The long season not only fits baseball's cultural niche as the lazy Summer, lose-today-but-lick-'em-tomorrow sport, it also has the nice effect of reducing the significance of lucky breaks and hot streaks. The season's long enough to have a long run: Better teams win and worse teams lose. Players' individual statistics are at least stable enough to usefully model and predict overall team wins.

I love the excitement and unpredictability of NFL football as much as the next red blooded American, but there's something a little bit unsatisfying about a team's entire season routinely hanging in the balance of a single referee's call or a ball bouncing right instead of left.