Aqua4Ever04 said:
I bet you that's what a lot of people said when you told them the Patriots would win the Super Bowl 2001. The truth is, the NFL is crazy and anything can happen. That's why it's so popular, it's parity. If I came here one year ago today and said the Bears will win the NFC North and win 12 games, you would call me crazy.
All I'm saying is the NFL is unpredictable, and there will always be something that suprises you each season. I don't call any one crazy for making any certain picks. Unless of course someone picked the 49ers to win the big game this year.
Parity is a myth, conjured up by the NFL to inflate the notion of competitive balance within the league, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by the media, who help to perpetuate it. When they describe the league as having parity, what's really being conveyed is the idea of a large middle class among the league's teams. The fact is, since the advent of the salary cap and free agency, teams rise and fall at the same rate they always have, with a handful of elite teams remaining successful over long stretches (It just so happens that the rise of said elite teams coincides with the establishment of superior management and coaching regimes). Combine that with another handful of teams saddled with poor ownership parties and management, and what you get is what the NFL has now: Consistent turnover in playoff wildcards, along with one or two division winners a year, all pulled from the same middle tier of teams, sandwiched between two distinct groups, the elite and the incompetent. Note that the elite (and for that matter, the incompetent) tends to stay pretty consistent - The Steelers, Broncos, Patriots, Eagles, and more recently the Panthers and Colts (all teams that draft well) have made up this group for the better part of this decade, and while there will always be occasional hiccup seasons, caused by injuries and short-term attrition, the list doesn't change much - new teams are not welcomed into this group too readily. So sure, you can have the occasional surprise the way the league is structured - you usually see one or two a year - it's a fairly safe bet the aforementioned teams will be there, and picking from the middle class to fill the gaps is at best a crapshoot. And the truth is, aside from the Ravens (bolstered by a once in a decade defense), all the championship teams of recent years have either belonged to this group, or have been creeping onto the fringe of it for some time (Rams, Buccaneers). Those same Chicago Bears you mention (a team in a terrible division, uncoincidentally), who've had two of these "magical" runs as a result of so-called "parity", have flamed out in the playoffs both times. So excuse me when I scoff at predictions that fall outside of this group of elites - there's no precedent for it.
