I've learned that if you say a word enough times it loses all meaning and becomes just a jumble of sounds. Try it. Just pick a word and say it about 20 times as fast as you can.
As a society, I think we have done just that to the word "fair." We toss it around so much that we no longer know what fair means. Fair is what we use to justify taking from those who have to give to those who don't.
Governments, however, aren't the only institutions in a financial crunch, and before politicians rush to spend our money, they should look to the sports world to see what works.
All professional sports claim they want parity. When an organization wants parity, they usually implement salary caps, prohibiting wealthier teams from buying the best players. But how successful are these caps? Let's start with the National Basketball Association.
The NBA instituted a salary cap in 1985. So, how is it working out? In the 24 years since the introduction of the salary cap, only seven teams have won the NBA Championship. The Lakers and Bulls have each won it six times and the Spurs have won it four. Three teams account for over 50 percent of championships won in 24 years. So much for parity.
The National Football League has a salary cap that varies similar to the NBA's. The salary cap was implemented in 1994, and in the 15 years since there have been 11 Super Bowl Champions. This may seem like a victory for the salary cap, but in the previous 15 years there were eight different teams hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the year. The NFL salary cap was a solution in search of a problem.
Finally, we come to the National Pastime, Major League Baseball. The MLB, in case you weren't aware, has no salary cap. So how has it fared when it comes to parity?
I used 1985 as the starting point since that's when the NBA firstinstituted a salary cap. In the 23 World Series since then, 16 different teams have won the World Series.
Let's put this into percentages. In 23 years, a new team has won the World Series 69 percent of the time. In the 15 years since the NFL implemented the salary cap, a new team has won the Super Bowl 73 percent of the time.
A win for the salary cap? Not so fast my friend. If a new team had won the World Series 73 percent of the time, rounding up, that would mean one new winner in the past 23 years (Hey Cleveland fans, I guess that could've been you in '97).
The same people that denounce money as the cause of all evils also herald it as the cure to all of our problems as if it were some societal penicillin-a team hasn't won the World Series in a while? Give them some money. A school's failing? Give it more money.
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It isn't the richest teams that have the success-it's the smartest teams. Four MLB teams have been created since 1993-the Colorado Rockies, the Florida Marlins, the Arizona
Diamondbacks and the Tamp Bay (Devil) Rays. All four have made it to a World Series, the Marlins have won twice and Arizona has won once.
Before Washington insiders, with their vast knowledge of what is good for us, rush to spend our money, they should look to the world of sports. If they just spend money to spend money, we may wind up with a big fat Andruw Jones ($14.7 million to hit .158).
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