Parity Rules The NFL

Somewhere in the clouds, Pete Rozelle is smiling. Somewhere else, Paul Tagliabue is doing the same. Without a doubt, so is Roger Goodell. The NFL can claim something that the other professional sports in North America simply can not do. Through the work of their two previous commissioners, as well as the current head honcho, the NFL is a league where every team enters the new season with a chance to compete for the championship. It keeps the fans of all 32 teams involved with their team going into every season because no team can be ruled out before the season begins. A year ago, the Miami Dolphins were 1-15. This year they won the AFC East championship with an 11-5 record. The Atlanta Falcons were a team that only could be loved by anarchists in 2007. In 2008, they were a playoff team. The 2007 Patriots went 16-0 and lost in Super Bowl XLII but in 2008 they missed out on the playoffs (even with an 11-5 record). The NFL's preseason advertisement should be Kevin Garnett yelling out "ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!" (Unless, of course, you are a fan of the Detroit Lions. Your team has no chance to succeed. Ever.) The extreme examples in 2008 of the parity that rules professional football are the Arizona Cardinals and Baltimore Ravens. For years, the Cardinals have been a joke, suffering through countless years of losing. The high point of the Cardinals up until '08 was Rod Tidwell's fictional great game on Monday Night Football in Jerry Maguire. The only chance Cardinals fans had to see the Super Bowl was when Phoenix hosted the big game every other couple of years. In 2007, the Cardinals were 8-8, a good record considering their awful past. A year later they won the NFC West (with a 9-7 record) and their first two playoff games, setting them up to host the NFC Championship Game on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles. Other than the diehard fans of the Cardinals, no one expected them to go this far. As for the Ravens, they were coming off of a 5-11 season in 2007 and had fired longtime head coach Brian Billick (who led the Ravens to victory in Super Bowl XXXV) and replaced him with first-year coach John Harbaugh. The Ravens responded from their poor season in '07 to finish 11-5. Like the Cardinals, they too won their first two playoff games and will travel to Pittsburgh to face the Steelers for the AFC Championship on Sunday. Both teams are excellent examples of the equality that the NFL is based upon. Any team (again, other than the Lions) can be down one year and up the next. That is something very rare in the other major sports. Yes, the Rays had an amazing run in 2007 after years of losing but that is the exception. In the NFL, cases of teams rising from the bottom to the top are the rule.