All people are created equal, but all leagues and teams are not. Over the evolution of professional sports, certain teams have shown the extent to which they are willing to outspend the competition. Others outsmart the field - they don't have the resources of the rich. And this is a good thing.
Inequality in sports leads to innovation. The most famous example was depicted in the book and award-winning movie "Moneyball." The Oakland Athletics simply couldn't compete with other team's larger payrolls - it was no secret. The A's were in a smaller market with an owner who wasn't willing to spend with the competition. So what did they do? They found someone who was willing to think outside the box.
My dad used to define insanity to me as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For years, this was exactly what the A's were doing. They were content with mediocrity and were hoping that something would change even though they fundamentally were not changing anything they were doing.
Enter Billy Beane. He wasn't afraid to be different. Through shrewd tactics and the passion to revolutionize a game rooted in tradition, he built a team from scraps that would go on to challenge those spending on a seemingly unlimited budget.
The Yankees or Red Sox would never have been willing to take the new data-driven approach because they had a particular reputation to uphold. As established franchises, there were expectations that the behemoths of the AL East had to fulfill. Nowadays, everyone uses some variant of this sabermetrics method in developing their rosters. If the Athletics had the budget of the Yankees, this revolution never would have come to be.
College football was revolutionized with the "hurry-up offense" made famous by the Oregon Ducks and ripped off in one form or another by many other college teams. Traditionally, teams would load up with heavy linemen in the trenches and would physically overpower their opponents. Now, smaller teams can be quicker and more agile, to the point where the bigger teams like Alabama have to adjust to the style of the smaller teams instead of the other way around.
I'm not encouraging inequality, but I realize that it exists and isn't going to change despite how much we may want it to. Not all teams and markets are equal, so we shouldn't act like they are. No matter what, a team in New York will always have a bigger fan base and budget than one in Minnesota. You don't see the Yankees of the world leading the way in change. It's the Oakland Athletics or the Tampa Bay Rays.
With the odds stacked against them, those with built-in disadvantages embrace the opportunity to play the role of the underdog. They need to be smarter in how they spend money, acquire players and operate their teams. In fact, it makes it seem even sweeter when they are able to take down the favorite who is spending three to four times their budgets.
Redistribution of wealth isn't the answer. Passing money from the hands of the Dodgers to those of the Astros won't make an immediate impact on the standings or game. However, once teams learn how to use the money they have, we all get something special. It is through the inequality that the underdogs learn to outsmart their competition. The need for these tactics has the ability to revolutionize a sport to the point where it can never be played the same way again. Inequality exists; we should embrace it and we should see the benefits to the game that come from it, but until that happens - you're sacked!
Jordan Bean is a sophomore majoring in economics. He can be reached at Jordan.Bean@tufts.edu.
