The swinging seesaw of sport

Welcome to the ups and downs of sport, as demonstrated by the Boks, Proteas and Bafana recently.

The Boks, beaten a week ago by Ireland, returned to dominate England physically and again earn the tag of "team most likely to beat New Zealand in 2015".

The Proteas went the other way, dominating the first T20 international against Australia before losing the next two, while Bafana have gone from winning tournaments to frequently failing to qualify for them - and then qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.

Such are the highs and lows that make sport the valuable commodity that it is. Of course, media and coaches should resist this rollercoaster (they often don't), but for fans, it's a crucial part of the mix that keeps them returning even when causes seem futile.

If the result were certain without any variation, then most of its appeal would evaporate. Saturday's Twickenham Test was made more intriguing by the defeat to Ireland. Similarly, Bafana's return ignites more interest because it nudges the arc of Bafana's history in a different direction. Even future failures can be buffered by present successes, because they remind fans of what is possible.

It is the uncertainty of result that is attractive in sport, whether fans wish to acknowledge it or not, because sport is a zero sum game: one team's defeat is another's victory.

There are exceptions, occasions in which we want to see dominance. In tennis and golf, for instance, the elimination or non-contention of Roger Federer or Tiger Woods devalued the product, because fans (and thus the media) want to see the creation of "greatest-ever" legacies.

I have often wondered about this balance between certainty, in the sense that fans want their teams to win, and the inevitability of losing occasionally.

I am currently in America presenting at a few conferences and, as is the norm, I take in as much NFL and college football as possible.

American football is one of the most fascinating sports to observe, even if, like me, you hate the delays and stoppages. But it has unparalleled competitive balance. The last six Super Bowls have produced six different champions, and not a single finalist has returned to the following year's Super Bowl since 2005. That makes it enormously intriguing.

Compare that to English football, where a champion or runner-up has repeated a top two finish every single year without exception over the same period.

I often wonder whereinternational rugby, cricket and soccer lie in this spectrum between the oligarchy that is European club football, where the wealth is owned by few, and the NFL, where the spread is widest.

New Zealand have the best winning percentage of any team in a global sport, at 90% this decade, but the knockout nature of a world cup generates intrigue.

Both sports' world cups are relatively predictable in that four, sometimes five teams are viable winners, and the tournament format invariably produces one or two group stage matches that swing the tournament balance to produce a skewed quarterfinal and semifinal balance.

The possibility of victory, however small the odds, allied to patriotism, is what drives popularity. Now, if we could just produce this for cricket next year.