Parity, the "Super Seven," and the NFL

I'm holding off on writing about the Super Bowl -- I will try to post something either tomorrow or Sunday morning, but I am standing by my belief that Seattle is better than everyone thinks and that they will bring a title to the Pacific Northwest.

I was intrigued by a Tim Cowlishaw column and accompanying chart in the Dallas Morning News the other day. The gist: For all of the talk about parity in the NFL, it actually lags behind most of the other professional sports leagues on this front despite the fact that baseball, for example, has a huge disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The chart is most telling -- seven teams have won 2/3 of all Super Bowls, and unless they are facing one another, they rarely lose. In fact, the seven teams have five total losses in the Super Bowl against teams that are not on that list of seven. (Eg: The Patriots have won three Super Bowls, and while they have lost twice, one of those losses was to the Packers, who are also part of that elite group of three-time Super Bowl winners; similarly, while the Cowboys have won five and lost three Super Bowls, two of their losses were to the peer-group Steelers).

Where I see the NFL's parity still being a factor is when it comes to the teams that have made it to but not won the Super Bowl -- just think of the last few years -- we have seen Philadelphia, Carolina and Atlanta make it to the big game, we saw the Rams come out of nowhere to make it to two Super Bowls, one which they won, and one which they lost. And when the Rams won they beat Tennessee, and of course they lost to the Pats in what is my favorite Super Bowl ever. The year that the Raiders (one of the teams among the Super Seven) lost, they did so to the Bucs, and of course there was the Ravens-Giants Super Bowl best remembered for being the Super Bowl we all would like to forget. Now this year we have the Steelers, also on the list of seven, taking on Seattle, this year's upstart. So while the rule seems to be that parity does not extend to the winner of the ultimate game, almost every year there will be an upstart in the game.

(It also seems fair at this point to address the fact that the "modern era" of football seems to trace back to the AFL-NFL merger and thus to the Super Bowl. This is all well and good, but we probably ought to note that there were NFL championship games long before that, and so while the Super Seven principle is an interesting one, there are several teams that have three or more championships -- yes, Tom and Don, including Cleveland -- and Green Bay's numbers are even more staggering when placed in that context.)