Mission Improbable: RE-EDITED: Without any intentional mocking, I'll throw my hat in the ring. First of all, I don't know that it is really possible to compare team sports with individual sports. An individual only has to worry about herself. She travels, trains and plays. If she's really good, she wins, takes home prize money and rings up some endorsements. If healthy, the superior player should win a goodly percentage of her matches. Compare to a team sport like the NFL. Somewhere upwards of 50 players. Add to that two dozen coaches and trainers. Add to that laundry, supplies, medical staff, accountants, executives, lawyers, physical plant and/or stadiums. Throw in some marketing, ticket sales, and premises liability. A pinch of salary cap and free agency, and just a smidgen of rules and regulations. Stir together over low heat, and just to make matters more fun, a tax dispute with the city in which you play. Your roster isn't set from game-to-game, much less year-to-year. It has also been shown, consistently, that the "dream team," one with a collection of the best individual athletes has no guarantee of winning the championship (see our Olympic effort with basketball a couple of years ago). So, it may be difficult to compare, say golf to hockey.

Now, take team sports. Look at hockey and baseball vs. football and basketball. One set has a purposeful salary cap designed to level the playing field to a certain extent, and allow smaller markets the illusion of equality. The other set (for the moment) has no real limit on spending. Again, money does not always equal winning, but it sure don't hurt (viz. Yankees). So, it's hard to compare those two sets because the money factor really skews the charts.

So, then, for the sake of an example, let's compare basketball with football (assuming you're still buying into my argument, and to make it as simple as possible); and remembering your question was whether it was "harder" to win in one sport versus another. Let's look at the last ten years in basketball (chart below goes: Year/Winner/Loser/Games/Series MVP).

2002-03 San Antonio Spurs New Jersey Nets 4-2 Tim Duncan, San Antonio
2001-02 Los Angeles Lakers New Jersey Nets 4-0 Shaquille O'Neal, L.A..
2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers Philadelphia 76ers 4-1 Shaquille O'Neal, L.A..
1999-00 Los Angeles Lakers Indiana Pacers 4-2 Shaquille O'Neal, L.A..
1998-99 San Antonio Spurs New York Knicks 4-1 Tim Duncan, S.A.
1997-98 Chicago Bulls Utah Jazz 4-2 Michael Jordan, Chi.
1996-97 Chicago Bulls Utah Jazz 4-2 Michael Jordan, Chi.
1995-96 Chicago Bulls Seattle SuperSonics 4-2 Michael Jordan, Chi.
1994-95 Houston Rockets Orlando Magic 4-0 Hakeem Olajuwon, Hou.
1993-94 Houston Rockets New York Knicks 4-3 Hakeem Olajuwon, Hou.
1992-93 Chicago Bulls Phoenix Suns 4-2 Michael Jordan, Chi.

What do these games have in common? In most years ('94, '98 and '01 being the exceptions), one of the two finals teams had the best player in the league playing (remember, Hakeem won when MJ was pursuing baseball). Below is each season's MVP:

1992-93 - Charles Barkley, Phoenix
1993-94 - Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston
1994-95 - David Robinson, San Antonio
1995-96 - Michael Jordan, Chicago
1996-97 - Karl Malone, Utah
1997-98 - Michael Jordan, Chicago
1998-99 - Karl Malone, Utah
1999-00 - Shaquille O'Neal, Los Angeles Lakers
2000-01 - Allen Iverson, Philadelphia
2001-02 - Tim Duncan, San Antonio
2002-03 - Tim Duncan, San Antonio

This trend makes more sense because basketball goes 5 on 5 (okay, with subs, it's more like 9 on 9), and now more than ever, the game is about individual players. Therefore one player can have a much greater impact on a basketball team than on a football team. So, that wouldn't necessarily work in football, right? Here's football champions over time (year/winning team/regular season record/losing team/record/Superbowl score):

1990 New York Giants 13-3-0 Buffalo Bills 13-3-0 20-19
1991 Washington Redskins 14-2-0 Buffalo Bills 13-3-0 37-24
1992 Dallas Cowboys 13-3-0 Buffalo Bills 11-5-0 52-17
1993 Dallas Cowboys 12-4-0 Buffalo Bills 12-4-0 30-13
1994 San Francisco '49ers 13-3-0 San Diego Chargers 11-5-0 49-26
1995 Dallas Cowboys 12-4-0 Pittsburgh Steelers 11-5-0 27-17
1996 Green Bay Packers 13-3-0 New England Patriots 11-5-0 35-21
1997 Denver Broncos 12-4-0 Green Bay Packers 13-3-0 31-24
1998 Denver Broncos 14-2-0 Atlanta Falcons 14-2-0 34-19
1999 St. Louis Rams 13-3-0 Tennessee Titans 13-3-0 23-16
2000 Baltimore Ravens 15-5-0 New York Giants 14-5-0 34-7

And MVP's:

2000 -- Marshall Faulk, St. Louis
1999 -- Kurt Warner, St. Louis
1998 -- Terrell Davis, Denver
1997 -- Brett Favre, Green Bay and Barry Sanders, Detroit
1996 -- Brett Favre, Green Bay
1995 -- Brett Favre, Green Bay
1994 -- Steve Young, San Francisco
1993 -- Emmitt Smith, Dallas
1992 -- Steve Young, San Francisco
1991 -- Thurman Thomas, Buffalo
1990 -- Joe Montana, San Francisco

Strangely enough, the trend holds pretty much as well for football too. Get the superstar, get the ring (or at least get to the finals). But is it harder to do it in the NFL?

It appears not, when comparing apples to apples (admittedly one is Red Delicious, the other a McIntosh). When playing under the same rule structure, it's all about managing that structure in a way to get the best possible player, and surround him with a competent supporting cast (clearly, Montana and Young needed Rice and Craig; Shaquille needed Kobe -- the point being really good supporting players make the superstar all the more brilliant), all the while dealing with injuries, egos, coaches, t.v. revenue, and league rules. Admittedly, the above example is really only anecdotal evidence of how to do it. Flyer's question wanted to go across the board with sports and figure it out.

One way to look at it might be to look at these artifical constraints then. Individual sports would seem the easiest for a dominant player to achieve greatness. Those sports are then followed by team sports without cap rules, followed by those team sports with salary caps. Now, someone go out and get the empirical evidence.