First, I never said Upshaw invented revenue sharing. He championed it to help spread more throughout the NFL. Yes, the NFL had been collectively bargained the TV right since the 60s, but a lot of things were not shared and not shared even until the 2006 CBA like luxury boxes and some marketing deals (before 2006, the individual teams got 100% of that revenue for themselves). Upshaw was in the played a role to get that. He knew that if small market teams didn't have the money, they couldn't sign players.
Luxury box revenue or local licensing and sponsorship deals are
still not shared between franchises. The only thing the 2006 CBA changed in that respect is that these unshared revenues were now included in the calculation of the players' compensation. This put the low-revenue franchises in the position of having the salary cap/floor raised by increases in revenue they didn't have a share in, increasing the relative burden on them far beyond what the meager supplemental revenue-sharing plan could make up for. In the 2006 CBA, Upshaw did exactly what you're angry at Miller for -- winning something for the players despite it potentially leading to more imbalance among the teams.
Second, long after Marvin Miller MLB did come up with a weak form of revenue sharing in the luxury tax. It is a weak form because only a handful of teams that pay this tax and the small market teams don't have to use any of the money they get from the luxury tax on the players. So there are Miller could have done.
Are you saying that the head of the players' union can tell the owners how to split up their money? Baseball clearly wasn't ready for revenue sharing in Miller's day, and even at present, the luxury tax is a pretty feeble form of it. What was Miller, or any subsequent union head supposed to do about that? The NFL, for example, just amended its revenue sharing plan, something that's clearly been in the works for a month now, and De Smith apparently heard about it when the rest of us did.
Third, parity most definitely plays a factor in the NFL's dominance over the MLB. Every team in the NFL has a legitimate shot to win the Super Bowl within three years if they are properly managed and coached. You can't say that for MLB. That keeps fans interested. Look at New Orleans. About a half dozen years ago, Tom Benson was looking to move the team to San Antonio because the SuperDome was empty. Now they have a mile long season ticket waiting list and Saints merchandise are among the hotsellers. In a non-parity system, the Saints would have been moved and the majority of the region would be only casual fans.
Or, the team would have been moved, and would now be playing in a bigger, healthier market in a city that was willing and able to build it a modern stadium, and making the NFL more money.
I'm not arguing that parity isn't overall good for the league. In particular, it encourages spending by the the lower-revenue teams by keeping the goal-posts at an attainable distance, and thus keeps teams from going the Marlins' route. But this still doesn't mean it's played a significant role in the rise of the NFL's popularity over baseball's. After all, the 2000's have seen the NFL's best growth, and has been characterized by a 3-team dominance of the AFL even more than Sox and Yankees have had on the AL.
The thing about the NFL's success is that it can get millions of people in the West Coast to excitedly tune in to watch Indianapolis play in Foxborough. That a team from a tiny burg in Wisconsin can have one of the largest national draws in the league. Parity is good for the league to be sure -- but it's the collectively bargained TV package and centralized league media strategy that has put the NFL where it is relative to baseball.
Fourth, what Miller brought to MLB is by far not the only reason for the decline of the sport, but it was certainly a contributor. There are a bunch of other reasons for the decline, but the free agency he won definitely plays a factor in it. He didn't fight for a system that would support his free agency and that was shortsighted. He should have pushed for a salary floor (which Upshaw fought for and got) where teams have to spend a certain amount. A lot of what he did was great in that he got the players out of a system of indentured servitude, but it doesn't mean what he helped to create was neccessarily good for the sport in a lot of ways.
Miller and Upshaw were both charged with winning free agency for their constituents. They both did, within the parameters of the league organization at the time. Blaming Miller for failing to completely reorganize baseball's core business model is just silly.
