This has been a terrific month for the North American sports league with the longest track record of sustained parity.
This year’s unquestioned title favorite has lost in resounding fashion to two last-place teams. Another powerhouse was vanquished by a perennial also-ran division rival.
Half of the teams currently in a playoff spot have not won a championship this century. When the playoffs begin, every team will have a path to a title — as well as a convincing first-round exit.
The previous 83 words describe Major League Baseball — and not the NFL, whose season kicked off 13 days ago with the usual nonsense about how it’s the most competitive and unpredictable sport in our land.
Unfortunately, you’ll never hear this from Rob Manfred, who is too busy trying to become a living meme by rubbing his hands in anticipation of fixing what isn’t broken with a lockout on Dec. 1, 2026.
Nor will you hear him declare the NFL’s reputation as a parity-ridden league is based entirely on old and mostly or entirely erroneous propaganda — which, to be fair, makes it a worthy national pastime.
Even when the late, genial Pete Rozelle was aiming to engender competitive balance in football — and before the NFL became a league in which it was impossible to win a title without a Hall of Fame-bound quarterback — the same small circle of teams tended to raise the Lombardi Trophy.
Eighteen teams have won the 45 Super Bowls since 1980 (or, if you prefer this written in pretentious NFL terms, XVIII teams have won the XLV Super Bowls since MCMLXXX). There have been 23 different World Series winners in the same span.
The disparity has been particularly vast this century, when 13 teams have won the Super Bowl. There have been six different champs over the last 10 years, a span in which 10 teams have reached the big game.
Sixteen teams have won the World Series since 2000. Eight different teams have been crowned champions over the last 10 years, during which 14 teams have advanced to the Fall Classic.
(For the record, for all the talk about salary caps and parity in basketball and hockey, there have been eight NBA champs and 12 conference champions and seven Stanley Cup winners and 13 finalists over the last decade.)
A giant gulf exists between the haves and have-nots in the NFL, where 63 teams have won at least 13 games in a season and 55 teams have suffered at least 13 losses in a season since 2000. But barring a season-ending surge by the Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies or Toronto Blue Jays, no baseball team will win 100 games in a full season for the second straight year — the first such stretch since a three-year streak from 2012 through 2014.
The parity has been widespread this month, when the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers were swept by the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates and lost two of three to the last-place Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles also swept the San Diego Padres, who are firmly ensconced in a wild card spot, while the cellar-dwelling Chicago White Sox and Washington Nationals won series against the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs, who are on their way to winning the AL Central and the first NL wild card, respectively.
Three of the four first-round byes will likely go to the Brewers, Tigers and Blue Jays, who have combined to win three titles in the last 50 seasons — as many crowns as the Kansas City Chiefs have won since 2019.
Baseball is far from perfect, and a long-range problem will develop if the Dodgers have figured out the life hack that allows them to sleep through the regular season before going into hyperdrive in October.
But with 13 days to go before the wild card round begins, the results of this season and recent history strongly suggest any team that reaches the playoffs has a legitimate chance to win it all. It’d be nice if Manfred, with a league-run network at his disposal as well as games on every network and streamer you’ve heard of (and a few you haven’t), could spend a little time talking about this and a little less time making everyone else worry about what awaits in 2026 and beyond.
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