy Score in excess of 200, 93.1% of them were starting pitchers. Say whatever you want, I believe that equal performance over more innings should be considered a better performance. Therefore, if two pitchers rank in the 80th percentile on the rate stats and both have an ERA+ of 150, the one that throws 200 innings should have a better Murphy Score (240.0) than the one that throws 50 innings (60.0).
BEST SEASONS EVER
Now that I’m finished on my high horse, let’s take a look at the best seasons in the Cy Young era. This table shows the top 20 seasons according to Murphy Score (MS) in the past 56 seasons with some of the more traditional stats that people are accustomed to.
As you can see, there is only one season from a reliever in the top 20 and it’s not even the one you might expect. Dennis Eckersley won the AL Cy Young award in 1992 but he led the league in Murphy Score two years earlier with one of the most dominant pitching performances of all-time. In fact, in 1990 Eckersley was one of just four relievers to ever lead the league in Murphy Score but none of those four won the Cy Young. However, of the nine relievers to win the Cy Young, only three finished in the top ten in Murphy Score and Steve Bedrosian in 1987 finished 96th that year.
One can easily poke fun at my methods and say that they are flawed but many analysts have looked at the Cy Young voters and found flawed (or outright missing) logic, at least as far as statistics are concerned. Recently there has been a bit of a shift in thinking amongst the voters and this analysis agrees; in the past three years, the Cy Young winners have finished first and second in Murphy Score.
THE VERDICT
Do relievers deserve to be considered for the Cy Young award? Yes, I believe they do. However, I personally will always give a nod to a starter for the sheer sample size. As far as I’m concerned, a reliever has to be great (or beyond great) in a season where no starting pitchers are dominating. The problem for both Fernando Rodney and Aroldis Chapman is the fact that there are starting pitchers (Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, David Price, and Johnny Cueto) who are pitching extremely well.
When handicapping the Cy Young races down the stretch, you need to also remember that the margin of error for a starter is much larger. If Rodney goes out and gives up three runs in an inning (hardly a stretch for a closer), his ERA would jump from 0.78 to 1.23, an increase of 57%. If his ERA+ were to go down 150 points (about where Aroldis Chapman is right now), his Murphy Score would go from 236.36 to 157.89. Justin Verlander would have to have a bad month for his rate to go down 79 points.
Relievers deserve to be considered but that doesn’t mean that they should be winning every other year. I just can’t support a guy who throws less than one out of every 18 innings his team plays.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Sadness
Early in the morning of Friday, July 20th, I received a text message from a friend who lives in Seattle stating:
“Hey I just heard about the shooting out there last night. Are you guys ok?”
Fresh off of a morning workout, I was far more worried about when I’d stop sweating than anything else. My assumption was that there had been a random act of violence in the town where I live, Arvada, Colorado. I thought nothing of it, replied that my girlfriend and I were fine and knew nothing about a shooting of any kind.
It was only on my drive to work that I first heard the details of the horrific event that took place at an Aurora movie theater early that morning, just 20 miles from my house.
Friday was a difficult day for me and thankfully, I was not personally touched by the tragedy; I didn’t know anyone who was in the theater that night and of the few people that I know who live in Aurora (both friends and family) all were accounted for. Still, this event resonated with me more than any other shooting ever had and I believe it was simply a matter of proximity.
Thirteen years ago when there was a shooting at Columbine High School, I was living in Washington, 1,500 miles away. When Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, I was living in Colorado but I was still half a continent away.
Friday morning when I went onto the websites of CNN and the Wall Street Journal, there on the front page was a small suburb twenty miles from my home. It resonated like nothing ever has simply because of its frightening proximity and its terrifying randomness.
I went about my work day on Friday and tried to focus on my work but found it quite difficult. Upon reflection in the afternoon, I realized that at one point or another throughout the day, I had gone through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Now, several days after this occurrence, I am left with nothing but sadness.
GUN CONTROL
Ever since I learned of this happening, I have been searching for an answer; some new piece of legislation or some new program to help identify people who are at risk of doing something along these lines. I’ve come up with many answers but whenever I put them up to any sort of scrutiny, they just don’t stand up and that has helped me arrive at a truly depressing conclusion; there is very little that can be done.
No, this is not me being a pessimist; this is me being a realist. There are roughly 310,000,000 people in the United States and there are an estimated 270,000,000 firearms. Because of that, the crime rates in the United States involving a firearm are truly frightening when compared with other countries. The obvious question at that point is what are those other countries doing that the US should be doing?
Ironically, the answer is our government has never restricted (within reason) the freedoms of the people. Firearms were a necessary part of American life once upon a time and although that time has long since past – the United States government accounts for roughly 40% of the world’s expenditure on their respective militaries – firearms have never been illegal. Yes, gun control laws have been passed but relatively speaking, the proliferation of firearms has been going on unchecked in this country for more than 200 years.
If the second amendment was repealed tomorrow and the decision was made to make it illegal for citizens to own firearms, think for just a moment of what a Herculean effort that would require. The budget of the ATF would have to increase by a factor of 10… or maybe 100… or maybe 1,000. Even then, there would be a significant number of people that would not willingly relinquish their firearms. How many firearms would have to be removed from circulation for them to no longer be a significant threat? 75%? 90%? I would argue that until they are all removed and firearms are only in the hands of trained law enforcement or military personnel, they are a threat.
To sum up all of that, eliminating firearms is a logistical impossibility.
ARM EVERYONE
The idea of everyone carrying a gun came up shortly after the Aurora shooting and it’s one of the more asinine and dangerous ideas that anyone has ever come up with.
First and foremost, let me address the Aurora incident before getting a bit more abstract. The shooter was wearing full tactical body armor and most importantly (from a combat standpoint) he was prepared for everything that was about to happen. The members of the audience were not prepared for tear gas canisters to be released in the middle of a dark and noisy movie theater.
Secondly, if everyone had been carrying a concealed firearm, how many of them would have been able to do any good? Handguns are relatively useless against body armor. In the infamous North Hollywood Shootout, police officers fired approximately 660 rounds at the two gunmen over the course of 44 minutes while the robbers were able to fire well over 1,000 due to their body armor. In that case, only one of the robbers was actually killed by fire from the police and this was only after being hit in the legs by roughly 20 rounds (the other assailant was hit in the neck right after shooting himself in the head).
If we apply this situation to what happened in Aurora, it is possible that the instinct to fight back could have cost more lives as people stayed to enter the fray instead of fleeing the scene.
Is it possible that spree killers could be stopped if more people had firearms? Yes, but the key word is possible. Would overall firearm violence go down? Absolutely not. Imagine the following scenario; you are out at a restaurant with a few friends and you have a few rounds of drinks. You get up to go to the bathroom and, tripping over something or other, you bump into a patron at the bar, spilling his drink. He is understandably upset.
Normally, this situation could be defused quite simply. You apologize and maybe offer to buy him another drink. What happens if he doesn’t like the way you apologize (don’t ask me why, these things happen)? Again, not too difficult to defuse but what if he’s carrying a firearm? Now, all of a sudden, you have gone from a simple alcohol-fueled altercation to a potential life-and-death situation. Having been drinking and perhaps not in the most sound mind, you perceive his advances as a threat and you pull your gun and seeing this, he perceives a threat to him and he pulls his gun. Nobody wins.
That is a relatively simple scenario but completely plausible. There are a million other everyday scenarios that if you simply add the presence of a firearm (or two) it makes the situation much more difficult to manage.
Arming everyone is not the answer. Murder rates might go down but the number of people injured and killed by firearms would skyrocket.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
A debate is needed on the issue of gun control and as always, both sides need to give a little. Proponents of gun control need to realize that logistics are not on their side and they need to pick their battles. Proponents of personal freedom need to realize that the Supreme Court has determined that the states are able to restrict the sales of firearms while not being in violation of the second amendment. Most importantly, both sides need to realize that this is not a black and white issue; there is not a right answer and there is not a wrong answer.
There are plenty of concessions that conservatives can make without giving in on the principle of gun ownership. To name just one example, I wonder why the shooter was able to legally acquire an AK-47 which he then used in this massacre. Assault rifles are weapons of war and shouldn’t be in the hands of a civilian under any circumstances. If you can’t agree on that point, then you should not be debating gun control.
The same can be said on the liberal side of the argument. Does gun control really stop gun related crimes? I cannot answer that with certainty but I do know that if 8,000 people die from gun related homicides in a year, gun control is not working as well as it should. Who knows what the death toll would be without gun control laws; I cannot answer that. All I know is that laws for the sake of having laws are an exercise in futility.
I am sure that the answer is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes but it will never be found when both sides stick to their respective ends of the spectrum and treat the middle as a no-man’s land where one goes when they abandon their principles.
If I can broaden for one moment, I’d like to say that this is a mentality that is rampant throughout American society and it is abhorrent. Compromise is not a dirty word. Any idiot can say “I’m right and you’re wrong”. It takes one hell of a person to be able to say “I believe I’m right but you might be right as well”.
I do not believe that violence is an inherent part of human nature. I do believe that survival is. How many deadly altercations could have been avoided if more people adopted the second mindset than the first? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. How much better off would American society be if we could put our egos aside and work on solving problems? The word “utopia” comes to mind…
SADNESS
All I have left nearly a week after this horrific event transpired is sadness. I am sad that something like this happened and my heart truly goes out to the victims and their friends and families; nobody should ever have to endure something like this happening to someone close to them or to themselves.
On top of that, I am sad because I am deathly afraid that nothing good will come of this incident. It’s an election year and inevitably, this issue will find its way into the debates. Frankly, I’ve had enough. Until our elected officials come out and say that compromise is the only way forward on this issue, I won’t listen to either side.
Mostly, I’m sad because our society is obsessed with firearms and using them for their intended purpose; to end life. I am not a hunter but I have no problem with it but nobody can deny that the intended result is for something that was living to end up dead. Why do we feel the need to kill each other? There are a select few motivations that I believe are legitimate reasons to end someone’s life but if we applied those reasons to the nation as a whole, the death toll would be in the hundreds instead of in the thousands.
At the end of the day, our society has a terrible illness. Our elected officials are supposed to be the wise elders of our community of 300,000,000 people who guide us through difficult times. Instead, half of them are proposing unrealistic measures while the other half is saying there is simply nothing that can be done about the problem, a stance that has never been so eloquently put as in the popular saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.
In the past week I’ve experienced the five stages of grief and I’ve finally found acceptance in the depressing truth that there is very little that can be done that will affect real change. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to find a solution. I have ideas and I will share them with whoever will listen. I will also listen to what they have to say; they might have the brilliant idea that I’ve been searching for but it just needed to be viewed from the proper perspective.
I will not bury my head in the sand. I will say that I’m right and someone else is wrong. There are very few issues where there is a “right” position and a “wrong” position and this is not one of them.
The time for blindly clinging to one’s beliefs and refusing to hear alternative points of view is past.
The time for intelligent debate is now.
Any takers?
“Hey I just heard about the shooting out there last night. Are you guys ok?”
Fresh off of a morning workout, I was far more worried about when I’d stop sweating than anything else. My assumption was that there had been a random act of violence in the town where I live, Arvada, Colorado. I thought nothing of it, replied that my girlfriend and I were fine and knew nothing about a shooting of any kind.
It was only on my drive to work that I first heard the details of the horrific event that took place at an Aurora movie theater early that morning, just 20 miles from my house.
Friday was a difficult day for me and thankfully, I was not personally touched by the tragedy; I didn’t know anyone who was in the theater that night and of the few people that I know who live in Aurora (both friends and family) all were accounted for. Still, this event resonated with me more than any other shooting ever had and I believe it was simply a matter of proximity.
Thirteen years ago when there was a shooting at Columbine High School, I was living in Washington, 1,500 miles away. When Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, I was living in Colorado but I was still half a continent away.
Friday morning when I went onto the websites of CNN and the Wall Street Journal, there on the front page was a small suburb twenty miles from my home. It resonated like nothing ever has simply because of its frightening proximity and its terrifying randomness.
I went about my work day on Friday and tried to focus on my work but found it quite difficult. Upon reflection in the afternoon, I realized that at one point or another throughout the day, I had gone through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Now, several days after this occurrence, I am left with nothing but sadness.
GUN CONTROL
Ever since I learned of this happening, I have been searching for an answer; some new piece of legislation or some new program to help identify people who are at risk of doing something along these lines. I’ve come up with many answers but whenever I put them up to any sort of scrutiny, they just don’t stand up and that has helped me arrive at a truly depressing conclusion; there is very little that can be done.
No, this is not me being a pessimist; this is me being a realist. There are roughly 310,000,000 people in the United States and there are an estimated 270,000,000 firearms. Because of that, the crime rates in the United States involving a firearm are truly frightening when compared with other countries. The obvious question at that point is what are those other countries doing that the US should be doing?
Ironically, the answer is our government has never restricted (within reason) the freedoms of the people. Firearms were a necessary part of American life once upon a time and although that time has long since past – the United States government accounts for roughly 40% of the world’s expenditure on their respective militaries – firearms have never been illegal. Yes, gun control laws have been passed but relatively speaking, the proliferation of firearms has been going on unchecked in this country for more than 200 years.
If the second amendment was repealed tomorrow and the decision was made to make it illegal for citizens to own firearms, think for just a moment of what a Herculean effort that would require. The budget of the ATF would have to increase by a factor of 10… or maybe 100… or maybe 1,000. Even then, there would be a significant number of people that would not willingly relinquish their firearms. How many firearms would have to be removed from circulation for them to no longer be a significant threat? 75%? 90%? I would argue that until they are all removed and firearms are only in the hands of trained law enforcement or military personnel, they are a threat.
To sum up all of that, eliminating firearms is a logistical impossibility.
ARM EVERYONE
The idea of everyone carrying a gun came up shortly after the Aurora shooting and it’s one of the more asinine and dangerous ideas that anyone has ever come up with.
First and foremost, let me address the Aurora incident before getting a bit more abstract. The shooter was wearing full tactical body armor and most importantly (from a combat standpoint) he was prepared for everything that was about to happen. The members of the audience were not prepared for tear gas canisters to be released in the middle of a dark and noisy movie theater.
Secondly, if everyone had been carrying a concealed firearm, how many of them would have been able to do any good? Handguns are relatively useless against body armor. In the infamous North Hollywood Shootout, police officers fired approximately 660 rounds at the two gunmen over the course of 44 minutes while the robbers were able to fire well over 1,000 due to their body armor. In that case, only one of the robbers was actually killed by fire from the police and this was only after being hit in the legs by roughly 20 rounds (the other assailant was hit in the neck right after shooting himself in the head).
If we apply this situation to what happened in Aurora, it is possible that the instinct to fight back could have cost more lives as people stayed to enter the fray instead of fleeing the scene.
Is it possible that spree killers could be stopped if more people had firearms? Yes, but the key word is possible. Would overall firearm violence go down? Absolutely not. Imagine the following scenario; you are out at a restaurant with a few friends and you have a few rounds of drinks. You get up to go to the bathroom and, tripping over something or other, you bump into a patron at the bar, spilling his drink. He is understandably upset.
Normally, this situation could be defused quite simply. You apologize and maybe offer to buy him another drink. What happens if he doesn’t like the way you apologize (don’t ask me why, these things happen)? Again, not too difficult to defuse but what if he’s carrying a firearm? Now, all of a sudden, you have gone from a simple alcohol-fueled altercation to a potential life-and-death situation. Having been drinking and perhaps not in the most sound mind, you perceive his advances as a threat and you pull your gun and seeing this, he perceives a threat to him and he pulls his gun. Nobody wins.
That is a relatively simple scenario but completely plausible. There are a million other everyday scenarios that if you simply add the presence of a firearm (or two) it makes the situation much more difficult to manage.
Arming everyone is not the answer. Murder rates might go down but the number of people injured and killed by firearms would skyrocket.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
A debate is needed on the issue of gun control and as always, both sides need to give a little. Proponents of gun control need to realize that logistics are not on their side and they need to pick their battles. Proponents of personal freedom need to realize that the Supreme Court has determined that the states are able to restrict the sales of firearms while not being in violation of the second amendment. Most importantly, both sides need to realize that this is not a black and white issue; there is not a right answer and there is not a wrong answer.
There are plenty of concessions that conservatives can make without giving in on the principle of gun ownership. To name just one example, I wonder why the shooter was able to legally acquire an AK-47 which he then used in this massacre. Assault rifles are weapons of war and shouldn’t be in the hands of a civilian under any circumstances. If you can’t agree on that point, then you should not be debating gun control.
The same can be said on the liberal side of the argument. Does gun control really stop gun related crimes? I cannot answer that with certainty but I do know that if 8,000 people die from gun related homicides in a year, gun control is not working as well as it should. Who knows what the death toll would be without gun control laws; I cannot answer that. All I know is that laws for the sake of having laws are an exercise in futility.
I am sure that the answer is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes but it will never be found when both sides stick to their respective ends of the spectrum and treat the middle as a no-man’s land where one goes when they abandon their principles.
If I can broaden for one moment, I’d like to say that this is a mentality that is rampant throughout American society and it is abhorrent. Compromise is not a dirty word. Any idiot can say “I’m right and you’re wrong”. It takes one hell of a person to be able to say “I believe I’m right but you might be right as well”.
I do not believe that violence is an inherent part of human nature. I do believe that survival is. How many deadly altercations could have been avoided if more people adopted the second mindset than the first? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. How much better off would American society be if we could put our egos aside and work on solving problems? The word “utopia” comes to mind…
SADNESS
All I have left nearly a week after this horrific event transpired is sadness. I am sad that something like this happened and my heart truly goes out to the victims and their friends and families; nobody should ever have to endure something like this happening to someone close to them or to themselves.
On top of that, I am sad because I am deathly afraid that nothing good will come of this incident. It’s an election year and inevitably, this issue will find its way into the debates. Frankly, I’ve had enough. Until our elected officials come out and say that compromise is the only way forward on this issue, I won’t listen to either side.
Mostly, I’m sad because our society is obsessed with firearms and using them for their intended purpose; to end life. I am not a hunter but I have no problem with it but nobody can deny that the intended result is for something that was living to end up dead. Why do we feel the need to kill each other? There are a select few motivations that I believe are legitimate reasons to end someone’s life but if we applied those reasons to the nation as a whole, the death toll would be in the hundreds instead of in the thousands.
At the end of the day, our society has a terrible illness. Our elected officials are supposed to be the wise elders of our community of 300,000,000 people who guide us through difficult times. Instead, half of them are proposing unrealistic measures while the other half is saying there is simply nothing that can be done about the problem, a stance that has never been so eloquently put as in the popular saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.
In the past week I’ve experienced the five stages of grief and I’ve finally found acceptance in the depressing truth that there is very little that can be done that will affect real change. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to find a solution. I have ideas and I will share them with whoever will listen. I will also listen to what they have to say; they might have the brilliant idea that I’ve been searching for but it just needed to be viewed from the proper perspective.
I will not bury my head in the sand. I will say that I’m right and someone else is wrong. There are very few issues where there is a “right” position and a “wrong” position and this is not one of them.
The time for blindly clinging to one’s beliefs and refusing to hear alternative points of view is past.
The time for intelligent debate is now.
Any takers?
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Alcohol, Tobacco, and... Sugar?
As loyal readers of this blog know, I don’t often enter the political arena. I find that once people go into the particular arena, one of the requirements is that they must check their common sense and ability to stay level-headed at the door. Thus, what often ends up happening is you have two people at different places on the political spectrum who end up yelling at each so much that they miss the fact that their views aren’t really that different after all.
As most people in the country know, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City recently proposed a law which would prohibit convenience stores and restaurants from selling soda in quantities larger than 16 ounces. Immediately, people came out from every angle against the law. Some people said it was an unforgivable infringement upon personal choice. Others said the law didn’t go nearly far enough. Some dieticians and nutritionists came out and said that in the war against obesity, soda and other sugary drinks wasn’t even the place where attention should be directed.
So who is right and who is wrong? Strangely enough, that isn’t the question I want to address. It is entirely possible that better things can be done to combat obesity than banning sugary beverages. The issue I’d like to address is whether or not this sort of law should even be permitted. My short answer; of course it is.
Is banning large sodas the best way to combat obesity? No. While Mayor Bloomberg’s law prohibits 32 ounce sodas, there is nothing (that I’ve seen or heard of) to prevent one person from purchasing 2 beverages of 16 ounces each. There are also those that I mentioned above who believe that sugary beverages have a relatively small effect on obesity rates. However, at least Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do something while the rest of the nation sits down to their supersized extra-value meal*.
(*at this point I feel the need to point out that by the rudimentary calculations taking into account only height and weight, I have a BMI over 30 which is considered “obese”. I am not part of the solution. The purpose of this post is not to solve the obesity epidemic in American; it is simply to examine the attempts of someone in a position of power to help combat the epidemic.)
LIMITS TO PERSONAL FREEDOMS
Now, I arrive at the counter-argument that has gotten the most traction; personal freedom. Many people believe that their personal freedoms are theirs and cannot be limited or infringed upon and I cannot possibly express how wrong that sentiment is. One of the most basic right guaranteed by the Constitution is the right to freedom of speech. However, there are limits to free speech and everyone knows it. You can’t walk into a crowded movie theater and yell “fire”. You could be found liable (criminally, civilly, or both) for any injuries or property damage that happens in the ensuing panic.
There are many cities where smoking in certain public places is illegal. In Colorado, where I live, you can’t smoke in a bar. Now, it just so happens that I am not a smoker so this limit to personal freedom does not affect me in any way. However, once upon a time a large portion the friends that I hung out with on a regular basic were smokers and their personal freedoms were infringed upon.
Drinking and driving, seatbelt laws, and motorcycle helmet laws all limit personal freedom and yet they still exist. How can they possibly exist when they blatantly infringe upon the personal freedom s and the pursuit of an individual’s happiness?
To answer that question, one simply needs to widen their gaze. To quote Spock’s dying words from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
Everything that I mentioned above (obesity, smoking, drinking and driving, driving without a seatbelt, riding a motorcycle without a helmet) has the potential to adversely affect other Americans. For two of them, the effects are obvious; second-hand smoke and traffic collisions caused by drunk drivers but what about the other three; how do they affect anyone else? The answer is health care costs.
According to a column published in Reuters at the end of April (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/obesity-costs-dollars-cents_n_1463763.html), there are $190 billion in medical costs every year due to obesity. The average overweight person (amongst employees surveyed who work for the Mayo clinic) spends $1,850 more per year in medical costs than a person who is a healthy weight. For people in that sample with a BMI between 35 and 40, that number jumps to $3,086 per year. For employees with a BMI over 40, they spent $5,530 more per year than the healthy weight person. For comparison’s sake, smoker’s medical costs were, on average, $1,274 higher than non-smokers.
Here are a few tidbits that you’ve probably never thought of; airlines spend approximately $5 billion more on jet fuel flying around heavier Americans (compared to average weights of Americans in 1960). Also, Americans purchase roughly $4 billion more gasoline for their cars on an annual basis because of the heavier passenger load.
So what? People pay for their own gasoline, they pay their own medical bills, and they pay increased airfare because of the additional jet fuel required…
What if they can’t?
This is the crux of the issue and this is where the government has the right to infringe on personal freedoms; when their actions are for the public good. People who cannot pay for their medical care or who have no health insurance or insufficient health insurance are still treated to some degree. Many of them are fully treated. Who pays for that treatment? The hospital would most likely be paid by an insurance company or the government. Who pays insurance companies or the government?
You and me; everyone who has health insurance or pays taxes. Therefore, a person’s individual choices made under the guise of personal freedom and “it’s my life, I can do what I want” have a profound effect on others who make completely different decisions with their own lives.
The question that arises out of this is why should I have to pay for decisions that others make with their own lives? The answer is that I shouldn’t have to but the problem is that that is exactly what is happening. Laws have been put in place restricting the use of alcohol and tobacco because of their potential to affect people other than the user.
The elephant in the room is that obesity is now one of the top causes of preventable death in the United States and it’s on the rise. Currently, the CDC estimates that 35.7% of American adults are obese and all of the predictions say that number will only increase in the coming years and decades.
Those statistics are great but what exactly do they mean? I don’t claim to be a legal scholar but I feel extremely confident in saying when the behavior of one person exacts a toll (be it physical or monetary) from another person who is not partaking in that behavior, the government is well within their rights to pass a law that restricts that behavior. Like it or not, the government has a responsibility to protect the greater good. If individual freedoms were more important than the public good, drinking and driving would be legal and you’d be able to light up a cigarette anywhere.
MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND THE FUTURE
I am not saying I support a law so easy to circumvent that all you have to do is add the number “2” to an order. In fact, I don’t. All I am saying is I support a public servant’s attempt to try and reverse the trend and fight an epidemic that is the number one public health issue of the 21st century. Perhaps a tax on fast food will both reduce our consumption of it and also help alleviate the cost to the public to treat health problems stemming from obesity. I know that it will not be an easy fix and at very least I applaud Mayor Bloomberg for trying to do something.
The fact of the matter remains as it always has that laws are infringements upon personal freedoms. Laws are in place to serve the greater good and when an individual puts their own personal freedoms ahead of the greater public good, the government has the ability and the responsibility to step in and regulate that behavior. It doesn’t matter if the action is eating unhealthily when you are uninsured or if it’s drinking and driving or stealing a car or physically harming someone. Obesity is an epidemic of epic proportions and it’s only getting worse and it’s only a matter of time until obesity becomes the number one cause of preventable death in the United States (it may have already, I saw conflicting reports). On top of death and disease, obesity has racked up a huge healthcare bill that is being borne by everyone and there is nothing fair about that. The only protection for the people who pay their health insurance premiums and their taxes comes from the government.
While enacting laws in the name of the “public good” is a slippery slope, there is no logical reason for people to have to pay for the decisions of others.
As most people in the country know, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City recently proposed a law which would prohibit convenience stores and restaurants from selling soda in quantities larger than 16 ounces. Immediately, people came out from every angle against the law. Some people said it was an unforgivable infringement upon personal choice. Others said the law didn’t go nearly far enough. Some dieticians and nutritionists came out and said that in the war against obesity, soda and other sugary drinks wasn’t even the place where attention should be directed.
So who is right and who is wrong? Strangely enough, that isn’t the question I want to address. It is entirely possible that better things can be done to combat obesity than banning sugary beverages. The issue I’d like to address is whether or not this sort of law should even be permitted. My short answer; of course it is.
Is banning large sodas the best way to combat obesity? No. While Mayor Bloomberg’s law prohibits 32 ounce sodas, there is nothing (that I’ve seen or heard of) to prevent one person from purchasing 2 beverages of 16 ounces each. There are also those that I mentioned above who believe that sugary beverages have a relatively small effect on obesity rates. However, at least Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do something while the rest of the nation sits down to their supersized extra-value meal*.
(*at this point I feel the need to point out that by the rudimentary calculations taking into account only height and weight, I have a BMI over 30 which is considered “obese”. I am not part of the solution. The purpose of this post is not to solve the obesity epidemic in American; it is simply to examine the attempts of someone in a position of power to help combat the epidemic.)
LIMITS TO PERSONAL FREEDOMS
Now, I arrive at the counter-argument that has gotten the most traction; personal freedom. Many people believe that their personal freedoms are theirs and cannot be limited or infringed upon and I cannot possibly express how wrong that sentiment is. One of the most basic right guaranteed by the Constitution is the right to freedom of speech. However, there are limits to free speech and everyone knows it. You can’t walk into a crowded movie theater and yell “fire”. You could be found liable (criminally, civilly, or both) for any injuries or property damage that happens in the ensuing panic.
There are many cities where smoking in certain public places is illegal. In Colorado, where I live, you can’t smoke in a bar. Now, it just so happens that I am not a smoker so this limit to personal freedom does not affect me in any way. However, once upon a time a large portion the friends that I hung out with on a regular basic were smokers and their personal freedoms were infringed upon.
Drinking and driving, seatbelt laws, and motorcycle helmet laws all limit personal freedom and yet they still exist. How can they possibly exist when they blatantly infringe upon the personal freedom s and the pursuit of an individual’s happiness?
To answer that question, one simply needs to widen their gaze. To quote Spock’s dying words from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
Everything that I mentioned above (obesity, smoking, drinking and driving, driving without a seatbelt, riding a motorcycle without a helmet) has the potential to adversely affect other Americans. For two of them, the effects are obvious; second-hand smoke and traffic collisions caused by drunk drivers but what about the other three; how do they affect anyone else? The answer is health care costs.
According to a column published in Reuters at the end of April (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/obesity-costs-dollars-cents_n_1463763.html), there are $190 billion in medical costs every year due to obesity. The average overweight person (amongst employees surveyed who work for the Mayo clinic) spends $1,850 more per year in medical costs than a person who is a healthy weight. For people in that sample with a BMI between 35 and 40, that number jumps to $3,086 per year. For employees with a BMI over 40, they spent $5,530 more per year than the healthy weight person. For comparison’s sake, smoker’s medical costs were, on average, $1,274 higher than non-smokers.
Here are a few tidbits that you’ve probably never thought of; airlines spend approximately $5 billion more on jet fuel flying around heavier Americans (compared to average weights of Americans in 1960). Also, Americans purchase roughly $4 billion more gasoline for their cars on an annual basis because of the heavier passenger load.
So what? People pay for their own gasoline, they pay their own medical bills, and they pay increased airfare because of the additional jet fuel required…
What if they can’t?
This is the crux of the issue and this is where the government has the right to infringe on personal freedoms; when their actions are for the public good. People who cannot pay for their medical care or who have no health insurance or insufficient health insurance are still treated to some degree. Many of them are fully treated. Who pays for that treatment? The hospital would most likely be paid by an insurance company or the government. Who pays insurance companies or the government?
You and me; everyone who has health insurance or pays taxes. Therefore, a person’s individual choices made under the guise of personal freedom and “it’s my life, I can do what I want” have a profound effect on others who make completely different decisions with their own lives.
The question that arises out of this is why should I have to pay for decisions that others make with their own lives? The answer is that I shouldn’t have to but the problem is that that is exactly what is happening. Laws have been put in place restricting the use of alcohol and tobacco because of their potential to affect people other than the user.
The elephant in the room is that obesity is now one of the top causes of preventable death in the United States and it’s on the rise. Currently, the CDC estimates that 35.7% of American adults are obese and all of the predictions say that number will only increase in the coming years and decades.
Those statistics are great but what exactly do they mean? I don’t claim to be a legal scholar but I feel extremely confident in saying when the behavior of one person exacts a toll (be it physical or monetary) from another person who is not partaking in that behavior, the government is well within their rights to pass a law that restricts that behavior. Like it or not, the government has a responsibility to protect the greater good. If individual freedoms were more important than the public good, drinking and driving would be legal and you’d be able to light up a cigarette anywhere.
MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND THE FUTURE
I am not saying I support a law so easy to circumvent that all you have to do is add the number “2” to an order. In fact, I don’t. All I am saying is I support a public servant’s attempt to try and reverse the trend and fight an epidemic that is the number one public health issue of the 21st century. Perhaps a tax on fast food will both reduce our consumption of it and also help alleviate the cost to the public to treat health problems stemming from obesity. I know that it will not be an easy fix and at very least I applaud Mayor Bloomberg for trying to do something.
The fact of the matter remains as it always has that laws are infringements upon personal freedoms. Laws are in place to serve the greater good and when an individual puts their own personal freedoms ahead of the greater public good, the government has the ability and the responsibility to step in and regulate that behavior. It doesn’t matter if the action is eating unhealthily when you are uninsured or if it’s drinking and driving or stealing a car or physically harming someone. Obesity is an epidemic of epic proportions and it’s only getting worse and it’s only a matter of time until obesity becomes the number one cause of preventable death in the United States (it may have already, I saw conflicting reports). On top of death and disease, obesity has racked up a huge healthcare bill that is being borne by everyone and there is nothing fair about that. The only protection for the people who pay their health insurance premiums and their taxes comes from the government.
While enacting laws in the name of the “public good” is a slippery slope, there is no logical reason for people to have to pay for the decisions of others.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Models for Business and Competition
Let’s face it; everyone wants to be the NFL. The league has never been more profitable than it is right now and it has taken steps seemingly on an annual basis to make sure that its stranglehold on the American psyche does not weaken. Owning an NFL franchise is one of the safer bets in the economic climate today and while the profit margins are never gaudy, they are consistent. What is the secret of the NFL that everyone wants to duplicate? I believe it can be broken down into three main factors; popularity, socialism, and strength.
POPULARITY
Once upon a time, baseball ruled the American landscape and while it might still qualify as “America’s Pastime”, it is nowhere near as popular as it once was. The NBA has had its moments in the sun but it has never captured the imagination the way baseball or football has. Football is by far the most popular sport in American right now and it’s only getting more popular. I heard a statistic on Colin Cowherd’s radio show on ESPN Radio and I almost drove my car off the road; apparently 60% of women polled (I’m assuming this is adults; I don’t remember exactly) watch the NFL regularly. Forget about the particulars that I can’t remember and just think about that for a minute. Three out of every five women, who basically never have the opportunity to play this sport, watch the NFL on a regular basis. Granted, I’m sure that some of those only do because their boyfriends or husbands watch the games but that also shows how universally popular football has become. When you throw all of that together, it basically means that the NFL can do just about whatever they want and charge just about whatever they want for anything and people will pay it.
SOCIALISM
I know that this is a bit of a sticky word in the United States and frankly, it’s about time that we got over it. Socialism and Communism have become dirty words because of their association with our enemy in a cold war that lasted for nearly a half century. I get it, I really do. The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union is no more. Its economy was not sustainable; capitalism outlasted socialism. On a national scale, socialism has not fared particularly well when compared to capitalism but for the sake of this discussion, we are talking about a far smaller scale. Socialism is an economic theory; it is not a dirty word. There, I got my rant out of the way.
The fact of the matter is that the NFL is run with a socialist model. Revenues are shared amongst the 32 owners and at the end of each season when the money is all doled out, teams make shockingly similar profits. The difference in profit margin between a really well run franchise (like the New England Patriots or the Pittsburgh Steelers) and a poorly run franchise (like the Cleveland Browns or the Cincinnati Bengals for most of the past 20 years) is very small. In many ways, it can be more profitable to field a bad team than a championship contender in the NFL.
Why does this matter when it comes to a discussion of business models? It all comes down to risk. By engaging in socialist practices, the risk to any one individual owner is greatly reduced. As I said before, the profit margins aren’t necessarily gaudy but they are consistent and when this many millions of dollars are on the line, which would you rather have; a 5-10% profit margin every year or a 50/50 chance of making 20% or losing 20%? Not everyone is the same and some people are more risk averse than others but if I was presented with those options, I would take the guaranteed profit every day of the week.
STRENGTH
This aspect of a business can manifest itself in many ways but I am focusing on just one; the relationship with the players’ union. In the constant give and take between the players and the owners, in the NFL, the owners have far more power. There is a hard salary cap which every player’s union opposes. There in an apparatus in place to restrict player movement in the franchise tag which is unheard of in other sports. Most importantly, contracts are not guaranteed.
Not long ago, the Washington Redskins signed Donovan McNabb to a 5 year extension worth $78 million. In any other sport, if McNabb failed to meet expectations as spectacularly as he did in Washington, that contract would become the albatross hanging around the necks of that team’s payroll for the length of the deal. Why was it not a big deal for the Redskins? The only part that was guaranteed was an extra $3.5 million that was added to his salary the year he signed the extension. After that, if the Redskins cut McNabb before the next year started, they owed him a grand total of zero out of the remaining $75 million.
To give you a good idea of just how much power the owners have, compare the NFL to Major League Baseball. In MLB, all contracts are guaranteed. Mike Hampton was paid millions of dollars by the Colorado Rockies years after he threw his last pitch for the franchise. When the Yankees resigned Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $275 million contract several years ago, they were on the hook for every penny of that money. If A-Rod got hurt tomorrow and couldn’t play out the second half of that contract, the Yankees would still owe him half that money. Unlike the NFL, there is no apparatus to restrict player movement in MLB. There is no franchise tag and there is no such thing as “restricted” free agency. Most importantly, there is no salary cap. There is a luxury tax threshold but that has to do with revenue sharing, not player salaries. When it comes to salaries, you can spend as much or as little as you want in baseball and indeed, teams do.
RESULT
When you put those three factors together, you get a league with unparalleled potential to make money and it is the envy of every other league. Other sports want the business model of the NFL and indeed, the NBA seems to be trying to incorporate aspects of the NFL’s model into their own but it’s not working and it likely never will.
The problem is that the unions are relatively set in their ways and they are used to certain things being in their respective Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA). The fact of the matter is that the NFLPA accepts a hard salary cap because they have always known one. The MLBPA has never and will never accept a salary cap because they have never known one. You could easily argue that at the very beginning when the players challenged the owners in court, the MLBPA was able to get more concessions from their league than the NFLPA.
However, all of this discussion makes for interesting fodder but it is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is simply control. The NFL has enormous control over the careers of individual players and with the latest CBA that went into effect before the 2011 season, that level of control (in some aspects) has increased. Nowadays, when a player is drafted there is a small range of salaries in which the player’s first contract will be. After several years, the player becomes a restricted free agent, meaning the drafting team can match any contract offer that the player receives. Then, at long last, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent… and then this is put on hold by the franchise tag.
Put it all together and we’ve arrived at the one issue that separates these three leagues and makes the NFL the envy of all others; control over player movement and the competitive model.
COMPETITIVE MODEL
What do I mean by “competitive model”? In essence, the competitive model for the purposes of this discussion is the answer to the question “how do I build a winning team/franchise”?
Owners like parity. The 32 NFL owners love the fact that for each of the last several years, a team that was in last place one year makes the playoffs the next year. What they don’t mention is that while there is parity amongst playoff participants, there is not parity when it comes to championship teams. There have been 46 Super Bowls and of all those titles, 33 of them (or 71.7%) have been won by eight franchises (the Steelers with 6, the 49ers and Cowboys with 5, the Giants and Packers with 4, and the Patriots, Redskins, and Raiders with 3). In fact, there are 10 franchises that have never won a Super Bowl and another 4 that have never even been to a Super Bowl. As you can see from the following graphs, parity at the highest level of all of these three leagues is a myth. Just so you have an idea of what you’re looking at, the red line that runs diagonally at a 45 degree angle is what the graph would look like if there was perfect parity. The farther from that line the graph is, the less parity that exists.
Figure 1 – Parity when it comes to Championship appearances (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)
Figure 2 – Parity when it comes to Championship Wins (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)
So we’ve established that parity doesn’t really exist when it comes to winning championships and this doesn’t come as a huge shock. Some franchises are run better than others and inevitably, this leads to performing at a higher level with more consistency.
Still, there is more parity in the NFL than the NBA or MLB and all you need to look at are the rates of worst-to-first transitions and first-to-worst transitions. In both MLB and the NBA, they are quite rare. In 1990, both the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves were in last place and in 1991, the played each other in the World Series. In the 1996-97 season, the San Antonio Spurs went 20-62. In 1997-98, they went 56-26 and finished second in their division. In 1998-99, they went 37-13 in the lockout shortened season and won the NBA title.
You don’t hear about stories such as this when it comes to the NFL because they are commonplace. Teams go from worst to first and make the playoffs by having their young core players put it all together or they go from first to worst due to an injury (most notably Peyton Manning in recent years) or due to an aging team that just isn’t as good.
What that essentially means is that the margin between the best team and the worst team is razor thin in the NFL. Oftentimes experience and coaching can be the trump card to put you over the top because the talent on any two teams is so similar. In MLB, the talent margin is greater and so you can get teams like the Yankees and Red Sox that always have superior talent to teams like the Royals and the Pirates. Granted, they pay more for that talent but it is there nonetheless. That is one small reason why the talent margin is larger in baseball than it is in the NFL; the salary cap. If an NFL team had a player who was in the top five at his position at every position, that team’s payroll would be five times the salary cap. In the NBA, the talent gap is enormous and the owners are doing everything they can to compensate for it and so far, nothing is working.
If you team up two guys who have a chance to go down as “all-time greats” it can mean very different things for your team. In the NFL, it might mean a good offense or defense (if they play on the same side of the ball) and maybe a few playoff runs. In MLB, it means… well, more or less nothing until you take into account the other 23 guys on the roster. In the NBA, it means you win championships. One player can affect the direction of a franchise more in the NBA than in either of the other leagues and this is the central problem.
LEBRON JAMES
Yes, LeBron is the focal point of a discussion about competitive balance yet again. The fact of the matter is that he was a free agent and he could go wherever he wanted to go. I’m not going to discuss his decision making process or critique his choice (I’ve already critiqued the way he made his choice), I’m simply going to examine the results.
In Cleveland, he never played with an All-Star and yet they were winning 50-65 games and made it to the NBA Finals. The year after he left, they went 19-63 and got the number one overall draft pick. After winning the NBA Finals with Dwayne Wade and Shaq, the Miami Heat went 44-38, 15-67, 43-39, and 47-35 in the last four years. Not terrible records but not indicative of a dominant team. In year one after “The Decision”, the Heat went 58-24 and went to the Finals and this year they went 46-20 and are in line to go to the Finals again.
Players have enormous power and therefore enormous control in the NBA and the owners are terrified of that. You might have heard a lot of talk going around lately about owners trying to put in some sort of franchise tag or skew the numbers so that teams can offer their own players even more money all in an attempt to keep them in one place. The problem is that players don’t want to stay put. I don’t know why teams are able to keep players at a higher rate in small market in the NFL and MLB but they do. In the NBA it seems like the biggest stars only want to play in New York, Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles.
IS THERE A SOLUTION?
Is there an answer to this conundrum? Unfortunately, there is one and NBA owners aren’t going to like it. The answer is, there’s nothing you can do about it. NBA players are similar to moths, attracted to the bright lights of the biggest cities and frankly, who can blame them? If you have a chance to play for a storied franchise like the Lakers or Celtics or you get a chance to play your home games at one of the most famous arenas ever in Madison Square Garden, why would you ever want to play in Cleveland?
If things continue as they have, the stars will continue to align and a huge divide will form in the NBA between the good teams and the ones that would have trouble getting out of the first weekend at the NCAA tournament. When this happens, attendance will plummet in those cities and those franchises will face serious economic hardships. When that happens, the NBA will have two options. First, you can set up a series of “minor league” teams that aren’t in the same league (literally) as the NBA teams or you could set up a system like the Premier League does for soccer in Europe.
Secondly, you can make the NBA as a league far more sustainable and just contract six teams. There simply aren’t enough stars to go around and they are exercising the freedoms allowed to them in their CBA. The players are making decisions with their own best interests in mind and at the end of the day, can you really fault them for that?
CONCLUSION
The NFL has a sustainable business model and so does Major League Baseball. The NBA does not. The difference is the amount of impact a single player can have and therefore, the balance of power between the players and the owners.
During the lockout last summer, the NFL owners were floating the idea of an 18 game season and the players were completely against it. At the end of the negotiations, the owners kept the same schedule but Commissioner Goodell’s enormous amount of power (which was a big issue for the players at the beginning of the lockout) was never seriously addressed. Is it possible that the owners floated the idea of the 18 game schedule because either they all get another home game and more TV revenues (from the added games) or the NFLPA would be so adamant in fighting it that they would overlook other issues that they had in the first place?
The other aspect of these issues is the relationship between the league and the teams. It seems to me that the NFL is bigger than every one of the 32 teams and all the owners know this; they are committed to the long-term viability of the league. It also seems that the NBA owners aren’t quite on board with the concept that they need to build this league to survive for decades to come and so you get owners like Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers writing scathing letters to the transcendent star of the league trashing his decision. Can you imagine the late George Steinbrenner doing something like that?
Ok, bad example…
Except it isn’t because he would be the ONE baseball owner to do something like that. I also can’t think of an NFL owner that would do that as well. The fact of the matter is that the NBA is a league ruled by players and the NFL is a league ruled by owners. Major League Baseball accepted long ago that the players had much more power than the owners liked and as soon as the NBA accepts that, they can get on with life.
What these 3,000 or so words essentially boil down to is this: love it or hate it, there’s only one NFL and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
POPULARITY
Once upon a time, baseball ruled the American landscape and while it might still qualify as “America’s Pastime”, it is nowhere near as popular as it once was. The NBA has had its moments in the sun but it has never captured the imagination the way baseball or football has. Football is by far the most popular sport in American right now and it’s only getting more popular. I heard a statistic on Colin Cowherd’s radio show on ESPN Radio and I almost drove my car off the road; apparently 60% of women polled (I’m assuming this is adults; I don’t remember exactly) watch the NFL regularly. Forget about the particulars that I can’t remember and just think about that for a minute. Three out of every five women, who basically never have the opportunity to play this sport, watch the NFL on a regular basis. Granted, I’m sure that some of those only do because their boyfriends or husbands watch the games but that also shows how universally popular football has become. When you throw all of that together, it basically means that the NFL can do just about whatever they want and charge just about whatever they want for anything and people will pay it.
SOCIALISM
I know that this is a bit of a sticky word in the United States and frankly, it’s about time that we got over it. Socialism and Communism have become dirty words because of their association with our enemy in a cold war that lasted for nearly a half century. I get it, I really do. The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union is no more. Its economy was not sustainable; capitalism outlasted socialism. On a national scale, socialism has not fared particularly well when compared to capitalism but for the sake of this discussion, we are talking about a far smaller scale. Socialism is an economic theory; it is not a dirty word. There, I got my rant out of the way.
The fact of the matter is that the NFL is run with a socialist model. Revenues are shared amongst the 32 owners and at the end of each season when the money is all doled out, teams make shockingly similar profits. The difference in profit margin between a really well run franchise (like the New England Patriots or the Pittsburgh Steelers) and a poorly run franchise (like the Cleveland Browns or the Cincinnati Bengals for most of the past 20 years) is very small. In many ways, it can be more profitable to field a bad team than a championship contender in the NFL.
Why does this matter when it comes to a discussion of business models? It all comes down to risk. By engaging in socialist practices, the risk to any one individual owner is greatly reduced. As I said before, the profit margins aren’t necessarily gaudy but they are consistent and when this many millions of dollars are on the line, which would you rather have; a 5-10% profit margin every year or a 50/50 chance of making 20% or losing 20%? Not everyone is the same and some people are more risk averse than others but if I was presented with those options, I would take the guaranteed profit every day of the week.
STRENGTH
This aspect of a business can manifest itself in many ways but I am focusing on just one; the relationship with the players’ union. In the constant give and take between the players and the owners, in the NFL, the owners have far more power. There is a hard salary cap which every player’s union opposes. There in an apparatus in place to restrict player movement in the franchise tag which is unheard of in other sports. Most importantly, contracts are not guaranteed.
Not long ago, the Washington Redskins signed Donovan McNabb to a 5 year extension worth $78 million. In any other sport, if McNabb failed to meet expectations as spectacularly as he did in Washington, that contract would become the albatross hanging around the necks of that team’s payroll for the length of the deal. Why was it not a big deal for the Redskins? The only part that was guaranteed was an extra $3.5 million that was added to his salary the year he signed the extension. After that, if the Redskins cut McNabb before the next year started, they owed him a grand total of zero out of the remaining $75 million.
To give you a good idea of just how much power the owners have, compare the NFL to Major League Baseball. In MLB, all contracts are guaranteed. Mike Hampton was paid millions of dollars by the Colorado Rockies years after he threw his last pitch for the franchise. When the Yankees resigned Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $275 million contract several years ago, they were on the hook for every penny of that money. If A-Rod got hurt tomorrow and couldn’t play out the second half of that contract, the Yankees would still owe him half that money. Unlike the NFL, there is no apparatus to restrict player movement in MLB. There is no franchise tag and there is no such thing as “restricted” free agency. Most importantly, there is no salary cap. There is a luxury tax threshold but that has to do with revenue sharing, not player salaries. When it comes to salaries, you can spend as much or as little as you want in baseball and indeed, teams do.
RESULT
When you put those three factors together, you get a league with unparalleled potential to make money and it is the envy of every other league. Other sports want the business model of the NFL and indeed, the NBA seems to be trying to incorporate aspects of the NFL’s model into their own but it’s not working and it likely never will.
The problem is that the unions are relatively set in their ways and they are used to certain things being in their respective Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA). The fact of the matter is that the NFLPA accepts a hard salary cap because they have always known one. The MLBPA has never and will never accept a salary cap because they have never known one. You could easily argue that at the very beginning when the players challenged the owners in court, the MLBPA was able to get more concessions from their league than the NFLPA.
However, all of this discussion makes for interesting fodder but it is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is simply control. The NFL has enormous control over the careers of individual players and with the latest CBA that went into effect before the 2011 season, that level of control (in some aspects) has increased. Nowadays, when a player is drafted there is a small range of salaries in which the player’s first contract will be. After several years, the player becomes a restricted free agent, meaning the drafting team can match any contract offer that the player receives. Then, at long last, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent… and then this is put on hold by the franchise tag.
Put it all together and we’ve arrived at the one issue that separates these three leagues and makes the NFL the envy of all others; control over player movement and the competitive model.
COMPETITIVE MODEL
What do I mean by “competitive model”? In essence, the competitive model for the purposes of this discussion is the answer to the question “how do I build a winning team/franchise”?
Owners like parity. The 32 NFL owners love the fact that for each of the last several years, a team that was in last place one year makes the playoffs the next year. What they don’t mention is that while there is parity amongst playoff participants, there is not parity when it comes to championship teams. There have been 46 Super Bowls and of all those titles, 33 of them (or 71.7%) have been won by eight franchises (the Steelers with 6, the 49ers and Cowboys with 5, the Giants and Packers with 4, and the Patriots, Redskins, and Raiders with 3). In fact, there are 10 franchises that have never won a Super Bowl and another 4 that have never even been to a Super Bowl. As you can see from the following graphs, parity at the highest level of all of these three leagues is a myth. Just so you have an idea of what you’re looking at, the red line that runs diagonally at a 45 degree angle is what the graph would look like if there was perfect parity. The farther from that line the graph is, the less parity that exists.
Figure 1 – Parity when it comes to Championship appearances (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)
Figure 2 – Parity when it comes to Championship Wins (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)
So we’ve established that parity doesn’t really exist when it comes to winning championships and this doesn’t come as a huge shock. Some franchises are run better than others and inevitably, this leads to performing at a higher level with more consistency.
Still, there is more parity in the NFL than the NBA or MLB and all you need to look at are the rates of worst-to-first transitions and first-to-worst transitions. In both MLB and the NBA, they are quite rare. In 1990, both the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves were in last place and in 1991, the played each other in the World Series. In the 1996-97 season, the San Antonio Spurs went 20-62. In 1997-98, they went 56-26 and finished second in their division. In 1998-99, they went 37-13 in the lockout shortened season and won the NBA title.
You don’t hear about stories such as this when it comes to the NFL because they are commonplace. Teams go from worst to first and make the playoffs by having their young core players put it all together or they go from first to worst due to an injury (most notably Peyton Manning in recent years) or due to an aging team that just isn’t as good.
What that essentially means is that the margin between the best team and the worst team is razor thin in the NFL. Oftentimes experience and coaching can be the trump card to put you over the top because the talent on any two teams is so similar. In MLB, the talent margin is greater and so you can get teams like the Yankees and Red Sox that always have superior talent to teams like the Royals and the Pirates. Granted, they pay more for that talent but it is there nonetheless. That is one small reason why the talent margin is larger in baseball than it is in the NFL; the salary cap. If an NFL team had a player who was in the top five at his position at every position, that team’s payroll would be five times the salary cap. In the NBA, the talent gap is enormous and the owners are doing everything they can to compensate for it and so far, nothing is working.
If you team up two guys who have a chance to go down as “all-time greats” it can mean very different things for your team. In the NFL, it might mean a good offense or defense (if they play on the same side of the ball) and maybe a few playoff runs. In MLB, it means… well, more or less nothing until you take into account the other 23 guys on the roster. In the NBA, it means you win championships. One player can affect the direction of a franchise more in the NBA than in either of the other leagues and this is the central problem.
LEBRON JAMES
Yes, LeBron is the focal point of a discussion about competitive balance yet again. The fact of the matter is that he was a free agent and he could go wherever he wanted to go. I’m not going to discuss his decision making process or critique his choice (I’ve already critiqued the way he made his choice), I’m simply going to examine the results.
In Cleveland, he never played with an All-Star and yet they were winning 50-65 games and made it to the NBA Finals. The year after he left, they went 19-63 and got the number one overall draft pick. After winning the NBA Finals with Dwayne Wade and Shaq, the Miami Heat went 44-38, 15-67, 43-39, and 47-35 in the last four years. Not terrible records but not indicative of a dominant team. In year one after “The Decision”, the Heat went 58-24 and went to the Finals and this year they went 46-20 and are in line to go to the Finals again.
Players have enormous power and therefore enormous control in the NBA and the owners are terrified of that. You might have heard a lot of talk going around lately about owners trying to put in some sort of franchise tag or skew the numbers so that teams can offer their own players even more money all in an attempt to keep them in one place. The problem is that players don’t want to stay put. I don’t know why teams are able to keep players at a higher rate in small market in the NFL and MLB but they do. In the NBA it seems like the biggest stars only want to play in New York, Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles.
IS THERE A SOLUTION?
Is there an answer to this conundrum? Unfortunately, there is one and NBA owners aren’t going to like it. The answer is, there’s nothing you can do about it. NBA players are similar to moths, attracted to the bright lights of the biggest cities and frankly, who can blame them? If you have a chance to play for a storied franchise like the Lakers or Celtics or you get a chance to play your home games at one of the most famous arenas ever in Madison Square Garden, why would you ever want to play in Cleveland?
If things continue as they have, the stars will continue to align and a huge divide will form in the NBA between the good teams and the ones that would have trouble getting out of the first weekend at the NCAA tournament. When this happens, attendance will plummet in those cities and those franchises will face serious economic hardships. When that happens, the NBA will have two options. First, you can set up a series of “minor league” teams that aren’t in the same league (literally) as the NBA teams or you could set up a system like the Premier League does for soccer in Europe.
Secondly, you can make the NBA as a league far more sustainable and just contract six teams. There simply aren’t enough stars to go around and they are exercising the freedoms allowed to them in their CBA. The players are making decisions with their own best interests in mind and at the end of the day, can you really fault them for that?
CONCLUSION
The NFL has a sustainable business model and so does Major League Baseball. The NBA does not. The difference is the amount of impact a single player can have and therefore, the balance of power between the players and the owners.
During the lockout last summer, the NFL owners were floating the idea of an 18 game season and the players were completely against it. At the end of the negotiations, the owners kept the same schedule but Commissioner Goodell’s enormous amount of power (which was a big issue for the players at the beginning of the lockout) was never seriously addressed. Is it possible that the owners floated the idea of the 18 game schedule because either they all get another home game and more TV revenues (from the added games) or the NFLPA would be so adamant in fighting it that they would overlook other issues that they had in the first place?
The other aspect of these issues is the relationship between the league and the teams. It seems to me that the NFL is bigger than every one of the 32 teams and all the owners know this; they are committed to the long-term viability of the league. It also seems that the NBA owners aren’t quite on board with the concept that they need to build this league to survive for decades to come and so you get owners like Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers writing scathing letters to the transcendent star of the league trashing his decision. Can you imagine the late George Steinbrenner doing something like that?
Ok, bad example…
Except it isn’t because he would be the ONE baseball owner to do something like that. I also can’t think of an NFL owner that would do that as well. The fact of the matter is that the NBA is a league ruled by players and the NFL is a league ruled by owners. Major League Baseball accepted long ago that the players had much more power than the owners liked and as soon as the NBA accepts that, they can get on with life.
What these 3,000 or so words essentially boil down to is this: love it or hate it, there’s only one NFL and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
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