Before modification by Cannoli at 04/01/2014 11:34:11 PM
Remember a few years back when the NFC West was softer than wet tissue paper and yet the Seahawks, by virtue of winning the conference, got to host a game against a wildcard who had won almost twice as many games?
While I appreciate the opportunity this gives me, I still think that promising Division Champs at least one home game is crazy. On no account should the Green Bay Packers be seeded above the 49ers, based on the past season. It's completely nuts. That said, we might win. With Rogers and Cobb back, our passing game is suddenly as scary as ever, and as Lacy gets healthy, defenses are going to be hard pressed to figure out how to stop us.
Sure, our defense is basically a sieve, but the Niners have their injury issues, as well. In a shootout, at home, with the Frozen Tundra earning its name? I actually like our odds. And I have to imagine that one last game in Candlestick would appeal to Niners fans, opposed to what they're getting.
Anyway, the gist of my argument is that a division leader does a very simple thing - it compiles a superior record over three other teams, all of which face each other twice and otherwise play almost identical schedules. That last bit is the most important. The BCS system, as flawed as it might be, at least acknowledges the notion that due to various factors, two different teams might play very different caliber schedules. Compiling a record of 12-4 against a bunch of weaklings does not necessarily make you better than a team that had to scrap and fight for its 10-6 against better opponents. I recall everyone making a huge fuss about this stuff back in '98, because Arizona and San Diego won the woeful Wests with records of 9-7 & 8-8, respectively. And because defending AFC champion New England and defending NFC top seed Dallas played in the beasts of the East, they had to sit home with 11-5 & 9-7 respective records. In Dallas's case, everyone made a stink about how they had the same overall record and conference record as Arizona, but in the mighty Eastern division, 9-7 was only good for 3rd, while it sufficed to win the West, with all those pathetic teams. Likewise for New England. 11-5 only got you second place in the East, but 8-8 won the west. So so sad and unfair, right? But consider this - the Eastern divisions were so tough and brutal, providing both of the prior season's Super Bowl contenders, and all that nasty weather. This was the argument why it was unfair for the Patriots to have to contend against these brutes and the Cardinals against the creampuffs in the West, but the Patriots only played 6 games against Eastern teams, and played 8 games against those two pathetic Western divisions, where 9-7 & 8-8 won the divisions. For Arizona, the reverse was true. Six games against their own West, and eight games against the two Eastern divisions, each of which featured three teams with winning records. The reason New England stayed home? A tie-breaker situation, in which all of their losses were in their conference. They lost two games to the East, swept the NFC West, and went 3-3 in their remain six games, which included the Steelers, Colts and the four pussies of the AFC West. If the West was really so laughably easy and the Patriots so superior to that whole division, whose winner got a home playoff game that the Patriots had leisure to watch on TV, why didn't they sweep that division? If the Patriots HAD run the table on their 8 Western division games, they'd have won the division.
San Diego was 8-8 because they had to play the NFC South which featured 3 teams with winning records. Their conference record was identical to New England (7-5), so why should San Diego have to miss the playoffs just because they happened to draw the division with the best combined win-loss total, while New England got the division with the worst combined record in their respective extra-conference games?
That is the essence of the system - you compete with teams that played the same opponents. The Bears and Packers, for instance, played identical opponents in 12 of their 16 games, and two more against each other. We know the relative value of their wins and losses against one another. We know that if the Packers played against fierce competition, so did the Bears, and they lost less against that same fierce competition, or those same cupcakes. THAT is your task in the NFL - do better than 3 other teams who have the same road to the post season as you. Did the Niners earn that superior record to the Pack fair and square, or did they coast to it with a schedule that included Washington, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Jacksonville and Houston (17-63 combined)? Does their having to face Indy, New Orleans, Carolina and Seattle twice make up for that (60-20)? Green Bay's 12 conference games were against the North & East, on the whole considered much rougher road games than San Fran's run through the West & South. And they played the North & South respectively in the AFC as well. These are all debatable until the cows come home, but they earned their spots because Green Bay did better than three other teams, while San Francisco only did better than two other teams. Green Bay played all the same teams as the Bears, save two, and did better at that same schedule. San Francisco failed to outdo Seattle while playing a schedule nearly identical to that of the Seahawks. The two games difference between Seattle & San Fran were the former had to play Minnesota & NY (12-19-1 combined) while San Fran got play Washington & GB (11-20-1). So a marginally easier schedule, and they still failed to do better than Seattle. Whereas GB had to outdo Chicago while playing SF & Atlanta (16-16) to Chicago's New Orleans & St Louis (18-14), and succeeded. They'll get the chance this weekend to prove whether or not it was a fluke of the schedule that got them the privilege of hosting a pissed off team with four more wins and something to prove.
When you complain about the seeding based on the schedule, you are pretty much dismissing the importance of playoff games at all. Since the visiting team wins so often, it is hardly as if home field is a significant advantage. Under the current playoff format, the NFC top seed has only won the Super Bowl once. They have won the conference only 3 times in 10 years. So the advantage gained by the alleged unfairness of the seeding system is negligible. On the other hand, if it becomes all about the records, the grumbling will change to the teams who had to play murderous schedules against all top teams complaining about those teams who beat them out by coasting against divisions packed with losers. Even scheduling based on prior records won't guarantee a fair schedule. The Giants two schedule-based games this year were against Carolina & Seattle, the top two teams in the NFC, a joy which Minnesota also shared, because all three teams finished in second place last year. Dallas & Chicago, meanwhile, got to play the 3rd place teams in the same two divisions (StL & NO), and surprise, surprise, Dallas & Chicago moved up & finished second this year. Meanwhile, GB & San Fran each benefited by having one of their fellow division champs from last season take a precipitous tumble, allowing them to feast on Atlanta & Washington with their combined 25 losses.
The point is, there will ALWAYS be scheduling inequities. There is simply no way to plan ahead so that all the teams face opponents of the same caliber. Under the current format, if a team has an easy schedule, it will have to fend off three other teams with a similar cakewalk. If it has a brutal array of opponents, it only has to outdo three other teams, each of which will be facing a similarly nasty schedule. By giving such weight (if indeed it amounts to much weight) to winning the division, the effects of the random distribution of opposition are minimized. In truth the greatest advantage is the bye week for the top two seeds. No matter what the outcome of the wild card games, the winner will have to go on the road against a team that WILL have a superior record in the following week, so the absolute best teams still pull an advantage out of their supreme records. An advantage that, nonetheless, the supposed weaklings who "don't belong" manage to overturn with regular frequency.
What these complaints really boil down to is that teams with worse records beat teams with better ones, sometimes on their home fields and sometimes on the road. If you are going to jigger with the playoff format to prevent that, why bother having playoffs in the first place? Why not just invite the two teams with the best regular season records to the Super Bowl? That, is, after all, the substance of your complaints. You don't grumble about the scheduling on wild card weekend, because you expect these inferior division champs to be quickly eliminated so the teams with the best records can get on with sorting out who's number one. You grumble because a team you don't expect will have a chance to win it all. If regular season records were any indicator of post-season success, the top seed in the NFC would have made it to the Super Bowl a lot more than three times in the decade since the NFL adopted the current format. As it is, the top four regular season records in each conference always make it into the playoffs. These complaints about undeserving teams making it, or getting to host a game are really only complaints about which third tier teams are going to get a shot at knocking off the elite records. Your argument is "the regular season records are devalued by the playoff system, and teams with better records are being barred from a tournament... where records don't matter.". You can't complain that regular season wins and losses should determine who deserves to be in the playoffs, because those wins and losses are largely irrelevant to playoff success. If they were absolute, 100% accurate standards of superiority, then the playoffs would be redundant, since the better record team would always prevail.
This is one of the most fair, mathematically speaking, ways to determine the playoffs. Of course, we could just have a league-wide tournament, which would take the same amount of time, but then what point to the regular season at all? We could simply do away with the playoffs and crown the best regular season record as NFL champions, which would have done wonders for the league's credibility following Spygate a few years ago. As it is, this is a decent compromise between the two extremes, and the teams that get shafted are never among the top regular season records. If you win 3/4 of your games, you are all but assured of a playoff slot. If you win more games against the same 11 opponents as your three designated rivals, you will get to host a playoff game. If you are one of the top two teams in the conference, you get a week off, and a home game. All of the so-called controversial playoff teams or controversial eliminations are never about the top teams. They are about who's third best or who's sixth best. Whoop di friggin' do.
And as far as this Sunday is concerned, Go Pack! Scott Walker's state deserves another championship.