Re-envisioning the NFL season format to be even better

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[JD_KaPow]

 

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ok

 

[JD_KaPow]

ok

Seriously, I hate every single aspect of this.

Two bye weeks has been tried and everybody hated it, which is why they got rid of it.
Less regular season and more postseason, with every team making the postseason, that's the opposite of where things should go.
And worst of all, imagine that first postseason week, with exactly zero top-tier matchups: all the best teams romp against the worst teams. It's hard to imagine a less entertaining week of football than that. I mean, really, you're re-engineering the entire system so that we get to watch the 49ers play the Panthers in the playoffs? Really? And let's say the Panthers somehow win. Then, whoo-hoo, we get to watch a 2-14 team play in the second round of the playoffs, what fun!
(And no, it's not comparable to the first day of March Madness, because even there, only 64(ish) teams qualify out of 300+. Here, we'd have the absolute best playing the absolute worst. What a terrible idea.)

 

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Two bye weeks has been tried and everybody hated it, which is why they got rid of it.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/will-two-bye-weeks-return-for-nfl

Less regular season and more postseason, with every team making the postseason, that's the opposite of where things should go.

Says you. And that's okay.

Appreciate that you or anyone else would take time to study it. It did take some thought, maybe obviously.

But my take is probably one that's more likely held among the NFL capitalists, since post season is what routinely generates a lions share of profits... and too, important to note that we're not talking huge jumps here, either way... but nonetheless, significant ones by virtue of how it's set-up.

There is precedent for every team making a post season in the fact that most college conferences include all of their teams. And again, the capitalists are going to prefer a season ending game that always has playoff consequences over the potential of season ending games that do not necessarily.

And worst of all, imagine that first postseason week, with exactly zero top-tier matchups: all the best teams romp against the worst teams. It's hard to imagine a less entertaining week of football than that.

Would point out that everything gets "top tier" after that first weekend, and that even in that first weekend, the games pitting the middle 8 teams ordinarily will be competitive... and... that the top 4-ish teams have earned some warm-up games as they launch their post season.

And let's say the Panthers somehow win. Then, whoo-hoo, we get to watch a 2-14 team play in the second round of the playoffs, what fun!

Cinderella stories in post seasons often attract interest rather than tamp it down. Yes, like March Madness.

(And no, it's not comparable to the first day of March Madness, because even there, only 64(ish) teams qualify out of 300+. Here, we'd have the absolute best playing the absolute worst.

Yes, it is comparable to March Madness... just on the merits of what I just said. But let's grant your argument that only conference champs of certain conferences and other at-large teams selected by a committee will qualify... that's all valid to point out... but what that glosses over is consideration of the delta between the worst NCAA tournament participant and the best is exponentially wide... compare that to the delta between the worst NFC team and the best... and there is no serious comparison.

Said another way... a more objective way... oddsmakers considered the 2023 Houston Texans to be at the +20,000 line for winning a Super Bowl... whereas the Princeton Tigers were looking at a 100,000 line, ie, 5x less likely to emerge as champs.

A Cinderella in the NFL is a whole different thing than a Cinderella in the NCAA tournament. Sure, will grant you that the worst or second worst NFC team is going to be inherently bad practically every season. But will not grant, for good reason, that the 3rd or 4th is going to be so bad they cannot make games interesting... the Cardinals naturally being the example that leaps to mind after last Sunday's upset.


All that said, I did discover a mistake in construction that needs correcting, and will correct that sometime... but maybe not before I get some sleep tonight.

Again, don't mind the disagreement, and appreciate the perusal on your part.

 

[RonWashington]

Turning the NFL which is special with one game a week the anticipation on game day to expanding an already too long regular season and expanding playoff teams is garbage . Only the Jerry’s and Roger Goodfellas of this world would to turn the NFL into the not so special NBA NHL marathon. .

 

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expanding an already too long regular season

Look closer. (But only if you care to... doesn't appear you probably do.) That's all I've got for ya at this stage.

 

[RonWashington]

Look closer. (But only if you care to... doesn't appear you probably do.) That's all I've got for ya at this stage.

Look closer they want an 18 game regular season . Maybe you didn’t get the memo . And with it more “ wildcard “ cannon fodder to sell more beer & Buffalo wings . Maybe the SB can play in March .

 

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Look closer they want an 18 game regular season .

Good on you... at least you seem to have maybe reviewed what was said versus what you evidently presumed had been said.

But look closer, indeed.

The interest is not merely 18 games for 18 games sake... surely you're smarter than that.

The interest is in revenue.

This stokes a lot more revenue because it decreases the regular season slightly for the benefit of the somewhat more profitable post season.

Maybe the SB can play in March .

This plan pushes the SB from a one-day-and-done event on the second Sunday in February to a third Sunday in February, and a fourth Sunday if necessary.

Not like that's not a sports wasteland period anyhow, by the way. No harm done. To the contrary, it'd be a welcome sight for a lot of fans who spend that time otherwise waiting for MLB spring training to get started.

 

[RonWashington]

You don’t need to tell me it’s “ revenue driven “ friend . Jerry is round the clock revenue driven . My point is the NFL is a weekly physical battle with injury on top of injury . I’m not real interested in Minnesota coming to Dallas and watch Nick Mullins sling around interceptions when they are playing QB # 4 .

 

[JD_KaPow]

Appreciate that you or anyone else would take time to study it. It did take some thought, maybe obviously.

But my take is probably one that's more likely held among the NFL capitalists, since post season is what routinely generates a lions share of profits... and too, important to note that we're not talking huge jumps here, either way... but nonetheless, significant ones by virtue of how it's set-up.

There is precedent for every team making a post season in the fact that most college conferences include all of their teams. And again, the capitalists are going to prefer a season ending game that always has playoff consequences over the potential of season ending games that do not necessarily.

Is your goal here to make the season better for the fans or to figure out a way that the owners could make more money? Maybe I misunderstood. I don't think your system does either, but the evaluation would be different depending on your objectives.

Would point out that everything gets "top tier" after that first weekend, and that even in that first weekend, the games pitting the middle 8 teams ordinarily will be competitive... and... that the top 4-ish teams have earned some warm-up games as they launch their post season.

But who cares about those middle-mush games except fans of those teams? The 8-9 game is between teams that wouldn' t even make the playoffs today. And those top 4-ish games against the losingest teams have no appeal to anybody, and waste an opportunity to showcase good teams in exciting matchups. That's the appeal in the regular season: every week, there are a bunch of blah matchups, but there are also a few exciting marquee matchups. Your system is specifically designed to give us the least interesting possible matchups in the first week of the postseason.

And most importantly, any upsets mean that teams with losing records (sometimes egregiously so) would end up in later rounds of the playoffs. The optics of that are just awful.

Cinderella stories in post seasons often attract interest rather than tamp it down. Yes, like March Madness.id another way... a more objective way... oddsmakers considered the 2023 Houston Texans to be at the +20,000 line for winning a Super Bowl... whereas the Princeton Tigers were looking at a 100,000 line, ie, 5x less likely to emerge as champs

Yes, but the Cinderellas in March Madness were at least teams that actually had winning records in the regular season. Princeton was 23-7. The Texans were 3-13-1. If you can't understand why that matters and how having a team like Houston playing in the later rounds of the playoffs would be bad, I don't know how to explain it to you.

You also made the point that conference tournaments in the NCAA allow everyone in. First of all, they don't have such tournaments in football. Secondly, if you look at how those tournaments are designed (I'm looking at the SEC basketball tournament), they specifically structure them to avoid 1 vs. 14 type matchups, and they do that for a reason, the reason being that those games would be horrible.

 

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You don’t need to tell me it’s “ revenue driven “ friend .

Hmm. I was only responding to what you wrote. It seemed to emphasize what it emphasized, which was not revenue, but number of games.

My point is the NFL is a weekly physical battle with injury on top of injury

It is? I must not be reading closely enough. I'd not seen that point raised, but perhaps that's my fault.

The challenge flag having been thrown, let's go to the review, then....................

24 of 32 teams will actually endure less wear-and-tear, or as we tend to call it now, "load."

Another 2 could possibly endure the exact same load (18, either way), if the #1 seeds in each conference were to be eliminated in the Divisional Round. For certain, though at least 2 teams will endure less load in the proposed format (19 to 18), and possibly 4.

28 of 32 teams, then will endure the same or less load in the proposed format... all of which will have had 1 additional bye week, on top of that.


It is only for the four finalists that the situation tilts to one or possibly two more games played in the proposed format, compared to the current.

#1 seeds under the current format that are eliminated in the conference championships play 19 games, and all others complete the season having played 20. Super Bowl participants, then, either play 20 (#1 seeds) or 21 games.

 

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Is your goal here to make the season better for the fans or to figure out a way that the owners could make more money?

I would argue that if I'm an owner, I only make money to the degree that I make things better for fans... and that that's not a short-term assessment, but a long-term. It is true that there is the potential for overkill... asking too much of the golden goose.

The proposal pivots on the idea that we may be close, but we're still not exceeding that here. And the converse is also true, then... that there is a sweet spot that still can/should be achieved by enlarging the gravity of the final four.

Part of it, too, rests in the idea that some years, the best two teams both end up playing in one or the other conference's championship. (Classic example for us Cowboys fans, of course, being the years we faced SF in the NFC championship, and Buffalo in the Super Bowl... but it's happened with some regularity.) This leaves no question about who the best team is, but also no question about who is the second and third best. It adds even further orgasmic intrigue to the grand finale act of the season.

One more thing that I maybe should have made a bigger deal of already... when your team doesn't get eliminated from the playoffs games ahead of the end of the season... it gives you some better reason to take interest in those end-of-season games.

I see you've written more, but this is all I have time at the moment to address... maybe later.

 

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Disregard the original graphic above... needed to correct a thing or two, and so I submit this revision...

 

[Rockport]

Why change something that’s working so well?

 

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Why change something that’s working so well?

Completely reasonable question.

Answer: Still meat on the bone. Still money left on the table. And btw, let's realize please that this current weekend everyone is talking up the intrigue... why... because we don't ordinarily have this much going on for so many teams on the last weekend of the season... ie, historically this is a bar we rarely see reached.

 

[RonWashington]

Posters want to get cute play word games . Heck why stop at 18 games . Play 36 meet at the clubhouse for a round of Gatorade . Have a nice time .

 

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(Some posters read and make relevant comments. Or equally admirable and signifying competence, they ask relevant questions. Others don't even seem to know what they just read. But boy do they take great joy in stinging (from where they sit) denigration. All I can say is, not a way I'd wanna live. And, oh well.)

 

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specifically designed to give us the least interesting possible matchups in the first week of the postseason.

It is specifically designed for what it is specifically designed for, as stated in the OP.

If the worst weakness of the format is that you wait until the second weekend of post season for these most salient matchups you so love in the current Wild Card weekend, then okay.

Oh well. Trade-offs, my friend.

In exchange for that, the pay off is that no team has to endure 1-3 pointless home games every season as a consequence of being eliminated from playoffs... that on its own is a win, from where I sit. But forget that. The big pay off is that the very best four teams that the NFL has to offer participate in a grand finale... effectively a double-elimination tournament over the course of 4 weekends. That's a huge win. Fan interest off the charts. Revenues off the charts.

 

[JD_KaPow]

It is specifically designed for what it is specifically designed for, as stated in the OP.

If the worst weakness of the format is that you wait until the second weekend of post season for these most salient matchups you so love in the current Wild Card weekend, then okay.

Oh well. Trade-offs, my friend.

In exchange for that, the pay off is that no team has to endure 1-3 pointless home games every season as a consequence of being eliminated from playoffs... that on its own is a win, from where I sit. But forget that. The big pay off is that the very best four teams that the NFL has to offer participate in a grand finale... effectively a double-elimination tournament over the course of 4 weekends. That's a huge win. Fan interest off the charts. Revenues off the charts.

Just because you say it’s designed for something doesn’t make it so. It’s designed to give the worst possible matchups, and it’s designed such that 5-10 or 6-9 teams will inevitably show up in the final four, negating your concept of the “very best four teams” and turning the league into a laughing stock. I also like how you ignore the most important points I made.