We, as American sports fans, like endings. I think that speaks a little bit to who we are. We tend to think of September baseball games being more important than April games. We tend to think of sports heroics in the fourth quarter being more meaningful than heroics in the second. We tend to put more stock into great Sunday finishes in golf than great Thursday opening rounds. I think the vast majority of us believe in the fairness of playoffs over the fairness of extended excellence, the value of single elimination games over the value of many weeks of consistent winning. Like I say: I think that speaks a little to who we are.
Let's start with a quick review of the NFL playoff system. This is the 21st year of the bye system as we know it in the NFL playoffs. Between 1978 and 1989 (not counting the 1982 strike season), there were only two games the first weekend -- the two games featured the league's four wildcard teams. There were only six divisions in the NFL then, so the six division winners would all get a first-week bye. The two wildcard winners would match up with the six division winners in Week 2. In those years, wildcard Oakland won the Super Bowl (winning at Cleveland in the Red Right 88 game) and the 1985 Patriots reached the Super Bowl before getting pulverized by the '85 Bears. Other than that, wildcard teams had fairly limited influence on the playoffs.
Starting in 1990, the NFL changed the system, adding one wildcard team to each conference. That meant the division winner with the worst record in each conference stopped getting a bye and had to play a wildcard team that first weekend. That's when the system we know it began -- four teams got byes, the other eight (six which were wildcards) did not.
From 1990 to 2001, teams that had byes the first weekend went 39-9 in their first playoff game. That's an 81% winning percentage. And that makes a lot of sense. Teams with byes SHOULD win a vast, vast, vast majority of the time, right? You have the best of the division winners, rested, playing at home, they should win something like 80% of the time. It was set up so that the best teams during the season were given huge advantages. And those advantages paid off almost every time. It's instructive to take a look at those nine games when the bye team lost:
1992: Buffalo beat Pittsburgh 24-3.
-- The teams had the same record (11-5), but Buffalo had to play the first weekend because of tiebreakers. They beat Houston that first weekend in the famous Frank Reich game, coming back from 35-3 in the second half. And they manhandled Pittsburgh; it's pretty clear they were the better team.
1993: Kansas City beat Houston 28-20
-- Again, the teams were pretty close during the season, Houston was 12-4, Kansas City 11-5. There always seemed something insubstantial about those run-and-shoot Oilers.
1995: Green Bay beat San Francisco 27-17.
-- Two division winners again, both with the same 11-5 record. San Francisco got the bye because of tiebreakers. Green Bay had a young and ascending Brett Favre.
1995: Indianapolis beat Kansas City 10-7
-- Our first major upset, and people in Kansas City have never stopped thinking about it. Lin Elliott missed three field goals for the Chiefs.
1996: Jacksonville beat Denver 30-27
-- Our second major upset, and people in Denver probably have lived it down since the Broncos won the next two Super Bowls.
1997: Denver beat Kansas City 14-10
-- The Chiefs had beaten the Broncos in the regular season on a last second 54-yard field goal by Pete Stoyanovich to secure the division and the bye. And the game itself, like all close NFL games, has been dissected again and again in Kansas City (you can ask any obsessed Chiefs fan about phantom holding penalties and whether or not Tony Gonzalez was in bounds). The Broncos went on to win the Super Bowl.
1999: Tennessee beat Indianapolis 19-16
-- Both teams had gone 13-3 during the regular season, though the Titans had lost the division to the 14-2 Jaguars. They were very close in quality, I would say, and the game was very close. Peyton Manning, in only his second year, had a bad game and the rumblings about his ability to win playoff games would begin right around this time.
2000: Baltimore beat Tennessee 24-10
-- Like in 2000, the two best teams in the conference were probably in the same division. Tennessee had won the division with a 13-3 record. But you could argue convincingly that the 12-4 Ravens were better. In fact, the Ravens made a rather convincing argument on the field, and in the Super Bowl too.
2001: Philadelphia beat Chicago 33-19
-- Two division winners and though the Bears had the better record (13-3 to Philadelphia's 11-5), they had the same point differential and the Eagles really beat up the Bears in Chicago.
There was order in the NFL playoffs. Yes, there were upsets but they clearly WERE upsets, things that did not happen often, things that usually happened for a reason.
In 2002, the system changed -- but it didn't seem a particularly big change. The league expanded to eight divisions. So that meant there were now eight division champions instead of six. To compensate, the NFL wisely (methinks) eliminated two wildcard teams, going back to four. So that meant there were still 12 teams getting into the playoffs. And four of those 12 -- the two division winners with the best records in each league -- got a first round bye.
On the surface, it would not seem the system should change much. The same number of teams were making the playoffs. Two of the wildcards were replaced with division winners ... but that just seems to be cosmetics. In 2002, everything looked about the same. The four bye teams all won their first playoff games and by a total of 115-52. Only one of those games -- Tennessee's 34-31 overtime win over Pittsburgh -- was even remotely close.
But something kind of bizarre has happened since 2003. That something might just be a fluke or a statistical anomaly, but that doesn't make it any less fascinating.
Since 2003, bye teams have gone just 18-14 in their first playoff games.
Since 2005, it's even more stark -- bye teams are just 12-12.
Think about that for a moment. Bye teams have:
(1) The best regular season records.
(2) Home field advantage.
(3) An extra week to rest and prepare.
That's a pretty sizable advantage, isn't it? You take what looks like the superior team, you play the game at their stadium in front of their fans and you give them an extra week's preparation. You would expect that team to win almost every time wouldn't you? But the last six years, the bye team has lost as many times as it has won.
Is this good for pro football? I would say largely that it is. I love the NFL playoffs. I love the randomness of it. The NFL is built around that Any Given Sunday credo, and the game thrives largely because of that. You really don't know what's going to happen. But the question I think about, the question I want to ask here: WHY do we love that sort of randomness?
I bring up the BCS again. Lately, it feels like I have been arguing a lot in favor of the BCS which is a weird thing because I don't like the BCS system, don't have any desire to argue for it, and I absolutely would prefer a well-designed college football playoff. My problem, I guess, is that I want to have discussion, and it seems that almost nobody wants to talk about it. It seems like just about any time I bring up the question -- is a playoff really MORE FAIR -- I get yelled at, even by close friends. The BCS has been demonized past the point of absurdity, past the point where anyone even LISTENS when someone suggests that, hey, maybe it's not that bad.
Is a playoff really MORE FAIR? What does fair even mean? This year in college football, the BCS system had Oregon play Auburn for a trophy they called the national championship trophy. This left out other very good teams, particularly undefeated TCU. This wasn't fair. There was much griping about it, and rightfully so. It is absurd and somewhat arrogant to believe that we can use our eyes and our computer systems and our innate sense of the game to look at more than 100 Division I football teams playing somewhat self-determined schedules and simply pick the two best teams. The flaws in the system are obvious.
But aren't the playoff flaws obvious too? This year in the NFL, the playoff system included a seven-win team and took one 10-6 wildcard team while leaving two other 10-6 teams at home. The system made a 12-win team and two 11-win teams go on the road for their first game while three teams with 10 or fewer wins (including the NFL's first seven-win playoff team) played home games. This year, the NFL rewarded New England and Atlanta for their 14- and 13-win seasons by giving them an extra week to heal and homefield advantage. This seems like a seismic advantage. But is it really? We cannot argue that they promptly lost convincingly -- making that one loss much more important than their stellar 16-game seasons. We cannot argue that 12 of the last 24 bye teams have lost their first week.
There might not be any specific REASONS why bye teams have lost the last few years. It could just be one of those things. But I can think of a few reasons why it might be happening.
1. There's the NFL scheduling system. As you know, the scheduling system is intended to reward teams that had terrible years. In 2009, the Kansas City Chiefs went 4-12. As a result, their non-conference schedule featured these 10 teams (in parentheses I've included their 2009 records):
Cleveland Browns (5-11)
San Francisco 49ers (8-8)
Indianapolis Colts (14-2)
Houston Texans (9-7)
Jacksonville Jaguars (7-9)
Buffalo Bills (6-10)
Arizona Cardinals (10-6)
Seattle Seahawks (5-11)
St. Louis Rams (1-15)
Tennessee Titans (8-8)
The ten teams' combined record was 73-87. This was intended to be an easy schedule. It turned out to be even EASIER because the five teams that were .500 or better on the list -- the 49ers, Colts, Texans. Cardinals and Titans -- ALL took huge steps backward in 2010. The Chiefs went 10-6, won their division, and beat one playoff team all year, that one playoff team being the 7-9 Seahawks. Were the Chiefs a lot better in 2010? Sure. How much better? Why don't we ask the question next year when the Chiefs play the four teams that remain in the playoffs (Chicago, Green Bay, Pittsburgh and the New York Jets) along with New England and Indianapolis.
This is how the system works. Lose and they try to ease your path. Win and they try to put boulders in your way. Scheduling is a big, big part of what the NFL calls parity. And so records can be illusions.*
*Since writing this several people have pointed out that since 2002, teams in the same division play 14 of the same games -- only two are determined by how good or bad a team is supposed to be (the rest by divisions matching up with other divisions). So, for instance, the only two team difference between the 2010 Chargers (who had won the division in 2009) and Chiefs (who had finished last) was that the Chargers played New England and Cincinnati while the Chiefs played Buffalo and Cleveland.
It's a fair point -- and I missed it. Two games out of 10 non-division games is not insubstantial -- and if the Chiefs had played the Patriots instead of the Bills they probably would not have won the division. But the NFL schedule does not tilt as much as it once did, and so I would agree that this is not quite as big a factor as I had originally thought.
2. Homefield advantage seems to be losing some of its advantage in the NFL. For some of this, read Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim's fascinating piece on homefield advantage in this week's Sports Illustrated.* They point out that a big reason (the biggest reason?) for homefield advantage is unintended referee bias. Well, you'll have to read the piece.
*I just got their book Scorecasting and am ready to dive in. I'll give you a full report and see if we can get Jon to come on here for a conversation.
But ... with instant replay, the NFL might be taking a lot of unintended referee bias out of the game. Add in that officials surely bear down for playoff games (and they tend to be the best officials), and maybe homefield advantage isn't quite what is used to be. Maybe there aren't as many penalties called against the road team as there used to be. Maybe fumbles (or non-fumbles) that used to be called for the home team are overturned a little more. The speaker in the helmet thing seems to help too -- it doesn't seem that teams are nearly as bothered by crowd noise as they used to be.
The numbers don't exactly bear this out -- teams ARE winning a little less often at home, but it doesn't seem earth shattering:
1970-79: 1087-813, 57.2%
1980-89: 1344-998, 57.4%
1990-98 (year before replay): 1239-839, 59.6%
1999-10: 1593-1205, 56.9%
Not a big deal. But the last five years, the numbers are down a bit more (56.1%). Anyway, with the playoffs you are are dealing with small margins. In baseball, you hope and expect that over 600 plate appearances you will get something close to true value. But the NFL in many ways IS about small numbers. In the NFL, especially in the playoffs, one loss is devastating. Until 2005, road teams in the playoffs won 30% of the time. The last six years, they have won 45% of the time.
These are just thoughts, of course. I am not trying to suggest they are right. We're just talking.
3. It seems like there is more REAL parity in the NFL than ever before -- not just the illusion of schedules, but a real tightening of talent. These would be the effects of the salary cap and the draft and various other things. It does seem true that there really isn't a lot separating the top two or three teams from the 10th or 11th teams.
The question, I think, is this: What's the competitive point of an NFL season? Is it to determine the BEST team in the NFL? Or is it to give us a fun and easy-to-follow trail on the way to our Super Bowl party? The New England Patriots won 14 of 16 games, including their last eight. They beat all four of the remaining teams during the regular season (they also lost to the Jets in Week 2 during the regular season). In those four wins, only Green Bay even stayed close. They outscored opponents by 205 points -- the best point differential in the NFL since New England's 16-0 season, and the second best in the NFL since 2001.
And on Sunday, after getting a week's vacation, getting to play on their home field, they were obliterated by a New York Jets team they had already played twice. The Jets had a great gameplan, and they played a sharp game, and Tom Brady looked confused, and the Patriots looked flat. And now their 2010 record is meaningless. Their season is mud. All the winning they did, well, nobody cares. That happened BEFORE the playoffs, before it really mattered. Is this fair? I think most of us would say that absolutely it's fair. We are a playoff nation. The Patriots lost on the field. Fair or unfair, either way, it made for good television.
Circle me Vince Lombardi
ReplyDeleteGreat post, but I don't think the scheduling system has as much of an effect as you claim. Fourteen of each team's sixteen games are entirely independent of the team's results the previous year: they play six games against their own division every year, and eight games against one other division in their own conference and the opposing conference each year on a strict rotational basis. (That the Chiefs played the weak NFC West this year was only happenstance). Their division rivals played the exact same 14 games.
ReplyDeleteThe only advantage a "bad" team like the Chiefs get is the last two games, which are against the two teams in the same conference who finished last year in the same position as the Chiefs did (leaving out the third, which the Chiefs are already playing). This means the Chiefs played Buffalo and Cleveland, while the Chargers, for example, played New England and Cincinnati. Of course, you can also view this as off-setting the two "hard" games KC has to play against SD, where SD gets two "easy" games in KC.
In any case, the scheduling strategy fits entirely with the league's automatic-playoff-berth-for-division-champ policy, as only within a division can you easily compare records due to potentially severe variations in strength of schedule across divisions.
Continuing, I think another factor worth considering is that the #4 seed is now almost always weaker than it was before. This means that the #5 seed is more likely to win than previously, which may provide some "road-win" momentum that could somehow carry over to the following week. I haven't checked this hypothesis, but if pre-2002 the #4 seed was much more likely to win in round 1 (at home), they may have then had more difficulty continuing that success the next week on the road.
ReplyDeleteI think there's something to this line of thought since of the 12 bye-team losses you cite since 2005, only 2 have been to #3 seeds and 2 to #4 seeds, with 3 to #5 seeds and 5 to #6 seeds. Pretty remarkable.
I always looked at the regular season as teams playing for seeding. The point of winning all those games in the regular season is to get into the playoffs, and to give yourself the best advantage possible. The playoffs really do determine the best team. The best team isn't always the one with the best record, its the team that knows how to win the big games that are the most important.
ReplyDeleteI loved the fact that the Seahawks beat the Saints the first round of the playoffs. People can complain all they want about a 7-9 team in the playoffs, but the fact is that they knew going into the season that their division would be horrible. They knew what to expect, and they did their job and won the division with the limited talent that they had.
Peter has it right but left one part of it unsaid, which is that the Broncos, Chargers and Raiders play the SAME non-conference schedule as the Chiefs (except for those 2 games that are dictated by place in the standings). So everyone in the AFC West got to play the NFC West and the AFC South this year.
ReplyDeleteThe Chiefs schedule was easy, but no easier than the Chargers, really (especially when you consider that one of the Chargers' 2 standings-based games was against the Bengals. Because the Bengals won the AFC North last year, as hard as that seems to believe now.
One of the ways in which schedules turn out to be easy are hard has to do with who you play at home and who you play on the road. Always, 2 of your games against the other conference are home and 2 are on the road. Likewise, 2 of your games against the other division in your own conference that your team is playing are at home and 2 are on the road. And of your 2 standings-based games, 1 is at home and 1 is on the road.
For a team like the Chiefs, playing the AFC South and NFC West, an "easy" schedule might consist of getting the Colts on the road and the Jaguars and Seahawks at home. Because they'll probably lose to Indy regardless of where they play (so why waste a home game on them), while Jax is a tossup and so they'd like to get that one at home and Seattle they'd expect to beat in KC but not in Seattle. So if those games break right they can go 2-1 but if they break wrong they might go 0-3. And that has nothing to do with record.
There are two competing goals for any postseason system: (1) determine a champion in a fair manner and (2) entertain fans of the sport.
ReplyDeleteThe NBA is at one extreme: the best team, or at least one of the very best teams, almost always wins the championship. College basketball is at the other: all the upsets make the event highly entertaining but the tournament very often produces a champion that can't really claim to be the best team.
The NFL strikes a pretty healthy balance between the two goals. (My guess is that the recent upsets of the teams with byes is a function of the high level of parity the NFL has at this point.)
The amazing thing about the BCS system is that it manages to achieve neither goal with any level of adequacy. Because it usually isn't clear who the top two teams in college football are (largely as a function of the fact that there are so few real games between teams in different conferences), most people aren't convinced the BCS winner is a legitimate champion. Meanwhile, the rest of the bowl slate is rendered meaningless in terms of producing a champion, reducing the entertainment value to the casual fan.
We'd be much better off with either a 4- to 8-team playoff system (so that all teams with a legitimate claim to be the best in the country were included, creating a sense of fairness) or the old bowl system (which was at least highly entertaining as teams jostled for the mythical national championship in the court of public opinion).
Interesting article Joe. I have often thought about thinking about playoffs vs. soccer and their crowning a champ based on the regular season results (along with a few Cup tourneys to give a few teams something to celebrate).
ReplyDeleteI am thinking you are correct that it is largely an American thing. As a Canadian, the elimination of ties in hockey seemed to me to driven by the assertion that they wanted to grow the game in America and people didn't want to invest 3 hours and go home without a winner.
The point I think is that Americans want a result based on what happens right now. In some other parts people are satisfied with the process of a result occurring over time (such as the soccer example).
As for what is better, as a Canadian I am 95% in the corner of a result based on a playoff, though I do miss hard fought ties during the NHL regular season.
The US sport that interests me the most in this area is baseball. You have a sport that has a 162 game season which screams crowning a champ based on the year long process or playing each other 18 times. Instead they have a crap shoot playoffs with talk of adding more teams.
If MLB wants to add some excitement to the game, it isn't through more playoff teams. Eliminate interleague play and set up a few challenge cups like they do in soccer. Spread the month of playoffs over the season and have some mini tourneys like the California Cup or Midwest Cup. I remember as a kid the Pearson Cup between the Jays and Expos. It was kind of fun to crown the kings of Canada once a year.
Give me a real pennant race.
ReplyDeleteI'd love for baseball to be four 8-team leagues playing a 154-game round-robin schedule with no interleague play. Then you have a tournament between the 4 winners.
I wouldn't mind if football were the same way. Four 8-team leagues playing 14 games round-robin, all followed by a 4-team tournament.
It used to mean something when you had the best record in the league. Heck, the best sports call of all time is "The Giants win the pennant!!!!!!" Now having the best record means you either peaked too soon or choked "when it counts."
Hogwash.
As a longtime Braves fan, I'm all for the notion that regular season greatness is relevant, though perhaps not as relevant as postseason success. Those Braves teams were always great, frequently the best in baseball, but only once did they fail to blow it. The converse example is of course the 83-win WS champion St. Louis Cardinals, who by no measure cleared any reasonable standard for postseason inclusion.
ReplyDeleteBill Simmons wrote something this past week about the Seahawks blowing up the notion that a 7-9 team doesn't belong in the playoffs by beating the Saints. I would argue that they still didn't belong and that they never did anything to earn an opportunity to win a fluke game against an injury-depleted team against which it matched up perfectly.
For that reason, I think all pro sports except baseball should shorten their playoffs to make the regular season more relevant. The NBA and NHL playoffs, besides being 2 months long, make the regular season a meaningless slog that very few people can love. The NFL is OK, and recent results aside, the NFL certainly does enough to help the best regular-season teams. Baseball has it right, with the exception of the same obsession with "winning your [arbitrary] division" as all the other sports; of course, baseball is planning to expand its playoffs.
My ideal college football playoff scenario is 4 teams. That's enough to include every team with a legitimate claim but not enough room that the ACC or Big East champion gets an automatic bid. I think that would satisfy everyone (they're much quieter these days) who says, "the whole season is the playoffs!" I also think every team that's legitimately good enough to be national champion would be included. And play all the rest of the bowls too, who cares?
The regular season should be neither pointless (NBA and especially NHL) nor virtually the only determinant of the champion (college football). Joe, I'm glad you're still willing to argue the notion that playoffs are the only fair system and we need more of them.
Responding to KJ -- I agree that those are the two criteria and that the NFL probably has the best balance. The NBA definitely only ever has 3-4 teams going into the 16-team playoffs that have a real chance to win, which makes most of the postseason a slog. I disagree about the NCAA Championship, as I think it actually does a great job of identifying the best team (or at least "a" best team) and only a few times in recent memory--Arizona in 1997 and maybe Florida in 2006--was the champion really out of left field. But no moreso than the NY Giants in 2007.
ReplyDeleteThe sport that has gone way too far in the other direction, in my opinion, is major league baseball, where the 162 game season gives you plenty of information to determine the best 2-4 teams but is then disregarded for the silly 8-team playoff. The mind reels at how many recent World Series "champs" were obviously not the best team that season: 2006, 2003, and 2000 leap to mind, and one could make the same argument for this season as well.
sorry for the typo,
ReplyDeletebased on the year long process OF playing each other 18 times
I don't know if this has changed over time, but injuries play a huge role in explaining why regular season records do not accurately reflect the quality of the teams. Teams that limp through the regular season may get healthy for the playoffs and/or have a younger replacement get the seasoning needed to fill the role competently. Green Bay's recent run hasn't exactly shocked people, despite the fact that they were a 6 seed. The team playing in January is often different from the team playing in September.
ReplyDeleteJoe, those 10 teams comprise KC's out of division games, not nonconference games.
ReplyDeleteKJ, it doesn't really make any sense to compare any sport that's single elimination versus a 7 game series. You don't think New Orleans would fair very well if they got to play the Seahawks 7 times? That's why a team like the Lakers will win titles more often in the NBA while someone like KU will come up short more often when they're the best college basketball team.
ReplyDeleteNo matter what the system is, any system is better if it's actually settled on the field. It drives me nuts that the college football title isn't settled on the field and there are arguments that someone else should have been in the title game. Even worse, virtually every team is eliminated from the national title race by the middle of the college football season. Stupid. I hope Mark Cuban gets his way.
I think scheduling may be a factor, but not as Joe suggested. The entire AFC West played a weak schedule this year due to the division being weak and they were matched with the weak NFC West. Because they match AFC and NFC divisions to play each other each year, you will have a similar schedule in your division, but outside your division you will have a vastly different schedule as compared to the rest of your conference.
ReplyDeleteThis system was enacted when Houston joined the league. I'm not sure how they did scheduling before Houston, but my guess is that you saw more parity in scheduling across a Conference than you see now, and less parity within a division.
There is great scheduling parity now inside a division, but it can vary widely within a Conference. This may be causing more upsets as the teams without byes are "better" than they used to be.
To those calling for the 4-team playoff, who would have been your 4th team this season? Wisconsin? Stanford? Ohio state? Boise state - shudder? All you are doing is shifting the argument over 1, 2 and 3 to 3, 4 and 5.
ReplyDeleteTo pretend anything in professional or major college sports is done for parity or the sake of competition or the teams, players, fans (heavens no..) or anything except money is a fools errand. The current systems will all be around until someone figures something out to make more $$ out of the whole thing.
@ Jon Stewart...it's not exactly true that this system was enacted when Houston came into the league. A version of this system has been in place for decades. For example, at least going back to the 80s, inter-conference schedules were done by one division playing another. But in the 16-game era it's always been 12 conference games and 4 non-cons so the math didn't work perfectly because the divisions had 5 teams.
ReplyDeleteFor example, in 1985, the AFC East matched up against the NFC Central. The Jets, Dolphins, Patriots and Colts all played the Packers, Bears, Bucs and Lions. The Bills and Vikings got left out of the formula. And similar matchups occurred between the other divisions.
The addition of Houston and the cutting of all divisions to four teams meant that scheduling formula would work perfectly, with no 5th teams in divisions to be left out.
However, I believe that in every case, the left out teams were the 5th place teams from the year before (Bills and Vikings both finished last in 1984). So the four 5th placed teams (2 of the divisons only had 4 teams) did get more than just the two standings based games they get now because they all played each other. In 1984, the Bills, Vikings, Eagles and Chargers all came in 5th and in 1985 they all played each other.
Obviously money is the major issue and revenues are the driving force behind all the things I hate about current postseason systems. But I was responding to the post, and that was not the topic of the post.
ReplyDeleteAs for who the fourth team would have been - that's not the issue. I think TCU deserved a shot just like so many other teams have. But I'm not really sure how to do a 3-team playoff, so we'd have to have 4.
Obviously, there's always going to be an argument about the last team(s) left out in college sports. As long as those teams can't make a legitimate argument that they had the best regular season (or at least second-best, because I don't want to eliminate the postseason entirely), I have no problem leaving them out of the regular season. There's obviously a happy medium between the current college football system and the college basketball tournament, where I have to hear about the last few teams to miss, and all of them have losing records in conference. If the line could be drawn somewhere between, say, TCU and Ohio State this year, I would have that very much.
Great though Poz. You officially have an Australian reader who believes you are the best sports (or whatever you decide is worth the time) writer in the biz.
ReplyDeleteI honestly think a 'fair system' to decide the 'best team' is the common soccer form. An equal amount of home and away games against each team and then no need for a finals/playoff format. But having said that the relatively new soccer league in Australia has an even home and away season AND finals, I think Australians are similar to Americans in that way.
Now you can't argue that any "champion" team isn't fair because everyone played by the same rules and came out of that system the winner. But you can make the system fairer. A small playoff system in college football would certainly make me happier with the system. No more happy with the "champion" though.
@Zach
ReplyDeleteThat 2006 Cardinals team was essentially the same team that won 205 games in '04-05 and once healthy they were an excellent baseball team. It's true that in most years they would not have made the playoffs but once in they proved on the field that they deserved to be crowned world champions. It seems like often times the best team does not win, just the hottest team. The Cardinals, when healthy, were both in '06.
So much depends upon the personality of a team, the mentality of its coaches as to how their team approaches the playoffs - in any sport. It has become a crap shoot most years in the NFL and that's just how it is. So, that being said let's have 2 #6 seeds face each other in next month's Super Bowl...Jets and Packers are the teams to beat about now.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your third point Joe. I don't think there's that much parity in the NFL. Football reference and others have looked at this and no matter which way you slice it (returning playoff teams, how much the best/worst teams deviate from average etc) this era is rather unremarkable and the height of parity was actually the mid 90's (93 - 96). These last 4 years have seen a 16 win team and a 16 loss team. I honestly think this playoff randomness is just a blip.
ReplyDelete@Peter
ReplyDeleteFair point. I guess it's not so much that the NCAA Tournament produces bad champions but that very good teams can be so easily eliminated against substantially inferior competitions early in the process (Kansas/UNI). And, more often than not, the Final Four contains one or more teams that probably aren't among the best 10-15 in the country.
@Ryan
Well, all sports have their own idiosyncrasies. You can't realistically play multi-game series in football. Baseball is inherently more random since the best teams rarely bet over .600 for the season. Etc. Etc. But you could go to, say, a 8-team playoff in college basketball (6 major conf champs + 2 at-large bids) where the teams played 3-games series. Wouldn't be nearly as much fun, but would probably be more "fair" in terms of producing a champion that was really the best team in the country more frequently.
In my opinion, the increase in playoff parity in the NFL can be completely attributed to the salary cap and free agency. Although this is the basis of your third point, I think that it also serves as a better explanation for the decreasing "advantage" of homefield advantage than the unintended referee bias theory (although, admittedly, I haven't read the Moskowitz book). Before free agency, players drafted by teams like the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints rarely played cold weather games in Green Bay or Chicago. Besides the fact that they weren't used to these kinds of game conditions, they were also greatly intimidated by the lore surrounding these classic franchises. Moreover, these teams had developed a "culture of losing" that certainly affected their performance on the field.*** But free agency changed these three things. Now, teams had the power to quickly overhaul their rosters and change the internal culture by bringing in players from either cold-weather or "winning" teams. In fact, it's not uncommon for GM's to specifically target key players from rival teams for this exact purpose.
ReplyDeleteI specifically remember reaching this conclusion when Mike Vick won his first playoff game by going up to Green Bay and beating Brett Favre in 2003. Until that game, the Packers had never lost a home playoff game since the NFL created a postseason in 1933. In my opinion, the only time that homefield advantage really means anything nowadays is in stadiums where noise is a factor (Seattle, a few domes, etc).
***Coaches had a much longer tenure back then, too, which also made it difficult for teams to change their culture.
Thank you Joe. I've long thought this about the BCS. Let's say a 16 team tournament was instituted. It is not unlikely that in such a tournament this year, Auburn, Oregon, and TCU all lose. Does that format determine the best team in college football then??
ReplyDeleteIs it "fair" that a college basketball team has to win 6 games in a row against a mish mash of teams (depending on upsets) in order for it to be crowned "the best"?
The BCS is an imperfect system just like all the others. Is it fair that TCU was left out like Auburn was in '04? No. Is it fair that Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the conference tournament. Hell no. Such is life.
I know football is the topic at hand, but I'm surprised Joe didn't spend a little time talking college basketball as well.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion of whether a regular season matters is one fans of KU basketball have on an almost annual basis.
The problem stems from trying to crown a champion when the idea of a champion is entirely flawed.
ReplyDeleteBut if it was purely a ranking system like tennis, who would be happy with it? Almost nobody.
I'm amused by some people's complaints at the end of a season that the "best" team didn't win. Why, because the team with the best regular season record didn't become champs? Well, so what? The whole FUN of playoffs is seeing how the elite teams match up against one another. It's a gauntlet comprised of the best teams, and as far as I'm concerned the last team standing is always deserving of being called champion.
ReplyDeleteIf the pitchers on a 91-win team match up great against the hitters on a 101-win team, and the 91-win team wins the series as a result, so be it. That's part of what makes playoffs entertaining. Otherwise we might as well crown champions when the regular season ends... and that would be incredibly BORING.
I don't think the problem is the # of playoff teams as much as it is having 4 divisions. There are, in most years, worthy playoff teams that are left out. With the rotating of which divisions you play, there is usually one entire division that has an easier out of division schedule, one that is very tough, and two in the middle. When you are winning your division, your schedule is very similar to others in that division. It is vastly different when comparing schedules with a non conference opponent in a division you did not play.
ReplyDeleteWith all the talk of the 18 game schedule, the most logical way to do it would be to have every team in a division play the exact same schedule. They would play every team from two of the other divisions in their conference, and then 1 division in the other conference,(non conference games will never go away, as they are revenue generators) and of course the home and away with the other 3 teams in their division. Every team in a wild card tie breaker who did not play during the season would still have a minimum of 8 common opponents.
The other important issue is the seeding process itself. Winning a small division should get you a playoff spot but not guarantee you a home game. Teams should be seeded based on regular season record and reseeded after each round. (i.e. Seattle would have had to play a road game, and if they won, would have played #1 seed Atlanta in the second round.) Some of the after bye week losses (i.e. 1997 KC-Denver) featured the two best regular season teams playing each other, or first vs. third. This would make the regular season more important.
The #2 seed bye is also often the third or 4th best team in the conference, and it is often decided by a tiebreaker over the #3 seed. I am actually in favor of adding a 7th team (3rd wild card) and giving only the conference champion a first round bye. Quite often the weakest playoff team would still be a division winner. There would be two triple headers in the first week of the playoffs (More revenue), playoff races would be even more exciting, and the one bye team in each conference would play the survivor with the worst regular season record, while the other 2 winners would play each other in the second week.
Sorry about the long comment.
In fact, I'd say that the current NFL schedule is amazingly fair. Every team plays four 1st-place teams, four 2nd-place teams, four 3rd-place teams, and four 4th-place teams.
ReplyDeleteHi Joe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for correcting yourself on point one, but you're still missing an important part of it.
You wrote:
"the only two team difference between the 2010 Chargers (who had won the division in 2009) and Chiefs (who had finished last) was that the Chargers played New England and Cincinnati while the Chiefs played Buffalo and Cleveland."
That's not the only two team difference; you're forgetting about the fact that the teams played each other. So the Chargers, winning the division, played (besides the 12 common opponents) New England, Cincinnati, and Kansas City twice. The Chiefs played Buffalo, Cleveland, and San Diego twice. As a result, both teams played two games against an opponent that finished first in their division, and two games against an opponent that finished last in their division. So they had the exact same schedule difficulty in terms of finish.
Ultimately, each year every team plays 4 teams that finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the previous year. It is actually impossible to get more balanced than this; and one of the sad things about the 18 game schedule is that this will go away.
I’m late to the party here. And I say this with the understanding that it’s not possible in a 16 games to have all teams play the exact same schedule. But of course it’s the schedule. Although I would argue that having 20% of your non-division schedule non-in-common is a big difference, we’re not talking about in-division fairness. We’re talking about conference seeding. Look at the Packers and Falcons for example. The Packers played the AFC and NFC Easts, while the Falcons played the NFC West and AFC North. They only played two common opponents this year (besides each other) – SF and Philadelphia. And that’s only because they both happened to finish second last year. My point is not to argue who had the tougher schedule in this specific instance, but to point out it is intrinsically “not fair” to compare two teams playing 80% different schedules based solely on record, which is exactly what the seeding system does. So sometimes the better team might finish with a lower record. And sometimes the lesser team will just win. So it just doesn’t seem that unusual to me that non-bye teams might win roughly half the games. I’m not judging whether it’s right or wrong. Just pointing out that there are major schedule inequities that seem very likely to impact seeding, especially in years where seeding differences are determine by only one or two wins.
ReplyDeleteJoe, great article. I just wanted to point you towards this piece on league parity. I think it raises some good points that you intuitively hit on here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sounderatheart.com/2011/1/10/1926877/parity-what-is-it-and-how-much-is-right-part-4
Thank you for sharing
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