Sports media (this column included) likes its rhymes and nicknames and catchy bits of wordplay, and some snippets of lyrical mischief are just too good to avoid.
Which is how, any time a team or collection of teams from the Eastern part of North America lands upon an especially potent run of form, we get treated to the term “Beasts from the East” in headlines, tweets, news bulletins and more.
On the flip side, a particularly shiny season for a squad from the other coast prompts multiple usages of something like the “Best of the West.”
Before we get sidetracked by debating the ingenuity or otherwise of the sports journalism industry, let’s just say this: there are a heck of a lot of “beasts” around right now.
Across the major American sports, plus a few slightly more fringe ones for good measure, there is currently an overwhelming trend favoring conferences and divisions that happen to be geographically situated on the right-hand side of the map.
With apologies to Marshawn Lynch for poaching his iconic term, the Philadelphia Eagles are in full-fledged Beast Mode at present, coming off narrowly missing out on the Super Bowl, signing Jalen Hurts to a whopper of a five-year contract, and acing — by most neutral analytics — the NFL Draft.
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The Eagles were the standard-bearer for the NFC East (until recently bad enough to be monikered as the NFC Least), but they were far from the only ones to have a profitable campaign in 2022.
Behind them, the Dallas Cowboys racked up a 12-5 record, Brian Daboll coached the New York Giants to their best year since 2016, while all three not only reached the postseason but also the divisional round, the first time three teams from a single division had managed that feat since 1997.
In MLB, the American League East is similarly mighty, headlined by the Tampa Bay Rays, who began the campaign with a 13-0 tear, triumphed in 14 straight at home, are spurred by the lively brilliance of Randy Arozarena and Wander Franco, and as of early Wednesday sat pretty at an MLB best 24-6.
Following along, the Baltimore Orioles are cruising along merrily at 20-9 and while no one ever feels sorry for the New York Yankees, it must be a somewhat unfortunate feeling to be 16-15 and yet stuck at the bottom of a five-team division.
“(We’re) taking care of our own business … for a good part of the season until you really have to start looking at standings, but it is pretty interesting how this division has been on a pretty good roll,” Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters.
There isn’t much of a cohesive argument to make as to why the East is shining across all sports, but within the microeconomies of each individual division or conference there is some microeconomy at play.
With the NFC East weakened for so long and the NFL postseason system rewarding division winners with a home game, the Eagles, Cowboys, Giants and Washington Commanders were all incentivized to strengthen in recent offseasons.
The AL East is always likely to be strong due to the heavy spending of the Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, so when the Rays thrive while spending a third or half as much as those teams, the division resembles a behemoth.
Seriously though, what is going on? Have the moons aligned strangely and created a special, mystical force across the Eastern time zone? Has being subject to so much sunshine and surrounded by so many good-looking people proven to be an immutable distraction for those in the West?
Or is (hint: the answer is probably yes, if we’re being honest), the whole thing a monumental coincidence that just so happened to go a certain way?
It’s not slowing down, though. In the NBA, the three best records in the regular season were all from the Eastern Conference — Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia. In the NHL, the same thing, courtesy of the Bruins, Hurricanes and the Devils.
In each of those sports the hottest postseason underdog also comes from the East, the geographically adjacent Miami Heat and Florida Panthers.
During college hoops’ season of Madness the overwhelming voice of calm came from overall champion UConn, hailing from a conference titled, you guessed it, the Big East.
You can even take this to boxing, where in one of the biggest fights of the year Baltimore’s Gervonta Davis stopped Los Angeles’ Ryan Garcia. Or to Major League Soccer, where the top two points scorers so far this season are from the Eastern Conference, while the two lowest come from the West.
We’ve seen quirks like this within individual sports before, but when I took a straw poll of sage old-time reporters, no one can remember it crossing every sport simultaneously, or anything close to what’s happening now.
Are we so sure there isn’t something more to it? Something in the air? Tectonic plate shifts? I’m just spitballing; I don’t know how those things work either.
Answers on a postcard, please, and if the ones mailed from the Atlantic states arrive at our L.A. offices first, well, then we’ll really know something is up.
These are peculiar times indeed and the nature of such things is that by the time they become so noticeable that you start talking about them, like we just did, it usually means the wind of sporting momentum is ready to shift the other way.
