[x]

The league would argue that all that makes the season more competitive.

And no, a team doesn't just have to sit around and weight until it wins -- ask the Lions or the Browns.

A situation where the largest city with the largest media market always gets the best players and usually wins the championship, as was the case with the New York Yankees for a long time, doesn't look much better.

[Alberta's Child]

If balanced competition is so critical, then the NFL should just have a new draft every year with all of the existing NFL players mixed in with the new ones. Then a QB like Peyton Manning could play for 15 years in the NFL on 15 different teams.

Don't laugh ... it's getting closer and closer to that.

[Alberta's Child]

And unlike big-league baseball, the NFL never had a problem with competitive imbalance tied to market size. Otherwise, how did Green Bay end up being such a dominant team in the 1960s?

The league's national TV contract pretty much eliminated any disadvantage that small-market teams may have had.

Ironically, city and state income taxes in the Northeast are putting many of those big-market teams at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to signing players to big contracts. In purely monetary terms, a team like the New York Yankees has to offer at least 10%-15% more money to a free agent in order to "match" an offer from a team in a state with no income tax.