Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you take the, say, 500 most talented players in the US at a given time, you can't just replace them with the next 500 most talented players and get the same outcome I genuinely believe that a league made of the 500-1000 rank players would be just as (or at least almost as) entertaining as one with the top 500 players. Relative rank is what matters and it's why NCAA March Madness is so popular despite being made…
The AFL, WFL, USFL, XFL, AAFL, 2nd XFL and 2nd USFL would likely disagree. "March Madness" is an anomaly, a single-elimination tournament with 48 games in one weekend with a history of upsets and buzzer-beaters. Additionally, college basketball and football in the US benefit greatly from the local and alumni network affinity for the programs, that doesn't exist with, say, minor league baseball or the NBA D-League.
Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn
#291I mean that if the NFL didn't exist then the AFL would be popular. A better example would be Japanese Baseball. A lot of those players are great but very few of them ended up transferring to the American leagues, yet the sport is still extremely popular in Japan.