The NFL: Not as good as it used to be?

it's just that back then, you had some teams that were simply awesome and some that were god awful.  If free agency hadn't hit until say 2000, that cowboys team would have won at least four probably six superbowls.  They were so loaded it was sick.  On the same note, the pittsburgh and san fran teams of the 70s and 90s would not have been so successful.  As much as it pains me to admit it, this makes what the pats have done over the last few years even more impressive.  I mean, look at the Rams - they were setting the world on fire a few years ago and now they are toast.  

is what I meant to say

of several reasons. First of all, expansion teams (Browns, Panthers, Texans, Jags) all started to dilute the talent pool. Instead of 28 teams, we now have 32. Thats 200 players that would make the rest of the league stronger, not to mention coaches as well.

Free agency and salary cap is another. Teams are going to lose players every year so tha makes the front offices of teams more valuable in becoming capologists.

Finally, the goal of Paul Tagliabue was to create parity throughout the league so every franchise could be more competitive and have a shot at the title.

Its a watered down league and basically the Pats have been the most successful because they do the best job of working within the free agency and cap rules in drafting and signing FAs.

People who tell you that football teams of today aren’t as good as in the past are just people holding on to the glory days of their youth and engaging in hero-worship. It has nothing to do with the reality of the game today. It’s like music, each generation tends to hold on to the music they grew up with and categorize most new stuff as inferior to what they listened to. It’s a crock.

The talent pool isn’t diluted because the pool of available athletes is so much larger. Because the NFL continues to grow as a sport and the monetary rewards are so much greater, there is an ever-growing pool of youth who aspire to join its ranks. They are trained much earlier, condition themselves on a constant basis and live football year around. In the NFL’s distant past, players actually had other jobs in the offseason, their only job nowadays is to be football players.

People who glorify the dynasties of the past leave out one big factor. There were teams that absolutely stunk, and they stunk for a long time. Think of the Saints or the Falcons or other franchises that could never get it going. These teams are conveniently forgotten in hero-worship. Because of parity and free-agency, teams can actually get better quicker and this keeps their city and management striving to get better. The pressure form the fan base doesn’t allow for them to be complacent in losing.

The players are simply better athletes today on the whole. They are bigger, faster and stronger and possess as much skill as the past players in a better package. They pay much more attention to film and live football year round and their conditioning is much better. Coaching staffs are much better, they are trained better and they have plenty of technology available to create better game plans and to scout the opposition. The medical staffs are light years ahead and keep players playing who in the past would have had to retire.

So don’t believe them Nelson. It’s old-fogey hero-worship. They forget all the bad things and the bad teams that littered the landscape while only a few select teams dominated the scene every year. Because of this, the media, which was much more limited then, only concentrated on teams that won and this tended to elevate players into god-like idols because they won every year and no one was paying attention to the players on the mediocre and bad teams.

Football players and teams are definitely better today than they were in the past.

In fifteen to twenty years from now, there'll be a whole new set of old-time fans who will be saying, football just isn't as good today. What they really mean is my youth is gone and I miss those teams from when I was growing up, it has nothing to do with he quality of the play.

that there may have been a select few teams that were better than many teams today but the overall NFL is not worse.  Parity makes for more exciting games and teams that were basement dwellers for years now have a chance to turn things around.  Tampa Bay turned into a powerhouse a few years into free agency and they were a joke for twenty years prior.

To improve the quality of the game would be to institute a rookie salary scale, like the NBA has.

Most young players are vastly overpaid when they enter the league, and get pressed into service before they're ready, not based on their ability, but rather the exorbitant contracts they've been given.

JaMarcus Russell is a perfect example.  He's nowhere near ready to play in the NFL, but might see action this weekend, for no other reason than to justify the $38 million in guaranteed money he was given after holding out until the second week of the regular season (another thing that would disappear with a rookie wage scale).

Let those kids sit for a few years, and make sure that, when they do get paid, they've earned it.  Then take the money you're saving on rookies and spend it on productive veterans.