Half a century or more ago in baseball, for instance, it was considered important for a team to finish in “the first division” – this meant fourth place or higher in the either of the eight-team leagues that existed prior to 1961, when the American League expanded to 10 teams, the National League following suit a year later, causing “first division” to be redefined as a fifth-place finish or better. And finishing in “the cellar” – last place in either league – was an ignominy to be evaded at all costs. The fan base heartily embraced both these concepts, and similar ones in the other major sports generally.

But in recent decades, an all-or-nothing mentality has replaced this – epitomized perhaps most eloquently by the “You Don’t Win Silver – You Lose Gold” ads Nike plastered all over Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics. Indeed, today if a team repeatedly comes close to winning the championship without actually doing so, that team is reviled as “chokers,” and even greater opprobium is rained down upon them than if they were finishing in last place year after year – although a team in the latter situation will now be completely ignored, its games unattended and unwatched, prompting the current obsession of league bureaucracies with “competitive balance.”

In a 16 game season, 24 of the 30 teams would have made it to the playoffs at least once, or 80% of the league, during this 9 year stretch. In the complete season, 19 teams, or 63%, made it to the playoffs once during this stretch.

Only 1/3 of the teams leading at the 16 game mark make it to the playoffs in any given season.

If the season ended at 16 games, the Yankees would have only won a division once in the past 9 seasons. They won it six times at the end of the season during the same stretch.

Teams that made the playoffs once in the fictional 16 game season went to the playoffs an average of 2.25 times during the 9 seasons under the fictional 16 game season. Teams that made the playoffs in the normal season repeated 3.13 times on average.

The Twins, Yankees, Cardinals, and Angels won their division in 5 or more of the past 9 seasons. No team in the fictional 16 game season won the division 5 times or more.

It’s only 9 data samples, but it’s already demonstrating that a short season generates a more “competitive” result when compared to a long season. I’d like to do a more comprehensive comparison, but it would be incredibly difficult given the nature of expansion teams and city changes.

The NHL’s problems are due mostly to (a) foolish overexpansion; (b) abysmal marketing of the sport to US-based audiences, particularly following the 2005 lockout; and (c) no apparent clue as to how to address (a) or (b).

Even the overall operation is a confused mess. On one hand, they attempt to behave like a McDonalds and put in place things like salary caps and profit sharing to avoid putting its own franchise units out of business that rely on one another to stay in business (if one team puts the others out of business, there’s no one left to play). On the other hand, when a team is poorly managed, they just throw up their hands and say, “Hey, we can’t control the management, they own it.” McDonalds would just strip the franchise from them in the franchise situation or teams would refuse to be scheduled against them in the private entity situation.

The whole situation is maddening (pardon the pun) when I realize the only reason the NFL still even exists is because of all the healthy tax subsidies being siphoned out of my pockets and your pockets. The Arena Football League is infinitely more interesting than the NFL, yet my local team, the Sharks, are stuck renting out a shoddy arena while the lockout king (there’s another bizarre practice, locking out the more lucrative television broadcasts just because the team failed to sell out the game) Jaguars got full reign of a full-on stadium bought and paid for by Joe Taxpayer.

Bah, I’ll just go back to playing video games. At least that hasn’t been completely overrun by government…yet. Canada and the UK are trying their hardest to subsidize that, too.