I think one of the many things I prefer about baseball or rather following baseball is the existence of minor league ball and not just because it gives nuts like me more access to games.

If you live anywhere near an NFL market, you’re likely to see headlines about which players will make the 53-man cut for your favorite team(s). Even our market’s tertiary paper has devoted valuable space to who’s likely to make the roster. Aside from the practice squad, there’s little room for development if you don’t make the team.

Figuring out roster construction is part of being a fan. Like the reporters covering a team, we have our own ideas as to who should make teams. Of course, we don’t have the best information, but that never stopped anyone from sharing an opinion.

Football doesn’t lend itself to much of a developmental league partially because it wouldn’t generate much interest or TV dollars. The only way for such a league to succeed would be for it to play concurrently with the NFL, but then it would be competing for eyeballs.

One of the things that makes MLB so much fun is watching different organizations making use of their full compliment of players. Every team dips into their minor league system during the season-some more effectively than others. Looking at the Cubs specifically, it’s been exciting to see guys that began the season in the minors flourishing today. Where would the Reds be without some of their minor leaguers finally performing.

Every NFL team will need more than the 53 guys currently on their rosters, but they won’t be able to just pull up the next, readiest body from their farm system. More than likely they’ll have to resort to another team’s scraps.

As a storyteller, I like that each ML organization has a large pool of potential great stories, and even as MLB excised a couple hundred players during contraction, there are still plenty of guys able to contribute to a team’s success.

I’ll bet that a dozen or so players not currently on a 40-man roster who will impact a team’s playoff run because it happens every season. We can’t say the same for the NFL.