News: BTB: Should The NFL Change/Expand The Playoffs?

NewsBot · Jan 6, 2014

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With a dearth of Cowboys news, let's have an overall NFL discussion.

The NFL playoffs haven't seen a lot of change over time. Of course, there is the old adage that if it isn't broke, don't fix it. And the NFL playoffs don't appear to be broken as they continue to do record numbers on television. The weekend average for the four games was 34.7 million viewers and all four games where the top four most-watched television programs of the week.

But, there are a couple of areas of the playoff system that are receiving some scrutiny. One is the seeding process. The winners of the four divisions in each conference get to host home games on wild-card weekend even though the two wild-card teams might have far superior records. We saw this with teams like New Orleans and San Francisco having to travel on wild-card weekend. Even though the road teams won three out of four this year, there is a school of thought that the NFL should seed the playoffs strictly on record, thus throwing the division winners into the mix of possibly going on the road. This is actually a change I could support.

Another change that has been discussed is adding two more teams in each conference to the mix. In essence, adding two more wild-card teams. This obviously would keep more teams in contention late in the season adding to fan excitement and it would give the NFL more playoff games to televise. This one smells of greed more than anything else. Of course, Jerry Jones like the idea.

"From the standpoint of looking at how exciting it is for a city or a community to be involved in the playoffs and the fact that you can have a team that might have literally operated at .500 or in that area ... you can have that team win the Super Bowl," Jones said Friday on 105.3 The Fan. "That makes a big case for adding a couple of more cities or communities that have NFL teams to the playoffs.

"It just creates that much more excitement and that much more interest for people in those communities. So I fall on the side of the ledger that would increase the playoffs."

So what do you say? Would you change the playoffs using either of these ideas? Both of them? Or do you have other plans for what the NFL should do, if anything? Sound off in the comments.

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News: BTB: Should The NFL Change/Expand The Playoffs?

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