Moral hazard and the modern playoffs
Cold, Hard Football Facts for January 14, 2009
By Kerry J. Byrne
Cold, Hard Football Facts
If it seems odd that two nine-win teams will battle for the NFC title on Sunday, there's a good reason.
It is odd – as odd as the number on Donovan McNabb's or Kurt Warner's jersey (that would be 5 or 13, for those of you keeping score at home).
In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1967 NFL championship game – better known as the Ice Bowl – to find a league or conference title game that pitted two nine-win teams. The 9-4-1 Packers hosted the 9-5 Cowboys at frosty Lambeau Field that famous day.
But at least those teams had an excuse: they played back in the 14-game era. Given two more games each, it's reasonable to expect that at least one of those teams, and probably both, would have won at least 10 games.
So, yes, the Eagles (9-6-1) and Cardinals (9-7) are a pair of rare birds. And no matter what happens on Sunday, the Super Bowl will feature a nine-win team for just the third time in history (the 1967 Packers and 1979 L.A. Rams are the others).
It's a nice a little story for those who enjoy football fairy tales about plucky little teams that threaten to win it all.
To the Cold, Hard Football Facts, it's a perversion of the natural order of things and the latest manifestation of a disturbing trend that has come to dominate, and diminish, the playoffs over the past four years. It's a trend that:
[list]
Calls into question the wisdom of four-team divisions and the realignment of 2002. Calls into question the current playoff structure created by realignment. Diminishes the importance of the brutal 16-game regular season. Virtually destroys what used to be known as home-field "advantage" in the playoffs.[/list]Put most simply, the NFL needs to take steps to create better and more just playoff system. Simply look at the chaos realignment created here in the 2008 NFL postseason:
[list]
A 12-4 team (Indy) had to go on the road to face an 8-8 team (San Diego). A 9-7 team (Arizona) hosts not one but two playoff games, both of them against teams with better regular-season records. An 11-5 team (New England), which beat 9-7 Arizona by 40 points just a few weeks ago, is forced to sit at home and watch it all unfold on TV, missing the playoffs even though its record equaled or bettered that of three of the four title-game contenders. An 8-8 team (San Diego) reached the playoffs while not one but four teams with better records across the two conferences did not (Dallas, Chicago, N.Y. Jets, New England).[/list]Quite frankly, the widely criticized BCS offers a better system than what the NFL has given us since 2002.
To put it most bluntly, the NFL acts as if it could hardly care less about the blood and shattered bodies scattered across pro football arenas for 17 weeks from September to December.
http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Articles/11_2637_Moral_hazard_and_the_modern_playoffs.html
Kelly J. Byrne wrote: