Don’t Bet on a Subway Series Just Yet

Each fall, America is gripped by the sort of widespread insanity that’s probably better dealt with by novelists, sociologists, and experts in mass propaganda than by sportswriters: Faced with the end of the baseball season, people turn, in the millions, to football. It makes no sense. Leaving aside the sheer tedium of watching men in plastic armor alternately moving several inches at a time and standing around posing while overly caffeinated middle-aged men wearing polo shirts scream at them, football is a dull sport because the better team pretty much always wins. Even careful engineering meant to ensure that no team is much better than any other — ensuring lots of betting action and thus lots of interest in otherwise boring football games — still leaves an NFL where a fan with any knowledge of the game at all can call the winner before more or less every game.