I agree with Maher more than I disagree with him on this point, which thanks to fancy animation is now once again making the social media rounds, but Allen Barra makes a nice dent in Maher’s argumentative armor:

The problem is that MLB has not yet found a way to compel the so-called smaller market teams to spend that luxury tax on improving their clubs.

And it’s a bit of a leap to say this is the sole reason for the NFL’s wild success compared to that of baseball. Consider the shorter seasons, with significantly more importance for each game, which demands closer attention, more rapid fandom, greater loyalty to game attendance and keeps seasons from dragging on and on.

Or consider the variance in teams in the MLB that have made it to the World Series in the past decade compared to the NFL. The Patriots or Steelers have played in 7 out of the last 10 Super Bowls and the Colts take two of those remaining three slots (though the NFC has failed to show any consistency beyond the Giants’ recent appearances.) Two teams over the past decade have won the World Series twice, and only the Cardinals have appeared in the World Series more than twice during that same time.

So Maher has a good point, but there’s so much more at play here than just “revenue sharing equals a level playing field equals better play on the field equals the no. 1 sport in America.” Because at the end of the day, football’s popular because it plays off of the repressed homosexual urges of the American male, who really just wants to see heaps of men pile atop one another in a display of barely constrained violence, right?