The NFC, the NL and NBA East: crying on each others' shoulders

by Richard Paquette

We have witnessed during this decade, century, and, hell, millennium, complete dominance of conferences in our major sports. It seems as if talent is segregated by conference with the advantage going to the American League, American Football Conference, and the NBA’s West. These three conferences are all guilty of acting like Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone western. I’m not going to bore you with facts; they are there and easily accessible if you do not already know this. The problem is nobody cares that the talent has shifted so wildly. The sports media has just given up on the quality of championships.

Why do you think more people watch The View than the World Series? When the Red Sox and the Yankees finish their ALCS, nobody bothers with the World Series because more often than not, the American League comes back with the trophy.

Did anybody even watch the NBA Finals this year? I think more men died of erotic asphyxiation over those seven days in June than tuned into ABC to watch Lebron and his Cavs get swept. The Spurs, Suns, Mavericks, and Lakers are the attraction in June.

And the Super Bowl – the only reason people turn into that anymore is because of the stupid commercials. Face the facts – at your office, more people will talk about some stupid 30-second blip of something they will never enjoy (besides Budweiser or Bud Light) than the actual entertainment of the sport. The last few football seasons are all about Manning vs. Brady in January, not February.

So how do we end this problem? We can’t. The leagues and the media like it this way so it stays this way. This year the National League in baseball was made fun of numerous times as being Quadruple-A quality. Let’s face it – chicks still dig the long ball, which is why the American League is sexier. Newly affluent young black men want to play in the beautiful southwest these days. They don’t want to play in Boston, Cleveland, Washington, New York, Philly, etc. As for the NFL, elite players wind up in the AFC where as hyped players end up busting in the NFC.

Let us speak of this year. We could be on the brink of change. The World Series are about to begin with the hottest team in baseball, the Colorado Rockies, winners of 21 of their last 22, against the best team in the regular season, the Boston Red Sox. The Packers and Cowboys are no longer undefeated, but they are among the elite in the league this year and the Cowboys could represent the NFC well in the Super Bowl. As for the NBA, balance could be restored with the help of the young Bulls team, the newly acquired talent in Boston, a Pistons team with a mission, and of course King James in Cleveland.

We could be on the verge of a return to balance in the conferences. Or it could just be a pipe dream of this writer. In the end, I guess it does not matter if conferences dominate a sport as long as everyone still enjoys the playoffs and the finals, but ratings beg to differ.