Just looking at the wide range of Super Bowl winners

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Could we benefit from this in England? It seems that the lower teams get some decent players to use the next season and it''s forever evening out minus the odd marquee player.

Imagine us actually standing a chance at Champions league one year!

[Thirsty Lizard 3,174]

The NFL is run along ruthless - almost Stalinist - lines to ensure fair competition between the competing teams. Quite ironic really given that the USA is meant to be the home of free-market capitalism.

Football here and in Europe has unfortunately evolved in a very different way.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Which way do you go with then? I can see why both don''t work. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer our way, meaning grass roots and lower leagues badly suffer while the premier league and particular the top 6 or so teams thrive but on the other hand. It''d seem daft for Ronaldo and co to have to go to Wigan for the season because they finished bottom. It''d really annoy me if I was in Ronaldo''s boots, great for Wigan though!

I saw that Peyton Manning (the quarterback) gets like a million a week too! Makes footballers look like paupers! Conversely, the winning quarterback is on like half a million a year, about what an average championship player would get.

[norfolkchance1 0]

Your right Lizard sadly football in Europe is a mutating bloated monster.

[ncfcstar 292]

Whilst we''re at it we can all become franchises too...[:|]

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

There''s no doubt the US system makes sure that you don''t end up with the same teams at the top all the time.

 

This is what you need IMO :

• A wage cap. Would bugger up your Champions League chances if set at a level to reduce spending of the top teams (and otherwise is pointless).  Maybe it could be agreed across Europe, which would mean we can''t buy in as many foreign players, so the quality of the Prem would decline, but maybe strenghten the England team ?  Also is probably not allowed by European law.
• no promotion or relegation.  Can''t see it happening because there are so many Champ teams that regard themselves as entitled to be in the Prem. And it would take away a lot of the excitement TBH.  It wouldn''t be so bad as long as City are in the Prem when it happens tho.
• A draft system for young players coming in, with lower teams getting better picks.  A really good idea IMO - for baseball this applies to both school and college leavers so it could work equally well for football.  Would certainly put the cat among the pigeons !  Probably also not allowed by European law though.

A nice idea but football is so much in thrall to the big clubs I can''t see it happening.

[A Gay Schoolboy 0]

[quote user="Thirsty Lizard"]The NFL is run along ruthless - almost Stalinist - lines to ensure fair competition between the competing teams. Quite ironic really given that the USA is meant to be the home of free-market capitalism.

Football here and in Europe has unfortunately evolved in a very different way.[/quote]This is because we in Europe look at the NFL through with an incorrect view informed by European football norms. We expect each team to be its own separate entity competing against each other (I mean this in economic terms), with the ''product'' being individual teams. In American sports the product is the league itself.Its still just as hyper-capitalist as our football, perhaps even more so as the major leagues in America have so thoroughly crushed any competition that they have an effective monopoly.

[Morisons Prozac 0]

[quote user="Jimmy Smith"]Which way do you go with then? I can see why both don''t work. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer our way, meaning grass roots and lower leagues badly suffer while the premier league and particular the top 6 or so teams thrive but on the other hand. It''d seem daft for Ronaldo and co to have to go to Wigan for the season because they finished bottom. It''d really annoy me if I was in Ronaldo''s boots, great for Wigan though!

I saw that Peyton Manning (the quarterback) gets like a million a week too! Makes footballers look like paupers! Conversely, the winning quarterback is on like half a million a year, about what an average championship player would get.[/quote]But the seahawks QB is still on his rookie contract so that''s like the equivalent of Josh Murphy earning half a million a year. When this contract runs out Williams (the QB) will earn about the same as Manning.

[Redders Right Foot 22]

there''s no real way to have a draft system for football with the way the youth system works throughout europe. the reason it works in the US is that the best players play in university, then the best of the best get drafted to a pro team, with the worst team having the first pick of the bunch. so unless we did away with youth academies and made one giant one, it wouldn''t happen.

and with player power and how deep in the sh*tter we are with wages there''s no real way to place a wage cap either.

I don''t like it, but it''s just how it is.

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

True but they have the draft in baseball too, where players can be drafted out of "high school" or uni.  The question would be, how do you get youth teams setup to play at a high level, prior to the age when players can be drafted.  It could be done with the will to create a system of academies linked to schools rather than clubs, funded by the profesisonal leagues, but there''s no way the Prem teams would ever agree to it.

[kick it off 1,952]

[quote user="Jimmy Smith"]Which way do you go with then? I can see why both don''t work. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer our way, meaning grass roots and lower leagues badly suffer while the premier league and particular the top 6 or so teams thrive but on the other hand. It''d seem daft for Ronaldo and co to have to go to Wigan for the season because they finished bottom. It''d really annoy me if I was in Ronaldo''s boots, great for Wigan though!

I saw that Peyton Manning (the quarterback) gets like a million a week too! Makes footballers look like paupers! Conversely, the winning quarterback is on like half a million a year, about what an average championship player would get.[/quote]

I''m quite into NFL, and have long championed their system over ours. You seem to have a few key misnomers in your ideas of how their system works.

Firstly, Players come to the NFL through the draft process (99.9% of the time). This is where the players who have been playing at college (university) put themselves forth for selection to the NFL. There are seven "rounds" of selection, with each of the 32 teams having one pick per round, on a reverse order rotation, starting with the poorest team, and the best team picks number 32 in all 7 rounds. These picks can be traded either packaged together for higher picks (Eg Early 3rd round and 2nd round in exchange for a late first round pick) or exchanged for players already in the league.

The players are contracted to the team that picks them for 4 seasons. They can be traded before that, but they have no real power to walk away. The pay scale for this contract is pretty much fixed, which is why Russell Wilson earns so little compared to the veteran Peyton Manning. The best players are not divided up and sent to the worst teams, the only benefit the bad teams get is picking higher in the draft so getting better youngsters, they do not get any veteran stars unless they offer them a more attractive contract. So yes, you do get good (young) players on bad teams, but that is why the league is so competitive, and normally, a team who picks first in the draft will have a couple of key building blocks so you won''t find them being as bad again the next year. The initial contract is 4 years, but then the player is free to do what they like and go to the highest bidder. This means that as they are moving into their prime at 26/27, they have a free market for their services. So your Ronaldo/Wigan analogy is fine, but in the NFL there aren''t really unfashionable clubs in the same way due to the wider equality of the league (except Cleveland, nobody wants to live in Cleveland apparently!) and Ronaldo in his prime would be free to go elsewhere.

Due to having a fully enforced salary cap, and minimum salary floor, NFL teams can''t load up on good players anyway, like Man City or Barca, for every star they sign, there is a compromise somewhere else as they would not be able to afford the wages, and remain under the cap. That essentially means that good players are distributed pretty evenly, and more focus is put on to tactics.

Not sure where you got Manning being on a million a week from, seeing as the salary cap is around $125 million, and that would be half the teams player budget for the year (for the 52 man squad + 7 man practice squad). NFL contracts are fully disclosed, Manning is on a 5 year $98 million dollar contract (not all of that money is guaranteed). That''s a maximum of $18mill per year on average (if he hits all the targets to get the bonus money). Which converts to around £12mill per year. Which is around about what Rooney is rumoured to be looking for. Considering Peyton Manning is the best player of all time, I don''t think that''s a silly amount comparitively.

Hope that helps clarify things for you a little.

[kick it off 1,952]

[quote user="Morisons Prozac"]But the seahawks QB is still on his rookie contract so that''s like the equivalent of Josh Murphy earning half a million a year. When this contract runs out Williams (the QB) will earn about the same as Manning.[/quote]

Wilson is the QB. He won''t earn the same money as Manning. He''ll get a 5 or 6 year deal worth around $10-12 mill per year. Manning is the best QB in history, no way Wilson gets a comparable deal, unless he wins the next two superbowls too!

[Bill 1,788]

given that it is about delivering ''good telly'' then this contrived nonsense should not be help up as any example to football, or any sport to be honestmaybe someone from aviva could stand on the touchline a determine when there is a break and for how long so the correct ads could be insertedI think saturday afternoon wrestling on itv had a bit more integrity about it that this pantomime buffoonery

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

Is Payton Manning''s salary being calculated as a million dollars per week of the season? Which would be about right?

Makes it sound a lot higher than over 52 weeks

[A Load of Squit 5,207]

Its a system that rewards failure, finish last and you get the best new player, it only works in a closed shop.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Is Payton Manning''s salary being calculated as a million dollars per week of the season? Which would be about right?

Makes it sound a lot higher than over 52 weeks.

Ah, you saw the same graphic as me i guess. So he''s on as much as Rooney wants, makes a bit more sense now!

I''m not in any way an expert, i''m just observant that all the teams in the league have a chance at the big time.

I guess with all the foreigners and popularity round the world it would be hard to mimic the NFL system.

[kick it off 1,952]

[quote user="Jimmy Smith"]Ah, you saw the same graphic as me i guess. So he''s on as much as Rooney wants, makes a bit more sense now!

I''m not in any way an expert, i''m just observant that all the teams in the league have a chance at the big time.

I guess with all the foreigners and popularity round the world it would be hard to mimic the NFL system.[/quote]

I had a similar discussion in a forum on a manager game I play about what could and couldn''t be applied across, and hypothetically how I would implement changes to adapt the system to mimic the NFL setup.

http://www.virtualmanager.com/forums/topics/1061754-the-state-of-football-today

My club on there is Grant Holts Moustache.

[Surfer 1,547]

The NFL also has de-facto legal exemption from US anti-trust (collusion) laws (MLB - Baseball, even has de-jure legal exemption) so it''s unlikely the EU would ever allow it under their equivalent competition law...

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

[quote user="A Load of Squit"]
Its a system that rewards failure, finish last and you get the best new player, it only works in a closed shop.


[/quote]

Good point.  Can you imagine the last few weeks of the Prem if lower placings were rewarded !  In the NFL, the playoff system means lots of teams are in with a chance of winning until very close to the end.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Ah the good old playoffs! Reminds me of that old TV show Gladiators where you could dominate all show and get a 30 second head start and then get stuck on the final travelator! Imagine being top for so long only to lose to a team that just crept in.

I do think the playoffs should work so the bottom two qualifiers play each other, then the winner faces the next bottom then they play the top qualifier. It would be fairer.

[Yellow Wal 314]

Jimmy Smith wrote the following post at 04/02/2014 4:31 PM:Which way do you go with then? I can see why both don''t work. The rich

get richer and the poor get poorer our way, meaning grass roots and

lower leagues badly suffer while the premier league and particular the

top 6 or so teams thrive but on the other hand. It''d seem daft for

Ronaldo and co to have to go to Wigan for the season because they

finished bottom. It''d really annoy me if I was in Ronaldo''s boots, great

for Wigan though!

We don''t need to follow the American Football route.

We could:

Ban all loans - This season we have been beaten by Cardiff with the help of Manchester United (Wilfried Zaha), beaten by Everton with the help of Manchester City (Gareth Barry) and Chelsea (Romelu Lukaku), beaten by Hull City with the help of Tottenham Hotspur (Jake Livermore), and possibly others? If those clubs don''t want those players then they should move them on, permanently. This would also be greatly beneficial to the players in the long term as well.

Re-instate a meaningful Reserve league - Clubs would and could then develop their own players without the need to sent them out on loan.

Strictly enforce a 25 (or slightly more) man squad system - don''t allow clubs to register many other players than this and then don''t play them. As now, players under 21 would not count ........... but at their 21st birthday the player should be given a contract or allowed to leave the club. If they were given a contract then the club would have to release another one of its players.

Good Premiership squad players would not then be left to rot with the stiffs but would be given the opportunity to further their careers and, in fact, help the national team. Two immediate players who have suffered like this that come to mind, and could easily have been going to Brazil later this year but won''t now, are Kyle Naughton and Jack Rodwell - forgotten men!

 There are other suggestions .. but this is enough for now!

[Syteanric 1]

the NFL model is fantastic but sadly way too late!

I''d love to see an Aguerro at Norwich, it would have been possible under the model, but the game would never change and it we cost too mcuh and be too much upheavel now.

I also agree that we should have a "college" system for developing young players.. none of this "if you''re good enough you''re old enough..." by putting players through an education and ensuring they enter the game at 21/22 they are safeguarding a future.

what if a 18 year old kid gets in the first team, breaks his leg on his debut and can never play again.. the club gives up on him and what does he have to fall back on?

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

I was reading the CV for a tax partner at a firm of accountants recently (on their website) which revealed he''d been a trainee at a big football team in his youth but injury forced him to find another career.

So, the alternatives are pretty grim for young footballers who fail to make it.

[Fleckys Flip-Flop 0]

The draft system only works because the players come straight from college. College sport is huge and a lucrative business itself which (financially) allows colleges to offer scholarships to the best high school players. So to work a system like that, you need to eradicate the current youth development systems, while encouraging people to watch University sport in their thousands to pay for the player scholarships. Logistically we could never switch to that kind of system.    

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

Baseball drafts from school as well as college.  You would need to change the system so youth team football isn''t linked to the clubs.  It would be doable if there were the will, but as it doesn''t favour the big clubs it won''t happen.

[TexasCanary 0]

Can''t say I''m a lover of the NFL system which MLS has also adopted. There is effectively only a premier league. No relegation. Team owners can and do put out rubbish teams to earn TV money for their pockets.

In MLS the play off system is under review also. A team which wins their league hands down can be out of the playoffs at the first round taking no account for their season performance..

Guess nothing''s perfect !

[Houston Canary 0]

So, the alternatives are pretty grim for young footballers who fail to make it.

99.99% or more of young footballers fail to make it.

You''re in pretty select company to make a lifetimes earnings playing pro sports for a few years. I''m sure most who dont make it turn out all right.