Nothing bothers me more than reading something and not feeling like I’ve learned anything at the end. I just had that experience with Phil Sheridan’s latest column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. To set up: The Eagles and the Phillies are the two most popular professional sports teams in Philadelphia. Five years ago, no one would suggest that the Phillies were in the same class as the Eagles, in terms of results or popularity. Four division titles and one world championship for the Phillies later, the two teams are on a much more even footing. Scuttlebutt around town is that the Eagles’ management is not happy about this and that the Phillies’ management is not broken up about the Eagles’ unhappiness.
So this simmering tension somehow became a topic of discussion because Eagles president Joe Banner used the Boston Red Sox as an example of a baseball team that aggressively pursues excellence as opposed to the hometown team. So Sheridan tried to re-examine the apparent tension between the two teams and argue that it is a good thing because it motivates each team to try to one-up the other. It’s an interesting premise; I’m not sure I buy it, because I think both teams have ample internal pressure for success. But I could be persuaded by a good argument. Sheridan doesn’t come anywhere close to providing one.
Look at this passage:
To say this was an Eagles town at that point would be an understatement. They were the focus of most of the enthusiasm, passion, controversy, and criticism while the Phillies, a decade removed from their most recent postseason appearance, were struggling for a foothold.
They found it, and there’s little doubt the Eagles’ towering popularity was a motivating factor. Where a number of baseball teams settle for the fresh revenues provided by new ballparks, the Phillies seized their moment. As the Citizens Bank Park presses began printing millions of new dollars, the Phillies reinvested in their team.
The alternative was a return to irrelevance when the novelty of the new ballpark wore off. Ask the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose attendance in gorgeous PNC Park plummeted with the team’s winning percentage. In a market dominated by the Steelers, who have accomplished more than the Eagles in the same time frame, the bar is very high.
Look at that second paragraph. “There’s little doubt the Eagles’ towering popularity was a motivating factor†in the Phillies’ decision to increase their payroll and try to win more games? Why? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the quote from a Phillies official saying, “Yeah, we were thinking of keeping the payroll down, but we just couldn’t do it because those Eagles are so darned popular.†There is none.
In fact, there’s evidence for a competing theory right in the excerpt. Teams that don’t succeed suffer from lower attendance and lower revenues. That would be true if the Eagles were lousy or if they won six straight Super Bowls. The comparison to the Pirates looks like it’s evidence in support of Sheridan’s theory because Pittsburgh also has a successful NFL team, but he never does the work to make the information support his theory over competing theories.
OK, so the conclusion that the Phillies were motivated by the Eagles, and said motivation led to their championship, is dubious. What about the idea that the resentment is good for the Eagles? Look at this passage:
But if the Phillies’ rise in popularity, as measured by sellouts and merchandise sales and percentage of local media attention, has annoyed anyone over at NovaCare, and if that annoyance helped drive the Eagles’ aggressive approach to this offseason, how is that a bad thing?
If one thing caused a second thing, and if that second thing caused a third thing, then we should be happy because the third thing is a good thing. But there’s no evidence that the first thing caused the second, or that the second caused the third. So what was the point of the argument?
You may be wondering why I’m spending this much time analyzing a sports column. Well, given the amount of time people spending reading, thinking and arguing about sports, it’s one of the ways that we practice critical thinking without realizing we do it. If we don’t get in the habit of calling out sloppy thinking there, we probably won’t do it when it comes to other topics, either.