Week 7 (Mini) Preview - The Playoff Payoff
A brief rant about America's love of all things playoffs
America, for some reason, is obsessed with the idea that every sport has to have a playoff. And the bigger the playoff, the better. At least, that is according to both sports leagues and the networks that air these sports leagues.
MLB, whose playoffs are currently going on, keep expanding their playoff format to include new teams (currently the playoff is now at 12 teams). The NBA has just expanded their playoffs to include 10 teams in each conference (that is 2/3rds of the damn league making the playoff). The NFL, who maybe had the best playoff format the past couple of decades, decided to ruin that by adding 2 more teams to make the playoffs a few years back. The NHL, credit to them, is holding steady at a small constant number of *checks notes* 16 teams.
To recap, in the 4 American professional sports, we have:
NFL - 14 out of 32 teams make it (44%)
NHL - 16 out of 32 teams make it (50%)
NBA - 20 out of 30 teams make it (67%!!!)
MLB - 12 out of 30 teams make it (40%)
Total - 62 out of 124 teams (50%) in American professional sports make the playoffs
Why are we doing this? In a word, as it always is….money. People watch playoff games, so TV networks and leagues have partnered together to say “hey let’s just create more playoff inventory.” More inventory = more advertising $ for networks. That $ flows to the leagues through their exclusive partnerships with these networks that air the games.
Which is all fine and dandy - I am the last person to tell anybody to not secure the bag and get their money. But can we stop pretending that the oversized playoffs actually determine the best team? These teams play full months-long seasons full of injuries, ups and downs, huge wins and heartbreaking losses, and then the title winner comes down to just a small sample size:
In the NFL, despite the fact that 44% of teams make the playoffs, only 5-19% of those team’s seasons are played during the playoffs
In the NHL, despite the fact that 50% of teams make the playoffs, only 5-25% of those team’s seasons are played during the playoffs
In the NBA, despite the fact that 67% of teams make the playoffs, only 1-27% of those team’s seasons are played during the playoffs (thank the new play-in game structure for that weird math)
In MLB, despite the fact that 40% of teams make the playoffs, only 2-10% of those team’s seasons are during the playoffs
There are a lot of words going on here that basically say this - the regular season doesn’t matter anymore in professional sports. It doesn’t matter!! Who cares! Half the league makes the playoffs, and then they play a tiny fraction of the games played in the regular season to determine a champion.
Do we realize this makes absolutely no sense? I don’t want to go full European soccer league-guy where they don’t have playoffs at all (except for some cups that are exclusively playoffs), but it makes no sense to have so many teams make a playoff and then decide a champion with so few games.
These ratios above should be a lot closer, in my opinion. If 50% of teams make a playoff (which, again, is outrageous) then the playoffs should be roughly half the size of the regular season. Eliminate the bad teams, then let the best teams battle it out in a smaller but still representative sample size. That totally makes sense to me.
But the Orioles, a team that wins 101 games over a 6 months-long regular season and has the second best record in baseball, won’t win the title because the Rangers got hot with their bats for legitimately half a week is absolutely and completely bonkers. Same goes for the Dodgers, who got swept out in only 3 games by the Diamondbacks despite the fact they beat those same Diamondbacks by 16 games (!!!) in the NL West this season. And as I write this on Thursday, the same will probably go for the Braves tonight when they likely will lose in 4 games to a Phillies team that finished 14 games behind Atlanta in the regular season.
“But The Godfather, this is just a baseball problem. This doesn’t happen in other sports!”
Really? Tell that to the Boston Bruins, who had the best season in NHL history and then lost in the first round of the playoffs. 82 games of unbelievable hockey? Truly legitimately doesn’t matter. The team who had the best record in the history of hockey before them? The 2018-2019 Tampa Bay Lightning who got swept in the first round! Best season ever? Nope you’re just chokers now (credit to my Bolts who won the next two titles, but my point still stands).
The NFL is a little better, as both of last season’s best teams made the Super Bowl thankfully. But the season before that? The NFC #1 seed Packers go out in their first game as did the #1 seed Titans in the AFC. 4 months of great football? Poof, gone in literally one game. And while I hate to give credit to the NBA, their playoff structure seems to most frequently reward the best team in the playoffs. But even then, 67% of teams make the playoffs??? And even this past year we saw the best team in the East, Milwaukee, ousted in the first round by the team with the 12th best record in basketball.
I am not anti-playoff. In fact I’m very pro-playoff. I absolutely love watching playoff games. I just wish the playoff structure in these sports made sense. If you’re going to have more teams in your playoff, you need less regular season games (which obviously will never happen because $$$). If you’re going to have few games decides who stays and who goes home, don’t have half the damn league make a playoff.
Ultimately though, this is not an NFL blog or an MLB blog or an NBA blog or an NHL blog. I care about college football and the future of the sport with an expanded playoff. Right now, there are realistically about 70 teams that can make the College Football Playoff. 4 do. So, how is college football doing in these magic ratios?
Currently in FBS College Football, 6% of eligible teams make the Playoff each year (not counting group of 5 teams because come on let’s get real they aren’t making it). Roughly 7-14% of those team’s games are played in the Playoff
In the new structure starting next year, 17% of eligible teams will make the Playoff each year (rough math since Group of 5 conferences will get a combined 1 team that definitely won’t win lol). Roughly 7-24% of those team’s games will be played in the Playoff
I have spoken a lot about how I don’t like all of the outsized rhetoric around the College Football Playoff. And you want to know why I don’t like that? Because College Football is the only sport in America where the regular season truly actually matters!!
However, people against the 12 team playoff want you to believe this won’t be true once the playoff is bigger. They are lying. This absolutely still holds true in the new world of the 12 team playoff - it should be difficult to make a playoff and it should be then equally difficult to win said playoff. You think this weekend’s huge Oregon/Washington game still wouldn’t be huge in the 12 team Playoff? It would be absolutely massive. The winner is almost guaranteed a spot in the Playoff next year (sure it would be as a Big 10 team next year but we will cross that bridge when we get there).
(One note before I get off my high horse - I didn’t talk about March Madness here. The NCAA basketball tournament is the most preposterous unfair playoff in all of sports. College basketball fans know this though and are very aware it is an unfair way to find a champ. Due to this self-awareness, I am not going to talk about the March Madness ratios)
College football doesn’t always get it right, and there are plenty of haters of the new 12 team format. But I think, for once, college football might have gotten this one correct.
Don’t tell the TV execs that I said that.
This is normally where I do a picks section. No picks this week. Why? Very simple - I have had a new daughter at home the last few months and this has meant very few days out with my wife. Saturday we have a babysitter (thanks Mom) and therefore my wife and I are spending a Saturday afternoon out at a nice fancy steak restaurant for what people apparently call a “date” (if you live near me you know the restaurant we are going to, please don’t come say hi leave us alone).
With that being said, the last thing I am going to do is make a bunch of picks and stress out looking at my phone the whole time because I am a psychopath. So we are taking a bye week…except for one lonely pick.
THE PICK - WEEK 7 (Last Week: 5-3-1; 2023: 35-34-4). Pick below is in bold
Oregon State -3.5 vs. UCLA - Come on you thought I was going to bail on the beavs like that? Not a chance.
Want to see a kicker get an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty? I knew you did. Have a good weekend!
MLB playoffs were perfect with 4 teams. You play 162 games, it’s clear who is good. Expanding is crazy and I’ve been against it at every step, credit to me. It definitely wasn’t because the Red Sox were the wild card team every year of my childhood and I was pissed they were going to suddenly have to start winning an extra game only to have now played in the wild card game once in the 11 years it’s existed.
I am intrigued by so many of the match-ups this weekend, the board is fascinating to me. I was looking forward to seeing the GF’s analysis but I accept your reasoning and hope you and the wife have a lovely time at Waffle House.
After last week where 2 of my picks won by a combined 1 point and the other lost by 42, I believe I am 4-2 in the comment section. I am going to go with UNC -3.5 this week. I have no idea how Miami reacts to last week, perhaps they rally and the offense from A&M comes around. But that was the most preposterous single play call decision ever made, literally is there another example in the history of football of the game being over and the coach saying nah? Not 99.9% they’d win if X happens, 100.0% over with a kneel. Crazy. I don’t see them rebounding on the road. Go Heels.