Small-market clubs still alive (and thriving) in NFL playoffs – elcajon newson Elcajon News only

Now seems like a good time for a reminder on how two of our country’s major sports leagues operate:

The NFL chooses to lend a helping hand to the little guys among its 32 franchises.

The league’s small-market teams, as a result, have a fair chance to contend for the Super Bowl, and not just a Super Bowl every other decade or so.

The MLB’s economic system, in sharp contrast, doesn’t assist the little guys so much.

There’s no hard salary cap. There’s no franchise tag. There’s no equal slice of media pie going to every club.

This weekend, as the NFL playoffs resume, it’s once again a fine time to be a small-market franchise in the AFC.  Three of these little guys have returned to the conference’s semifinals after getting there last year — the Kansas City Chiefs, the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens.

If you follow both the NFL and MLB and think you have a good imagination, I’d like to put you to an imagination test.

Try to picture MLB’s Kansas City Royals — or any other small-market team, the Padres included — thriving to the same extent as football’s Kansas City Chiefs have in the past 12 years.

Visualize the Royals posting MLB’s best winning percentage over those 12 years. To be clear, that means a decade-plus of more winning than the Dodgers, Yankees or Red Sox.

Now, see the Royals raising three World Series trophies in the past five years.

And if you haven’t fainted yet, picture the Royals playing in six consecutive American League Championship Series clinchers.

Even the folks at Disney aren’t that imaginative.

Meantime, the NFL’s K.C. affiliate, operating in the same Midwestern region that stands 33rd among U.S. media markets, per Nielsen, has a chance to become the first franchise to win three consecutive Super Bowls.

With a win over Houston Texans, the Chiefs would play next week in their seventh consecutive Super Bowl qualifier.

The Royals may lack a leader as brilliant as Chiefs coach Andy Reid. But they’re not dummies.

In fact, the Royals own the only World Series trophy won by a club from a bottom-six media market in the wild-card era.

The potent QB Effect gives NFL upstarts more wherewithal to succeed, for sure. An NFL team that gets a star QB is almost certain to contend for a Super Bowl.

But the economic system gives the NFL small-market teams a great chance to retain its stars, and to build a good team around them.

The Chiefs, for example, won their second consecutive Super Bowl last year even as their quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, cost more against the salary cap than any other QB.

When it comes to reaching the championship game, winning the trophy and sustaining high-end contention, the NFL small-market teams can do just fine. In fact, several of these little guys have thrived in the three decades since the NFL adopted free agency.

Meantime, in the same time frame —  the wild-card era that began after MLB’s labor stoppage canceled the 1994 World Series — baseball’s little guys have lagged their NFL counterparts by miles.

Let’s look at MLB’s bottom-fifth tier of six small-market teams: the Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, the Padres, Royals, Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers.

The only World Series participants in the wild-card era’s 30 seasons have been the Padres (1998) and Royals (2014 and ’15). And across those regular seasons, all six franchises have an aggregate losing record.

The NFL’s bottom-fifth in market size over the same span includes seven teams: the Chiefs, Ravens, Bills, Green Bay Packers, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Diego Chargers (who existed most of that time frame).

The Chiefs, Steelers, Packers and Ravens have combined for nine Super Bowl wins in the 32 seasons. Including a conference title apiece for the Bills, Bengals and Chargers, the seven smaller-markets franchises have appeared in 14 Super Bowls in the free-agency era.

The NFL is a bully when it comes to extracting massive stadium subsidies out of markets big, middle or small. But its system enables teams and fans in Kansas City and several other smaller markets, including tiny Green Bay, to be as big time as anyone else.