The Arizona Cardinals, one of the oldest franchises in the NFL came within a whisker - actually just 35 seconds - of winning the SuperBowl having spent a long time among the also-rans. Can you imagine Stoke City doing the same at the end of a long Premier League season or Castleford Tigers storming to victory in the Super League Grand Final ..... it does stretch the imagination (and I speak as a hardcore Leeds Rhinos fan!).

Mihir Bose reports from America’s biggest cultural event - the SuperBowl final - and considers the way in which the structure of the NFL maintains genuine competition by a set of measures deigned to level the playing field for each team:

1. The draft system with the bottom teams each year having the pick of the new influx of college football stars
2. Revenue sharing
3. Tough regulations on debt and franchise finances
4. Salary cap - for each of the teams in 2010 the salary cap will be $123m

Can the Premier League in Soccer and the Premiership learn from the NFL’s sporting model? Might they have to move in this direction because of the recession? With income from sponsorship and TV rights set to decline, and ticket sales squeezed by the recession, dont bet against some really significant changes in the structure of top class professional sport before this recession is out.