What makes a winner?

I'm sure many books have been written on this subject. I started looking at this in the sense of sports. Last night was the Super Bowl of course and being from Browns country I was not pleased. The Steelers won again. Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl for the sixth time, the most of any franchise. I though about how tired I am of the Steelers and their fans.

I will state here I am not making a point or trying to convince anyone of anything in this essay. I am truly curious and would love to hear from other people and their opinions. I started wondering what makes them the best and most consistent? Unlike baseball where there are great disparities in salaries and revenue, football teams have a salary cap as well as total revenue sharing. So why is it that a few teams, the Steelers, the Cowboys, the Giants, the Patriots and a few others are always in the top echelon, and others are always in the bottom? The perennial basement dwellers include Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati. So why is it?

When you look at the Steelers they do it with different coaches, different General Managers but still manage to come out on top. Using life outside of sports as a guidepost I think I can make some assumptions. Attitude is a great predictor. Looking outside of sports, when we have people who are born leaders, who are used to success and are willing to go to the lengths necessary to succeed, usually do. In life the winners seem to do what is necessary to learn what needs to be done to win. I think this has to play a part. The Detroit Lions for example have a top 5 pick in the draft nearly every year. They are perennial bottom dwellers, and cause their fans much frustration. Their draft picks almost never turn into star players. So are the players substandard to start with or do they play down to the expectation of the organization? I can't claim to know the answer to that not having been involved in pro sports.

Here is another variable. Bill Belicheck. He has become one of the truly elite coaches in professional football. His first head coaching job was in Cleveland, and had extremely lackluster results. He was despised by the fans and basically run out of town. Did he become a genius, or was he always that skilled and held back by a terrible organization, or maybe the market of the team? The organization was the old Browns that moved to Baltimore and won the Super Bowl shortly after. Again, the only common ground is the city. I honestly don't see how fans can make a team bad, especially when the fans of Cleveland are among the most loyal and rabid in all of football. Once again no conclusions here.

Lets go back to the Steelers, one of the most prolific football teams, but one of the most frustrated baseball teams. Revenue and salaries can explain some of that, but what of Cleveland and Minneapolis. In Cleveland after forty years of frustration, since 1994 Cleveland has been very respectable. While no World Series titles, two trips to the World Series and two more just short. The Minnesota Twins have been very good in the last ten years, with revenue streams very similar to Pittsburgh.

I am still looking for the answers and am interested in others opinions. I think I can learn something about life by looking at sports.