March 02, 2008
Win Early
A great article in the Boston Globe points out that if an owner doesn't win early, that owner rarely wins at all:
In professional sports, an owner's commitment to winning right out of the gate counts, according to a Globe compilation and analysis of championships won by the last two rounds of owners for every team in the four major US sports leagues. If new owners don't win a championship within five to eight years of buying a team, depending on the sport, their chances of ever doing so decline dramatically, the Globe found. Many will never win.
Kraft claimed his first championship in precisely the median time it has taken other football owners to win - eight years. For baseball, basketball, and hockey, the median time to win the big trophy is five years, the data show. The largest slice of winning owners earn their victories within five years.
Take baseball, with its 30 teams, for example. Among 59 current and immediate past owners, seven won a World Series within five years of buy ing a team. After that, a handful of victories are sprinkled over four decades. And 38 owners have never won (not counting nine who have owned teams for less than five years).
The odds are surprisingly similar in the other major-league sports. It turns out that an owner's impatience to deliver championships is a big factor in the results.
That's really fascinating. One would think that owners would learn what works and what doesn't over time and improve their chances of winning by being more experienced. The desire to win early on seems to be a great motivator.
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Posted by David Pinto at
10:33 AM
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