Posted: May 07, 2016 12:57 pm
Shrunk wrote:TMB wrote:What has the size of the pool of possible players got to do with what they get paid?
What an excellent, excellent question! I have no idea what the two have to do with each other. In fact, if I had to say, I would think they two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Why? Was someone suggesting they do? Who was that?New Zealand for example dominates Rugby Union and despite not winning the RWC as many times as expected over the past cups, are almost certainly the dominant rugby union nations over the past few decades and with a population of less than 4 million.
No, no, no. You're doing it wrong. Just as we know that "women tennis players are almost certainly better than (sic) their sport that (sic) female soccer players" because the latter "draws upon a far smaller pool of competition" (according to some mysterious metric that is inversely related to the number of people playing the sport), we also know with near certainty that NZ rugby players are worse than those from, say, England or the USA, because of the larger talent pool in the latter nations.
Q fuckin' ED.
The pool of players that womens soccer players come from are not dictated by a population, they are filtered out from those that are not involved in another sport, those who are involved in no sports, those who think they cannot earn a living from it. The example from NZ is relevant because rugby is followed with a religious fanaticism, and this means that just about every schoolboy will play rugby in preference to any other sport, including cricket. In the US it might be a choice of baseball, gridiron and basketball that provide the most powerful draw of players. This means you end up with different sizes of potential players. The more evolved a sport is and the more people committed will produce more competition, more investment and more advanced skills.
DE 'nikcuf Q - you got it backwards.