Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

As I type this, the Saints are about to lose their third in a row (all at home). Despite that, they'll still be tied with the Falcons for first in the division at 4-7. It's the first time a division leader has been three games under .500. Their "defense" is utter garbage and Brees, by his standards, is having a down season, though his o-line isn't doing him any favors. The Falcons lost yesterday in large part due to some of the worst play calling and clock mgmt. you'll see. This is a few weeks after a similar loss to the Lions. Where does Mike Smith go when his "defense" is on the field? The Bucs, at 2-9, are a massive disappointment. The Panthers...well, they were off this week, so I'll leave them alone for now.

How would this be for irony - The defending champion, 11-5 Seahawks have to travel across the country to play the 7-9 (6-10?) Saints in the first round of the playoffs.

Irony or stupidity, either way it is ludicrous.

I guess this is bound to happen sooner or later with a Divisional system but it would be nice to have a caveat in the rules that if a division winner has a losing record an additional in-Conference Wild Card qualifies instead (or something to that effect).

JuggernautJ wrote: it would be nice to have a caveat in the rules that if a division winner has a losing record an additional in-Conference Wild Card qualifies instead (or something to that effect).

I wouldn't like that either. The sole problem is the size of the divisions, 4-teams is too small. The answer is never more WC teams though, I cannot stand wild cards in any sport at any level, especially football. It's illogical that a team can be "World Champion" after finishing 2nd (or possibly 3rd) out of a group of 4 teams.

Always been annoying to me, all levels of football. Like Alabama not even being SEC runner-up yet played in and won the National Championship. They not only didn't win their own conference championship they didn't even qualify to play in it! Equally annoying at the High School level, my 3 years of varsity we won 3 league championships but 3 of the 9 teams in our league made the playoffs every year so every year two other schools/towns close to us - that we beat - got to act as if they were on equal ground or had an equal accomplishment - making it to the playoffs. Ridiculous. Only district/league/conference/division champions should qualify for football playoffs, otherwise it defeats the purpose of playoffs, and thus becomes a randomized tournament.

As flawed as having a team in the playoffs with a losing record would be (again), I'de much prefer a 7-9 Division champion over a 9-7 third place team, as the latter already proved that they weren't the best in the league, since they're already behind two others, while the division champion will have proved that they were the best out of 4 teams that essentially play equal schedules (outside of 2 games) ... Of course, in my world of pure competition, I'de prefer four 8-team divisions with just those 4 division winners making the playoffs.

Reaser » Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:22 am
"... Of course, in my world of pure competition, I'de prefer four 8-team divisions with just those 4 division winners making the playoffs."

... and, if they wanted to have more play-off games, double-elimination.

1-2 & 3-4

4-1 & 2-3

1-3 & 2-4

1 v 2 for Title

Reaser wrote:I wouldn't like that either. The sole problem is the size of the divisions, 4-teams is too small. The answer is never more WC teams though, I cannot stand wild cards in any sport at any level, especially football. It's illogical that a team can be "World Champion" after finishing 2nd (or possibly 3rd) out of a group of 4 teams.

Always been annoying to me, all levels of football. Like Alabama not even being SEC runner-up yet played in and won the National Championship. They not only didn't win their own conference championship they didn't even qualify to play in it! Equally annoying at the High School level, my 3 years of varsity we won 3 league championships but 3 of the 9 teams in our league made the playoffs every year so every year two other schools/towns close to us - that we beat - got to act as if they were on equal ground or had an equal accomplishment - making it to the playoffs. Ridiculous. Only district/league/conference/division champions should qualify for football playoffs, otherwise it defeats the purpose of playoffs, and thus becomes a randomized tournament.

I agree, the problem is the size and number of divisions. 4 teams is too small, and 4 divisions with 4 automatic berths is too many with only a 16-game schedule. Its only a matter of time before a 6-10 team wins its division.

I think with the NFL and with College football, it isn't illogical for a WC team to be World Champion, because sometimes the schedules aren't balanced and a team can benefit from an easier schedule. To me, College football is a complete mess because you have conferences that are too large to have a pure round robin schedule, so much of the end-of-year standings is based on what good conference teams you avoided on your schedule. The Big10 used to have it right with 10 teams and 9 conference games, but then they started adding teams, reducing the amount of conference games, so you'd have years where Northwestern would actually tie for the Big10 title with Ohio State and Michigan, do mainly to the fact they avoided playing both Ohio State and Michigan.

Our High School playoff setup in Illinois is also ridiculous. To cut travel costs, the first three rounds are against teams from your region/conference. Also, they rotate the home field advantage, so if you host a game in the first round, you aren't supposed to host the second round game. So the only thing you get for winning your conference is the ability to host the first round game which is essentially another conference game. Kind of dumb.

Reaser wrote:I'de prefer four 8-team divisions with just those 4 division winners making the playoffs.

I'd like that too -- in baseball as well as football, though they'd have to add two more teams in baseball to make it work.

I miss the days when baseball did made it work with four divisions (that were five, six and seven teams as time went by), and it was that way for 25 years from 1969 through 1993. NL West vs. NL East, AL West vs. AL East, the two winners went to the World Series and it still wrapped up in October. Off course, even the league championship series went from best of five to best of seven during that time.
Still, playoffs are big revenue for networks, teams and players, and the fans seem to like it if their team isn't eliminated from contention early in the season. In any pro football league, a best of three playoff at any level would be impractical, and the players wouldn't stand for it.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to get rid of the divisions and just have the 6 best teams record wise in each Conference make the playoffs.

Bryan wrote:

Reaser wrote:I wouldn't like that either. The sole problem is the size of the divisions, 4-teams is too small. The answer is never more WC teams though, I cannot stand wild cards in any sport at any level, especially football. It's illogical that a team can be "World Champion" after finishing 2nd (or possibly 3rd) out of a group of 4 teams.

The problem is not the four-team divisions, the problem is that these teams only play 6 of 16 games in their division. It would make more sense, I think, for each team to play three games against each team in the division, two at home and one away, or one at home and two away against each other team, and it alternates each season. This way, Pittsburgh would play at Baltimore twice in one year and once the next year, and vice versa. In this system, each team would play nine games inside the division and seven outside the division. One way to schedule the other games is that you would play an entire division in the other conference as we currently have, but you would play three the three other teams in your conference who finished the same as you did last year. For example, if the Broncos win the AFC West, the next season they would play all three AFC division winners, and second place teams would play the other second place teams. We currently have that system in place.

Increasing the number of divisional games would greatly reduce the probability of a sub-.500 division winner.

I'd like to see a very simple change: A team with a record below cannot get into the playoffs, even if it wins its division.