Galeb
Experienced Starter w/First Big Contract
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2013
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You may be correct, but that is a really hard thing to determine. Good luck finding another sport that you can make good comparisons with the NFL. They simply don't exist.Again, you’re not understanding.
It changes the likelihood of one team stringing together multiple championships within a relatively short timeframe. This is because every team requires a little more luck to win than before, rather than just the wild card round teams.
Whereas, the Patriots from 2010-18, with a bye, had roughly a 20-25% chance of winning each year, an extra playoff round reduces that to 15-20% (assuming they’re still the favorite each round.)
In baseball, you used to need to win just one series to win the pennant. Now it’s 3 series and sometimes an additional game too. Look at what’s happened when extra rounds are introduced. Yes, there’s still a winner each year, and yes, that winner is more likely to be random year to year.
Comparing football to baseball is folly as baseball has a huge variance in money spent by teams, best of 5 and 7 series in the playoffs, and until next year, more than 10x the number of games in a season etc...
I get what you're saying, and my initial reaction was the same, but after looking deeper, it's not as obvious. There is still a team that gets a bye. The entire dynamic of the season was changed. Unless you get the #1 seed, you either tank for draft picks, or cruise and rest guys once you've clinched a playoff spot.
I don't know if it will become harder to maintain success, but what seems totally obvious is that it will lessen the importance of the regular season games in a sport built upon the idea that every game is critical. Something already lessened by adding a 17th.
Whether it is harder to maintain success will always be debatable, but the quality of the product will certainly suffer.