Do the runners up in this get a Shield or anything?
They get a round of applause if they keep the losing margin under 20 points. And the media get to say that the gap is closing! 
We'll have to bow to your knowledge, a Mayo man would have more experience of being a runner up than most.
Speaking of bowing, your county board usually bow to letting Dublin having home games in the championship and if ye do play Dublin outside Croker it's in a neutral venue.
Do you think that the procession in Leinster is now embarrassing? Do you not think the hopelessness is embarrassing? Do you not think the hammerings are embarrassing?
Embarrassing for who? It a complete mismatch.
It’s not embarrassing on an individual level for a county like Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, Longford, etc. If Dublin were not in their province these counties would be energised by having a realistic target of winning a provincial title. Any one of them could put together a 5 year plan to win it. Of course they may still not succeed, but the hope would be there. There is no hope now. I’m from one of those counties. I’m a clubmate of some of those players. A few years ago it was lads chucking in county football at 23 because “what’s the point, gonna lose to Dublin anyway”. Now it’s lads not even going in to the panel at 20, for the same reason.
Westmeath made back to back Leinster finals in 2015 and 2016, for the first time ever. Beat Meath and Kildare in the respective semi finals. Both finals were over by half time. It wasn’t embarrassing.
I get a sense of this feeling all over the country, although it must be especially strong in Leinster for obvious reasons. Match attendances in recent years are strongly indicative of the same.
On this board we regularly try to work through the big problems with football. People chat about new rules. People go over the pros and cons of the Super 8s and two tier system. Even right now the case for a straight knock out championship is pushed by those that see it as the answer to the malaise affecting the championship.
But none of this really matters without a glimpse of hope. The idea that maybe if everything just falls into place in the next few years your county could make that breakthrough. This is what gets people engaged even when they know they're up against it in any given year. It's what takes people to underage games, to preseason competitions, to challenges matches. You're always looking for that spark that suggests that better times are around the corner.
But the jig is up when you get to the point that you can't ever envisage a day that your county competes with the best. And we're at the point for 25+ counties looking at the Dubs. No amount of messing with the rules or competition structures will change the fact that, if they maintain their standards of the last decade, Dublin will suck all hope of success from the majority of the country. And with no hope people give up trying and give up caring.
We're in precarious times with intercounty football. A very exclusive elite is moving further and further away from the rest of the country. And, remarkably, every intervention from officialdom, whether it's with funding or competition restructuring, seems to just expedite this shift.
