Define success in sports

[tdarko]

Strangely enough I live in Dallas during football season and the northeast during all of baseball season. These two areas treat their different sports the same when it comes to defining success; you either win the Super Bowl/World Series or you failed. And as I have read this forum I keep seeing the same notion from many different fans of other organizations as well.

Then there are those rare exceptions when a fan is happy that their Jets team made the playoffs knowing that they don't have a chance to make it through a treacherous AFC playoff.

I look at teams like the Titans, Bengals and the Steelers. All the same record, nobody made the playoffs, yet one of these teams is happy with what they accomplished this year.

What sets the expectations, is it history? Teams like the Cowboys, Niners, Steelers etc. are supposed to be there every year. That seems silly to me, nobody owes anyone anything. You have the talent or you don't.

Is it money? Teams like the Yankees, Mets and the Dodgers with their payrolls should be able to stay ahead of the smaller market franchises. When they don't they have failed right? Well the smaller market organizations have clearly found this to be incorrect with their cleverness and their counter of the market. As we all know they simply take their one time prospect who has grown into a big time free agent money maker and sell him for a hand full of minor league prospects, these prospects, who they have for years come up and help them win b/c it has been shown that these prospects have been as valuable as 16 million a year free agents. Then when they win and progress now they are the big free agents and the cycle continues thus allowing the smaller market teams to always be ahead. Infiltrating the minor league system with talent has been a way to counter the explosion in price of free agents.

To me success in sports is only the expectation of the particular talent of a team in comparison to the talent of the rest of the field. This seems patronizing but it isn't b/c if success was thought of this way then every fan wouldn't think their team should win the SB/WS/Finals/SC etc. 1 team can win in every sport yet most fans think somehow their team can win and in most sports their are only a few teams that really have a chance. Baseball is an exception.

How do you define success?