Given an infinite amount of time, a monkey banging away at a typewriter could produce the works of Shakespeare. Perhaps given the same amount of time, the New Orleans Saints could eventually win a Super Bowl.
But are you willing to wait for that day? And if/when it arrived, would you even care?
It’s not NFL parity or mediocrity per se that upsets me. It’s what that parity breeds: a chance for teams no one really cares about to compete for a championship that no one will want to watch.
So I’m hereby proposing the NFL separate the wheat from the chaff and cut its current roster of teams to eliminate those that have forfeit their window of opportunity. Those teams for which a Super Bowl win would be either anticlimactic or the equivalent of a tree falling in the forest when no one is around.
To speed along the process, I've already done the dirty work, selectively mixing objective criteria with my infinite wisdom. In the immortal words of former Falcons coach Jerry Glanville, "This the NFL, which stands for 'Not For Long.'"
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2008.