Formula for success

A sport needs two dominant teams for maximum excitement

I read the other day that a wise mathematician claims he has found the answer to an equation that has forever eluded everyone. Perhaps his talents may now be put to use to answer sport's eternal business question: Is it better for a sport to have one overpowering entity or for there to be a general equilibrium in which no one team or individual dominates and every dog can have his day?

Being neither wise nor a mathematician, I nevertheless offer the following formula: A sport's success equals the least possible number of champions times two modified by the "Cinderella X-factor" of exactly 1.67 per decade. Q.E.D.

That is, the ideal situation is to have not one, but two dominant teams or individuals who are head and shoulders above everybody else in a sport. Only every now and then -- say, no more than once every six years -- should a charming surprise rise to victory. That's always fun, but if it happens too often, as it has lately in the NFL, you haven't got one darling Cinderella, you've just got multiple ugly stepsisters.

The Deford Axiom: There is no value in serial Cinderellas in sport.

Likewise, equality is good in democracy, for political correctness and when you're handing out committee assignments at the annual church fair. But equality is no good for big-time sports. It's best to boast one perennial championship team that everybody loves or hates. Like the Yankees, who are already making a shambles of the pennant race and we're not even out of April. But look at the other extreme: the National Hockey League. Here we are, deep into the NHL playoffs, and nobody really knows who the best team is even supposed to be. That's a disaster for hockey.

But, if you were paying attention to the formula, you know the perfect situation is to have two outstanding teams, so that everybody can pick sides. It's more fun to want to beat the Yankees than to just hope they lose. The NBA could be that way if only the Sacramento Kings could get a little bit better and actually defeat the Lakers one time.

A repeat championship team -- or, as we are determined to say in the sports business, a dynasty -- matters most in roping in the fringe fans. That's why, at least relatively speaking, women's college basketball, with Connecticut and Tennessee reliably contending all the time, is more likely to attract the casual fan than is men's college basketball, which is just a bunch of nobodies seeded like geraniums -- bracketball.

Now, with individual sports, I only have to give you one word: Tiger. Yes, it matters even more for individual sports to have great, lasting champs. If only golf had a perennial competitor for Woods, like Arnie had Jack, like Ali had Smokin' Joe, like Chrissie had Martina, it would enjoy the ideal.

As for the Yankees, I see that the Chicago Cubs are in first place. There is no position for the Cubs or Red Sox in any ordered universe. Neither are they merely potential Cinderellas. If either does ever win, it is proof of nothing in mathematics, only that yes, He might have been forgetful, but indeed there is a God.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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