Watching the hockey playoffs and just realized Montreal is East and Vegas is West. Of course Canada Covid blah blah. Carolina played Nashville as well earlier on.
Would it really matter to you if they ditched the conference rule for football playoffs... hypothetically? I don't know I was beginning to think, what difference does it make? Giants vs Pats in the wild card round or Giants vs Jets, Eagles/Steelers would be a lot more interesting than Giants vs the Carolina Panthers or vs Detroit.
Imagine a Giants/Cowboys Super Bowl? How much more intense would that be?
You can still play your division foes 2 times but I wouldn't mind seeing something different.
I can't stand 7-9 teams hosting 11-5 teams in the playoffs. You shouldn't deserve a home game in the playoffs if you went below .500 in the regular season. Awful.
totally agree
Money saved is all. No creatives to pay for their work, just rinse and repeat the same corporate looking crap.
Yes. I could see Giants vs Steelers being a big playoff matchup as opposed to being unique to playing Arizona, Atlanta or LA Rams in a Non-Super Bowl game.
Divisions stay put and you still play each rival twice a year, but with this suggested idea, it's just you can now play your division rival in the Super Bowl and an AFC team in the WC, Division, conference games.
Rodgers would be traded already and the Packers could get value.
Like I said it would increase your chances at seeing a Cowboys/Pats, Steelers/Eagles, Packers/Chiefs, Seahawks/Ravens game during the playoffs.
Be more interesting than being restricted to just playing no spice teams Arizona, Detroit, Atlanta. The option should be available, I guess.
Plus a million!
What if your team plays in the hardest division in the league? You get penalized for playing a harder schedule and teams thats play in a weak division get rewarded because they most likely will have a better record. If you change the league to that format you need to play everyone in the conference 1 time to make it fair.
I said you could still play your rivals more than anyone else.
Good points. Bad teams are already being rewarded with not only playoff spots, but home games. Ever since the league expanded to more than 3 divisions in each conference almost 20 years ago, you're starting to witness more sub .500 teams finding their way into the playoffs.
In 2014, Carolina had THREE wins going into December and still wound up securing a playoff spot. The playoff format is already precarious, no need to reserve matchups where you can watch Carolina vs Arizona but it is impossible to see Dallas vs Kansas City, just for the lone reason that they're a different conference, which is a silly one.
Hockey did it this year because they had to so it's not as if you're going to cross some sacred line.
That seems like an odd objection. Why would selection of playoff teams be done by committee? There are tiebreakers now, why wouldn't there continue to be tiebreakers? It's easy enough to do a playoff bracket that ignores conferences while still selecting playoff teamss in a fair, pre-determined manner.
Yeah. They played each other twice in the playoffs since 93. 2002 and 2011.
What classic intra-conference playoff rivalry in recent memory am I missing out on here? Brady Manning? I'm sure those two would have found themselves in the playoffs, or even the Super Bowl.
Watered down...
6 or 7 win teams making it to the playoffs and on top of it, being rewarded with home playoff games to host teams with 4 or 5 more wins than them.
That ring any bells?
Overreacting due to rare events is often what gets leagues in trouble because they start changing things that aren't broken.
If you want a change in the playoff requirements, you have to take the division aspect out of it. Have 16 teams in each conference who play each other one time each. Then seed them by record. But again - why change something that isn't broken?
Overreacting due to rare events is often what gets leagues in trouble because they start changing things that aren't broken.
If you want a change in the playoff requirements, you have to take the division aspect out of it. Have 16 teams in each conference who play each other one time each. Then seed them by record. But again - why change something that isn't broken?
Shhh. Don't get in the way of a good rant.
Your top seeded teams were the usual 16-0 to 13-3 teams. 12-4 and 11-5 were your standard wildcard home teams. Then 9-7 made you a road wildcard team and ... maybe ... even 8-8 was the last team at the dance. Rough estimates.
It would be a rant, if hockey wasn't doing the same thing and there wasn't an intra-conference match up scheduled for tonight. I'm not exactly plucking this suggested idea from the sky. As I alluded to beforehand, Nashville and Carolina already played each other in the NHL playoffs this year. It was not really a big foul and the sky didn't fall on everyone.
People are saying the idea watering is down the product and I'm just bringing up the "lousy team" hosts a playoff game to counter that.
Yes we must conserve the original format (that's not even the original format) so we can see the 7-8-1 Carolina Panthers host the 11-5 Arizona Cardinals. The traditional way.
Also ... another note to the 49ers Giants rivalry of the 80s comment, you can still play the 49ers in the playoffs and even with my (better system) you can form new rivalries between you and other top contenders in the AFC. The Giants have only played Dallas once in the entire history of the NFL in the playoffs right?
So what's wrong with bumping into the Steelers or the Patriots and starting a new rivalry with them in the playoffs? Then those once every four years matchups with them during the regular season would be a little bit more interesting if you have a have a history of brushing up with them in the playoffs.
I'm still not convinced and would rather have a chance to see Pittsburgh New England or Denver in the playoffs rather than only having potential opponents such as Detroit Minnesota Arizona Carolina Atlanta and all those boring teams.
Oh and now it's 7 teams for each side? Yeah. Sounds watered down to me.
Consequentially, my idea is sexier