Define success in sports

tdarko · #1 01-09-2007, 05:41 PM

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?

HajiShirazu · #2 01-09-2007, 06:28 PM

In college sports the definition of success makes more sense for most teams, which is roughly "outperform what your school is expected to do based on what it has done in the past few seasons." All the time you hear of some mid-major team going 8-4 and having a "successful season."
In pro sports the athletes are paid millions of dollars and fans don't have the same "root for the alma mater/old state" connection with the team, plus there are less teams, so nothing short of winning the title is acceptable most of the time. Most fans don't consider that in a 30 team league their team is doing very well to win a title every 20 years, or that only 20-40% of the teams make the playoffs, or that in the NFL and to a lesser extent other leagues all of the player acquisition rules are designed to prevent winning teams from staying at the top. It's just, "we are so unlucky, what a drought", or "we have been so bad, no title since 1980", or "another playoff failure, manning sucks."

tdarko · #3 01-09-2007, 06:51 PM

Haji,

So the fans of the Atlanta Hawks (sorry 'Tone) are being realistic in thinking that a championship is the only success? I agree that when you go 14-2 or whatever in the NFL, have a loaded team and come up short every year that you have now established a precedent and that anything short of a ring on your finger is failure...but there aren't but a handful of teams in ALL of sports that set these precedents over the course of each decade.

Needle77 · #4 01-09-2007, 07:05 PM

Haji,

I agree with alot of what you are putting out there. Good post.

Tdarko,

I am actually a fan of two teams that hit on both your spectrums. You hit it on the head as a Met fan, last year was fun, but I would be lying if I told you I was satisfied with not making it to the world series. But, as a Jaguars fan, when the team went 12-4 last year, I was so ecstatic about them making the playoffs I wasn't all that upset with the loss to the Patriots last year.

Look ahead one year. The Jaguars go 8-8 and I am extremely disappointed with their finish, I was hoping for a playoff berth and a win, at least. Being a Met fan this year, it's pretty much World Series or bust. Is that unrealistic? Well, it's a little to early to tell. But after last years success I want to be watching my team play in the fall classic.

I'm not sure if that answers your question or not. And I don't mean to hijack but while writing my response the question came to me, what do Tiger fans expect this year? After a few years of "knowing" you were going to lose to a very successful year, would it be a failure if they missed the playoffs by a game or were knocked out in the divisional round?