Jeffrey Pohlmeyer is 23 and lives in the suburban New York area. He is an avid sports fan (excluding the NBA because he doesn't consider that a sport). He has a standard job, but would love to be a sports writer instead. Playoff systems in the United States generate huge amounts of revenue for advertisers and marketers alike. The thing we need to ask ourselves, however, is if they are really what's best for sports?
You have to wonder what it is with the American sports fan's love for playoffs. Almost every single major sport in the United States has a playoff system to determine the league's champion, with teams squeaking in for the chance to play for the title in their respective sport.
It makes for great games and events towards the end of the season as teams jockey for position and look to qualify through tiebreakers and conference records, but that is the one of the only things that makes playoffs good for sports.
Take this season's NFL for example. In the NFC, the New York Giants, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers lead their divisions for the chance to get into the playoffs. After that, there are, theoretically, five teams with a decent chance of getting into the playoffs if some bounces go their way. Three teams in the NFC South are separated by one game, with the division leaders tied, but the Bucs get the edge because of the infamous tiebreaker.
In the AFC, you've got the New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Cincinnati Bengals and Indianapolis Colts either already having clinched or with commanding leads in their divisions. After that, you've got four teams separated by one game, with one team at 9-4 and the other three at 8-5, all vying for only two wild-card spots.
Scenarios like this make for excellent play towards the end of the season, as each team has to play games as if they are playoff games because if they lose, then they’d be out of contention to win the title.
Baseball is the same way with only one wild-card, while in hockey and basketball the division winners get automatic spots into the playoffs, with the remaining top five teams filling out the top eight in each conference.
The thing that I don't like about this system is that you can have a team in a weak division, like the Carolina Hurricanes a few years ago in the NHL, in which they would have qualified fifth or sixth based on record, but since they won their very weak division, they were given the third seed and had a home-ice advantage in their first-round playoff series. Or three years ago when the Anaheim Mighty Ducks were the seventh-seeded team in the Western Conference and they managed to make it to the NHL Final and get to game seven against the New Jersey Devils.
At least college basketball at least has a decent playoff in March, when they take 65 teams and have them play three consecutive weekends with the last team standing crowned the champion. The problem with this system, however, is that the best team does not always win the tournament. Instead, it is the hottest team.
In the 2002 season, was Maryland necessarily the best team in the country? No, but neither was the team they played in the final, Indiana, the second best team. If the best team in the country won the title every year, then a number one seed would win it every time.
The NBA is even worse with their ads on TNT saying things like, "Win, or go home." That needs to be revised a little bit to, "Win, or win four of your next six games, or go home."
However, it must be said that the NBA is a little bit better in having the best team(s) play for the title, with the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons being able to make it to the championships recently. The reason for that is that those teams treat basketball like a team sport, instead of a showcase for players, but that's a subject for a different article. Still, why have the top eight teams in the playoffs, since it serves no real purpose?
The idea of a playoff system is about one thing -- marketing. In every major European soccer league, which the MLS should follow suit, the team that finishes the season is rewarded as the champion of the league. They have a tournament, the FA Cup in England for example, that has a playoff format, but that doesn't have any effect on that season's championship race in terms of standings.
The Champions League, for example, has a home-and-home series, and that's it. Each team has one home game, and then the aggregate goals wins the series. Simple, isn't it?
Now, it would naturally be hard for the NFL to have that sort of system considering there are a lot of teams. In addition, the NFL can't necessarily go as long as soccer seasons do, but why not in basketball, hockey and baseball? They play enough games so that they can play every team in the league twice, once at home and once away, and then the winner of the league could be crowned the champion.
Personally, I feel like the winner of the President's Cup in the NHL is actually the champion, because they played the best all season long, not for a few weeks at the end of the season.
That is also why the way college football is working this season is good, because the two teams that had the best overall season are being rewarded by playing in the championship game. Sure, in years past we've had three undefeated teams and we want to crown one winner, but to have an extensive playoff in college football is ridiculous.
The reason that the playoffs will never be taken out of major sports, however, is because anyone involved in a playoff system in terms of marketing makes money, and money talks.