The Agony of Defeat, Not Winning, Is What Makes Sports Exciting
Plus: MLB’s labor showdown, and maybe referees really are biased for the Chiefs
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Don't be afraid to take on some extra work this week, it's important to have a side hustle or two (or four).
It was not a good weekend for my favorite sports teams, and I had some personal thoughts about that. But if you're not interested in my feelings on the agony of defeat, skip below for baseball's David vs. Goliath battle and what that means for MLB's upcoming labor showdown. Also, possible confirmation of refs being biased in the Chiefs' favor? Don't miss out.
But first, congratulations to "Primetime Paulie Rothrock" for winning the Free Agent NFL Eliminator Challenge! There's no prize other than this shoutout, so be sure to print out today's newsletter, highlight this paragraph, and frame it in gold. Congratulations again (and go Sounders, I guess?).
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- Serious golfers—PGA Tour winners!—are finding "psychedelics like mushrooms and ayahuasca" helpful.
- Politics and the culture war are increasingly infecting English soccer.
- Pray for Free Agent editor Jeff. He's not sick or anything, he's just a fan of Penn State, the Phillies, and the Bills.
- Big week in soccer for island nations: Cape Verde qualified for next year's World Cup, and the Faroe Islands upset Czechia.
- Big Ten set to get a major investment—not from private equity as we first thought, but from the largest public pension fund in the country. (Congress is not too hot on private equity getting involved in college sports.)
- Congratulations to the Las Vegas Aces on their third WNBA title in four years, solidifying their dynasty. Also, congratulations to the WNBA on getting great TV ratings even though a lot of fans checked out when Caitlin Clark got hurt.
- Elsewhere in Reason: "Tennessee Man Arrested, Gets $2 Million Bond for Posting Facebook Meme"
- She should!
Do you think Carrie Underwood does the Sunday Night Football song at concerts? Maybe as her encore?
— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) October 13, 2025
The Agony of Defeat
My son likes to open and close doors. He's almost 1.5 years old, so at his current height, his fingertips can just barely reach most door handles. On the occasions that he gets his fingers over the handle, he's able to go up on his tippy-toes and pull down, opening the door in a slightly clumsy fashion. Once on the other side of the threshold, he pulls the door closed, giggles and revels in his victory, and starts the process again. Except he's not quite big enough to have mastered the skill. About half the time, maybe more, he can't manage to open the door again from the inside—so he'll shriek and scream like an Ohio State fan when the refs finally give them a much-deserved penalty.
The victory is fun for him, but the potential to seize victory from the jaws of defeat is what really keeps him coming back. If he could just open and close every door with ease, like we do as adults, it'd be boring. But the risk of failure keeps him coming back for more.
So it goes with sports fans.
My wife doesn't want to be a Detroit Tigers fan, she says, because every year they make me really sad on elimination day. But when it comes to the season-ending championship that we all seek for our teams, even the best franchises come up short more than half the time. There is no fan who spends more of their time basking in championship glory than in season-ending disappointment. Even the Yankees and Montreal Canadiens, two of the most dominant franchises in sports with 54 league titles between them, are in droughts that have their fans apoplectic.
I grew up in a time when I was fortunate to see my hockey team, the Detroit Red Wings, win four Stanley Cups. I also saw the Detroit Pistons win the 2004 NBA title in person with my brothers and dad (thanks, Dad!). There have been several other glories along the way (for example, witnessing the U.S. women's soccer team win the 2019 World Cup with my then-fiancé) and devastating, crippling defeats as well (Game 163). In spite of it all, my various sports fandoms have mostly grown and grown.
This weekend, the team that means the most to me, the one I most want to watch win a title (even more than a Lions Super Bowl!), the team I daydream about winning a championship while my brothers, dad, and I look on, came up short again. The Tigers were eliminated in one of the most epic postseason games in baseball history, a 15-inning knock-down, drag-out fight against the Seattle Mariners. The Tigers have not won a World Series in my lifetime.
Baseball, as former commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote, "is designed to break your heart."
So it is with every other sport too. The basic odds say we should expect our teams to win one title every 30 years or so, but sometimes a dynastic team comes along to suck up more than their "fair" share. (A recent post on X that I cannot manage to find again suggested a small market MLB team can expect to win once every 50 years.)
Yet even the most miserable sports fans are lucky. For all but a tiny fraction of humanity's existence, people have not had any wealth, time, or freedom to dedicate to leisure activities like sports, let alone watching professionals play them for entertainment. Even low-income Americans with a basic cell phone and streaming subscription can watch sporting events on the other side of the world in the palm of their hands—this was basically impossible 20 years ago, no matter how wealthy you were.
Sports fans are some of the most resilient people around. They know the odds are stacked against them, but they devote their time and energy to their teams anyway—even Jets fans. It's a unique trait among the various fandoms—the most disappointing Taylor Swift song will never hurt a Swiftie as bad as a crushing sports loss like the Kick Six.
Even the most pessimistic fans watch in hopes that one day the team will get it right—or at least get it right on this day, because celebrating victories in seasons that come up short are still important too. (The Tigers blew a 15.5-game division lead, but I still got to watch in person as Riley Greene hit the longest Tigers home run since baseball started measuring them, and Tarik Skubal struck out 10-plus batters on two occasions). That ultimate glory, we hope, will make all the years of loss and pain not just worth it, but an important part of the story of glory.
That's why toddlers open and close doors they're not sure they can reopen, and why we don't bore ourselves playing FIFA on easy mode with 11–0 victories in every match. The losses suck, but they make the victories as sweet as they are. Banners live forever—right alongside the memories of devastating losses.
Brewers vs. Goliath
That's enough sappy stuff. If you don't want MLB players to go on strike after the 2026 season, it's time to join the Brewers bandwagon (Cubs fans exempted).
The Brewers-Dodgers series is basically a microcosm of the financial debate surrounding the upcoming collective bargaining negotiations. Can small market teams still win championships? Or are we destined to watch the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees dominate the future of baseball unless the owners impose a long-desired salary cap?
The Dodgers "spent more than $350 million to build their roster, not counting the enormous luxury tax bill that will increase their overall expenditures to over a half-billion dollars," Jared Diamond writes in The Wall Street Journal. "Meanwhile, the Brewers are largely a collection of castoffs and unknowns who have somehow coalesced into something greater than their collective pedigrees. They have a payroll of under $122 million, which ranks 22nd out of 30, according to data compiled by Spotrac….No club with a bottom-10 payroll has won the World Series since the Florida Marlins in 2003."
Of course, it helps the union's case that the Mets and Yankees aren't among baseball's final four teams this year (I'm sending commiserations to my friends and colleagues who are Mets fans, and sending nothing but blank stares to all Yankees fans). But last year's Yankees-Dodgers World Series set off alarm bells in the sport (as we covered in one of Free Agent's first issues). The labor strife hasn't improved at all since then.
The salary cap debate also might have nothing at all to do with small market success. Even if the Brewers win, the owners might push for one anyway. Doesn't every business owner want to keep their labor costs down? It's even better when you can convince your competitors to agree to the same thing (remember, salary caps would be super illegal if players unions didn't exist or agree to them). Valuations of Formula 1 teams recently shot up after they all agreed to cap their expenses.
As a fan of another small market team and a fan of athletes not going on strike, I'm rooting for the Brewers. But my feelings are a little complicated by my general disdain for players unions. As Diamond aptly summed it up: "A Brewers victory would bolster the union's contention that the Dodgers' largess isn't a problem that needs fixing. The Dodgers steamrolling the little guy would only embolden the millions of fans in small cities around the country who feel as if the game is rigged against them."
K.C. and the Refs vs. Everybody
The officiating in Sunday night's Chiefs-Lions game was a hot topic. As a Lions fan, I would probably be more upset if I had seen the whole game, or if we hadn't lost by 13 points, or if there weren't actually good explanations for some of these decisions. What I think has been majorly undercovered, though, is this study that found, as many NFL fans suspected, the referees have been biased in favor of the Chiefs in the playoffs—specifically because of the Chiefs' marketability.
"The study shows that during the playoffs, which the research team identified as the NFL's most commercially valuable period, penalties against opposing defenses of the Chiefs' offense were significantly more likely to result in first downs, cover more yardage and fall into subjective categories such as roughing the passer or pass interference," reads a press release from The University of Texas at El Paso. "Importantly, these effects were absent for the Tom Brady–era New England Patriots and other recent Super Bowl contenders, suggesting the phenomenon is unique to Kansas City's emergence as a television ratings powerhouse."
The analysis examined an impressive "13,136 defensive penalties from 2015 to 2023." As in science, one study shouldn't be the end of the conversation, though. Further research should examine alternative explanations or examine the same dynamic in other sports (I know many fans are suspicious of big market teams getting favorable calls). The league should also investigate this dynamic and examine ways to mitigate referee bias in subjective decision making—like how soccer's video assistant referee (VAR) has increased officiating accuracy.
So no, you're not crazy for thinking the refs might be biased against your team. The league should do something about this, and more media outlets should cover it. But also, your team might just suck and not be as good as the Chiefs.
Replay of the Week
Just your typical 8-6-2 double play, with the catcher getting the second out unassisted at third base. (This one-shot view both helps clarify what happened and makes it look even more chaotic.)
ONE OF THE CRAZIEST PLAYS IN PLAYOFF HISTORY!!
Bases loaded fly ball to center almost caught but bounces off the wall. Teoscar Hernandez gets thrown out at home and then they get another force out at 3B to end the inning.
No runs scored. Unbelievable.
— Ben Verlander (@BenVerlander) October 14, 2025
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Virginia Military Institute against Samford in football.