Why I Hate Playoff Seeding

Happy New Year dear reader, it’s 2016 and I’m back to spread my discontent throughout the land.  I had to take some time off during Christmas because even though I hate everything, I don’t hate Christmas, I’m not a Scrooge or anything.  So anyways I’m here to shit on the NFL Playoffs, and well playoffs in general.  They’re flawed as fuck, so as usual don’t take this completely seriously, I don’t mean it completely literally, but here is why I hate playoff seeding.

The Division System Is Out Dated:  Back in the early days of sports divisions were set up because teams didn’t make a lot of money and traveling with a full team was expensive, not to mention the players didn’t make shit for money and had day jobs to support themselves so they couldn’t take the multiple days it would take to take a bus or train ride up the coast.  So divisions were set up so teams could play locally and then after they spend the regular season beating up on teams close to them they would travel for the playoffs, think to your glory days in high school football.  You played a school bus ride away from your school and then when tournament time came you usually traveled to your state’s capitol to play the other teams.

Divisions worked then and they still do for high schools.  However, we’re not in the stone ages of sports anymore, even the poorest of American Sports, the NHL (sorry MLS I don’t consider you a league) makes roughly 4 billion dollars a year and teams can fly all over.  Fuck, we even play NFL games in Merry ole’ Fucking England, and they don’t fucking understand what the fuck is going on and why players are allowed to handle a football with their hands.  I think they kind of understand field goal kicking and punting.  So why in the fuck do we have divisions?

Because of this farce, we have the 10-6 Jets (who are fun to watch) sitting at home this weekend while the fucking Texans, the goddamn Texans, at 9-7 get to not only go to the playoffs but host a fucking game.  Side note, Geoff really wanted me to write this article because he expected the Redskins to finish 8-8 (or worse) and win the division and then I’d have to shit all over my favorite team.  Well, guess what Geoff, you old fuck, they didn’t, they finished 9-7 and better than any team that didn’t make the playoffs.  Sure we’re hosting the 10-6 Packers, but the way they’re playing right now, I dare say they don’t belong in the playoffs, if they didn’t get off to that lucky 6-0 start then they’d probably be sitting at home this weekend with the Jets.

One fix to this would be just get rid of divisions altogether and the 6 best teams in each conference face each other in the playoffs.  That works but I think an easier way to do this would be to just have two divisions and East and West or North and South.  The two Division winners get the bye week and the remaining four play in the first round.

Divisions need to be changed:  If leagues are going to keep divisions then they might want to consider switching them up a bit.  I know sports are fluid and one decade’s top teams might be cellar dwellers the next (NFC West last 10 years), or some divisions might be heavily competitive from top to bottom (NFC East early 90s).  Then you have some divisions that are woefully lopsided like the AFC South.  Pretty much since that division’s inception it has been dominated by the Colts, like horrifically dominated.  Founded in 2002 the Colts have won the division 9 times and usually by embarrassing margins and if Andrew Luck hadn’t spent the majority of the season injured they would have won their 10th.

The AFC South just isn’t competitive, ever, and for the most part that has been the same with the AFC East.  For the Last 15 years, the Patriots have won the division 13 times, at least, every once and a while the Jets, Bills, or Miami look like they might challenge.  For the Colts, it’s pretty much, as long as we don’t Fuck up our non-division games we can coast to another division title.

Shit say what you will about the NFC East this season, at least it’s been a hotly contested division (good or bad) the past five seasons, in fact, this was the first time in the last five year the division didn’t come down to week 17.

I know some of you are thinking “what about rivalries?” well you folks are morons.  Rivalries don’t exist anymore.  They pretty much died when free agency started.  Sure we fans hate certain teams (Fuck you Dallas, how does last place taste, assholes) but for players, they could give a shit, mostly because next season they’ll play for that team.  Players come and go through trade and free agency so much that they almost never develop a hatred for a particular team, that is unless you’re DeSean Jackson or LeSean McCoy and you were kicked to the curb by the Eagles and Chip Kelly.  You know I just thought of something.  Everyone was calling Chip racist for the way he handled the Eagles, maybe he doesn’t like a shitty form of the name Sean.  Maybe he looked at the roster and saw DeSean (who could have very well been drafted by Andy Reid simply because he misread it and thought it said Dijon and that fat bastard was hungry) and LeSean and thought to himself, well fuck that, I can’t have any weird spellings of Sean on my roster.  That name might be sacred to him, you don’t fucking know Chip’s life struggles.  Internet and Philadelphia, you owe Chip an apology.

Go to College Basketball Style:  You know what, fuck it, let’s make everyone happy.  All 32 NFL Teams make the playoffs and we do it NCAA Basketball-style, except we start off with the round of 32.  No byes, not nothing, we break it up, and you’re ranked by your regular season record.  We make four regions with four number one teams.  We get round one 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, and 4v5 and we go from there with the higher seed getting the home game.

How much fun would that be?  Who wouldn’t want to see the fucking Titans knock off the Broncos in the first round, we could watch Manning walk off in humiliating defeat for the last time (side note that fucker is done after this year when he gets bounced next round) and Cam Newton losing his smile to the Cowboys, actually, I wouldn’t want to see that, fuck the Cowboys, I’d hope Carolina embarrasses them again.  But what I wouldn’t give to see the Browns pull an upset on the Pats.  Could you imagine the look on Belichick’s face if he lost to the goddamn Browns in the first round, if ever there was a bye week in this playoff system it would be the Browns.  Just that scenario alone should make everyone get on board with this idea.  Not to mention the NFL would make so much more money than they currently do.  They’ll never get the NFLPA to agree to an 18 game schedule, but a schedule that allowed all the teams in the playoffs, that actually gives us one more full week of football, why wouldn’t they go for that.

I know, I can already hear the naysayers, “but that would make the regular season irrelevant,” no it fucking wouldn’t you idiot, teams would still compete to get home field advantage throughout or, at least, one or two home games.  In fact the sprint to the end of the season might be filled with less “resting” of players, knowing that you could drop from a 4 to a 6 or 7 with a loss in week 17.  Being a 4 gets you a home game, maybe more if there are upsets.  6 or 7, odds are you ain’t seeing home again.

Fuck I’m pumped for my imaginary playoffs to start this year.  Why am I so much smarter than everyone?  NFL, hire me now assholes, I’ll fix all of your problems, you know the problems a 9 billion dollar company might have.  Shit, my playoff system might make it 10 billion, shoot gambling would be a lot more fun in the playoffs.

So that is why I hate the playoff seeding, you can disagree with me, but I’d like you to know you’re wrong and I hate you.  However, if you’d like to know more about me, and why wouldn’t you, you can follow me on the Twitter @jomac006 or learn about my awesome writing career here , pick up my books at Amazon, check out my nerdy website Clash of the Nerds, and lastly if you’re a fine lady you should swipe right on Tinder.

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