Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the Manhattan Project gets all the fun science. After all, what's better than sitting around and analysing 300,000 sporting events to work out which one is the most exciting? The result: soccer is the best, American Football is the worst.

Eli Ben-Naim, Sidney Redner and Federico Vazquez at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico decided to look at unpredictability of results - how often a team with a worse record overcomes an apparently superior one - as the best measure of how exciting a league is. "If there are no upsets, then every game is predictable and hence boring," says Ben-Naim.

The team analysed results from more than 300,000 games over the last century from the US's national hockey, football, baseball and basketball leagues and the top English football league. Rugby and cricket were omitted because they do not have a big following in the US. Their results showed that the "upset frequency" was highest for soccer, followed by baseball, hockey, basketball and finally American football.

The report shows that the underdog won 45% of the time in soccer, but just 36% of the time in American Football. This doesn't mean that NFL games are the least competitive, as the methodology doesn't take into account the relatively short length of the NFL season. Indeed, NFL games are becoming more completive and soccer less.

However, English soccer has become a bit more predictable since the 1940s, when the underdog won 48% of the games. This suggests that the top teams are getting stronger at the expense of weaker ones--a trend notably accelerated once the economics of the game were changed by the abolition of the individual salary cap on players in the 1960s and the subsequent impact of big TV money on the game.

American football, in contrast, has become a bit less predictable over the same period. The underdog won only 31% of the time in the 1940s and 1950s. The NFL, more than any other professional sport, has pushed to regulate parity between its teams. On the basis of this Los Alamos research, that may have been smart marketing strategy, as the NFL has almost closed a six-point excitement gap with basketball and cut soccer's lead in half.

In the last fifteen years, the NFL has made introduced a salary cap and has retained the excellent draft system. By contrast, salaries in European football have kept rising, where a defender who gets a nine month drug ban can command $170,000 a week. This piece of science may add some circumstantial evidence to the UK Sport Minister's call for the introduction of a salary cap.

*Editor's note: They have obviously never watched playoff hockey.*

TheSinner

Seattle, WA

October 2004

JAN 10, 2006 12:45 PM

I love watching both sports. But I like soccer better for what that is worth...

priapus

I'm lost

January 2004

JAN 10, 2006 12:50 PM

Fuck them both and watch rugby.

Rugby and cricket were omitted because they do not have a big following in the US.

And yet the Rugby World Cup attracts more worldwide viewership than the Soccer World Cup or the NFL's Stupor Bowl.

[Edited on Jan 10, 2006 by priapus]

mamet

Charleston, SC

March 2005

JAN 10, 2006 12:50 PM

The result: soccer is the best, American Football is the worst.

You know, maybe this science stuff is overrated afterall.

priapus

I'm lost

January 2004

JAN 10, 2006 01:03 PM

ClubsBabyJesus said:

priapus said:
Fuck them both and watch rugby.

I was second to the scene, it seems.

Better late than never. At least you're on the right side.

PointBlank

New York, NY

November 2004

JAN 10, 2006 01:04 PM

mat8drb said:
Rugby and cricket were omitted because they do not have a big following in the US.

Odd that they included soccer then.

Seriously, an upset isn't the only thing that makes a sport exciting. And if upsets happen roughly half the time in soccer, how can you call them upsets any more?