View original postIt's less so in football, but with with free agency, rivalries don't mean so much anymore. Without the same core of players year after year, the players themselves don't care about the rivalries, and that lack of feeling bleeds through. Also, because of that, rivalries wax and wane depending on the fortunes of the two teams involved. For example, the Raiders and Chiefs used to be an intense rivalry, but with how bad the Raiders have been for the last 15 years, it's not even close. When both the Cowboys and Redskins were good teams every year, that was a nice rivalry. Now, while the Cowboys have been relatively good most years and the Redskins' winning percentage acting like a yo-yo, it's not even close to the same.
I mean, I'm admittedly an outsider looking in, and I don't know what came first historically and all that, but I for one would think that the main factor against rivalries and players feeling team spirit, is not so much free agency - players deciding for themselves to go play for another team - as it is trades, teams swapping players without necessarily caring too much what the players involved think about that. Admittedly, it's not very likely that there will be many important trades between real rivals who directly compete with each other, but still, why would you really care about a team which can send you to some other team at the drop of a hat if they come across an interesting trade option?
I suppose what you meant, more than the decision-making issue, is players switching teams very regularly, which may be more likely to happen if they're free agents, but it could happen with trading too.
So do you still like the seeding system, NFC West fans?
- 02/01/2014 07:39:48 PM
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So you're saying that a system which is even-handed is wrong?
- 03/01/2014 04:12:25 AM
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Good suggestion.
- 03/01/2014 01:07:31 PM
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It was an ironic suggestion of a ridiculous extreme
- 03/01/2014 05:30:00 PM
626 Views
Yes, I know.
- 04/01/2014 03:39:56 PM
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You both seem to be under impression that the point of the season is the Super Bowl
- 04/01/2014 06:09:51 PM
558 Views
No, that's the point of the playoffs; the current system services both your interest & fair playoffs *NM*
- 04/01/2014 07:25:54 PM
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That would be because it is.
- 05/01/2014 03:36:37 PM
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It's funny you should say "with free agency".
- 05/01/2014 05:38:28 PM
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