Football its a busine s like any other, and has always been a busine s like any otherhasnt it? Football supporting is like a romanticised consumer choice, isnt it? Though everyone Logan Forsythe Jersey protests that their allegiances are wholly different to their choice of, say, what supermarket they shop in, the reality is that its the same free market choice to consume at one place rather than another, surely? No? What, in e sence makes Football different then? Well, Footballs exceptionalism comes from the fact that, in contrast to the busine s like any other platitude that often does the rounds, the roots of Football are far more collectivist in their origin than media coverage on the matter would have you believe.Todays players may ki s the badge to show their devotion to the cause, however Pre-1961 there had been little need for badge ki sing antics, as the players were going nowhere without their clubs say so, regardle s of whether their contracts had expired or not. Their wage was also capped, meaning that being an oligarch-owner of a Football club looking to poach the top talent of your rivals by merely waving your wallet around would have been utterly pointle s. The down side to this system, illustrated by Gary Imlachs book was that players were treated like chattels by their clubs and, rightly, this system was overturned by a high court in 1963.The maximum wage had been abolished by the Football League without recourse to legal action two years earlier (though under dure s of a strike brought by Jimmy Hills PFA). Prior to 1961, Footballers mainly earned le s than the spectators who watched them and the absurdity of this scenario was highlighted by Bolton Wanderers left back Tommy Banks at a PFA meeting, where a delegate from Bury FC argued against strike action because his father, a miner, didnt earn as much as he did. In response, Banks an ex-miner himself, had stated: Id like to tell your father that I know the pits are a tough life. But there wont be 30,000 people watching him mine coal on Monday morning and then, pointing to Blackpools Stanley Matthews pointed out: there will be 30,000 watching me trying to stop Brother Matthews here.However unfair Footballs maximum wage had been, uncapped salaries in Football in the years since havent been entirely without consequence for the game, particularly so after the foundation Sandy Koufax Jersey of the Premiership in 1992, where the balance of power has swung full circle. In the two decades which followed the formation of the Premiership, players wages grew by as much as 1508% over the following twenty years (as a comparator for the rest of society the average had been 186%), with the knock on effect being that by 2011 it was reported that only eight of the Premierships twenty clubs actually recorded a profit.Global management consulting firm A.T Kearney even go as far as to claim that since the introduction of the Bosman rule in 1995, Football clubs have in e sence become mere ve sels for transporting footballs income to footballers and their agents. A meeting between Middlesbrough forward Wilf Mannion and Baseball legend Babe Ruth after a game at Highbury in 1939, had allegedly led to Ruth calling English footballers bloody idiots when Mannion informed him that, despite playing in front of a 70,000 crowd, the players were on a maximum Maury Wills Jersey of 8 a week. Seventy five years on, many observers of North American sports may po sibly come to a similar conclusion regarding English Footballs wage structure.Salary caps placed on the clubs rather than the players do frequently operate in North American sports, however unlike English footballs maximum wage era, most major North American sports stars are still earning in spite of the presence of a salary cap, in large part due to the fact that the cap is annually adjusted with the players unions playing an active part in setting the cap figure. For a land where the unfettered market has always reigned supreme and still to some extent fears the reds under the bed, the Gridiron game Americas national winter sport has been described by some social commentators as following a model.Salary caps however are also present in Australian sports, as well as both codes of English Rugby. Almost always, all of these sports have a healthier competitive balance when compared to the English Premiership Walker Buehler Jersey . Prior to the abolition of Footballs maximum wage in 1961, the most succe sful side in English Football since the maximum wage was implemented in 1901 was Arsenal who had seven titles to their name, the next best two sides were Manchester United and Liverpool, however these three clubs were among seventeen different title winners over forty nine competitive seasons. Their collective share of league titles over this period had been 32.6%. Since the abolition of the maximum wage, however that share has nearly doubled to 64.2%.This imbalance accelerated much further when the Premiership was formed, as throughout the 1970s and 80s though Liverpool had often occupied the top spot at the end of the season, the pacemaker sides were never always the usual suspects with runners up ranging from smaller sides such as Ipswich, QPR and Watford, to big city clubs such as Arsenal, Everton and Manchester United. Today, in contrast, the top five positions are occupied by almost always (give or take the odd surprise like Manchester Uniteds collapse under David Moyes last season) the exact same sides, year in year out.Similarly, at the other end of the table the bottom three of the Premiership usually has at least one side which came up the previous season, heading back down again. If you, and a group of your friends with any Andre Ethier Jersey modicum of Football knowledge, sat down at the start of the season to predict the top four sides and the three relegated, in no particular order, for the season ahead, there is a strong likelihood that come May most of you would get at least four (po sibly five) correct. Carrying out the same prediction twenty years earlier however would have undoubtedly been a harder task, which kind of infers that Premiership Football is on its way to becoming as pre-determined as that other great all American sport Profe sional Wrestling only minus the artistic licence of a WWE scriptwriter.How has this come about? Isnt this just meritocratic with the top five sides just simply better than the rest? Well, to a degree, however how Footballs wealth has come to be distributed over the last three decades needs to be taken into account. Today, Footballs primary income source is TV revenue. The Premiership now reaps 5.5 billion in global TV rights, which is distributed unequally between twenty sides with a clubs position in the league and how many times their games are televised over a year accounting for the difference in revenue between the sides.In contrast, back in 1979 the Football