Quote Aboveusonlypie="Aboveusonlypie"
I'm probably in a minority here but as a lifelong Socialist I still believe that Socialism (not Communism) can provide plenty of answers.'"
One thing that has always interested me, is the American attitude to sport. In most things the Americans are very capitalistic, they don't like the idea of the NHS as they see free healthcare as some form of socialist oppression, however in their major sports they operate salary caps and are fiercely protective of them. I follow NFL, and the American attitude is very much that the game comes first, they market the game vigorously through things like NFL films all about bringing money in to the game, and wanting a fairly even competition to keep interest in the game. They are also very wedded to their playoff system and aren't too bothered about the perceived unfairness that a team can go 15-1 in the regular season and then bomb out in the first playoff and season over, where a team can go 8-8 in a weak division and end up scraping their way to winning the Super bowl.
The American attitude to sport is much more about levelling the playing field being a good thing.
Two big things make it work in America.
1. The US is a big place with a lot of talent and sport is taken seriously at all levels. There are enough quality players, to fill NFL rosters with elite players. Where there aren't enough elite players like over here you get imbalance.
2. Youth development in the US is not the responsibility of the clubs. It is done by the colleges, which means they have a separate system for developing young players, and then give the clubs a chance to draft players from those colleges. The draft system means clubs that struggle one year get prime picks of the new graduating talent. I also think its a good system that they have very strong college football and rather than players turning pro at 17 or 18, rookies in the US are 23 or 24, which is probably why its so common to see the best rookies have incredible seasons straight away - they are pretty much the finished article by the time they graduate in to the top level.
In the absence of points 1 and 2, you can't replicate that kind of tough open competition even with a salary cap. In Australia they sort of get close as they have point 1 but not point 2. Although in some ways they do have point 2, in terms of the Queensland Cup. Melbourne Storm don't have an Academy, they draft in the best graduates from the Queensland competition. Could we use the National Leagues in a similar way? Difficult, but worth exploring.