The Playoffs Help Make the BCS Look Smart, But Group Play Trumps Them All

If the regular season means anything in professional football, as we’d all like to believe it does, then neither the Cardinals nor the Eagles have any business playing in the Super Bowl. But, regardless of what probability thinks, sport is uncertain, allowing any team to win on any given day, especially in the NFL, where parity makes the teams more evenly matched than any other sport. This is how we’ve arrived at an Arizona-Philadelphia NFC Championship, featuring two teams that won nine games. Are these the two best teams in the NFC? Again, if we are to put any real stock in the regular season, then no, they’re not. ↵↵They won when they needed to, however, which not only makes them deserving of the position they’re in, but is also why we love a playoff system: Any of the teams involved have the chance to win a championship. The previously mentioned parity makes one game contested between a nine-win and a 12-win team a virtual pick ‘em. Over the course of a full season, however, the razor-thin competitive edge that the better team possesses manifests itself into a few more notches in the victory column. Such is the case with the Giants and Eagles, or Panthers and Cardinals.↵

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↵↵Following Florida’s win over Oklahoma in the BCS Championship, arguments -- albeit flimsy ones -- have been made for Texas or Utah to be considered No. 1, or at least stake claim to a split national championship. But most level-headed minds can agree that Florida can be, at the very least, considered as good as any team in the nation, if not the outright best. So in this sense, the system sort of, kind of works: Most sports fans are content calling the Gators the National Champions.↵

↵↵If the Cardinals win on Sunday though, would there be anyone outside of the desert who’d honestly think Arizona is the best team in the NFC this season? Same for the Eagles. Of course, what people think won’t matter because one of those two will be the conference champion and move on to the Super Bowl. This is the yin and the yang of a single-elimination playoff system: It’s unpredictable, exciting and allows for games to be decided on the field, yet it isn’t necessarily the best way to determine the champion of the entire season. Not that I’m suggesting the BCS accomplishes that, but if nothing else, it certainly makes the regular season more important. And, if any team other than the Steelers wins the Super Bowl, it’ll have created a more authentic looking champion.↵

↵↵The incredibly complicated solution to all of this: A Euro/World Cup-style tournament with the first round being group play so that a one game fluke (see: Arizona crushing Carolina) wouldn’t knock out one of the top-seeded teams. Ideally, the cream would rise to the top of each group. This would be followed by a single-elimination semifinal and final. It would also be somewhat of a scheduling nightmare and eliminate bye weeks for the top seeds, so yeah, we’re definitely speaking in hypotheticals here. It certainly is one sexy, sexy hypothetical, however. ↵

↵↵(For the record, I’m not hoping aboard the “worst NFC Championship game ever” bandwagon ... at least not until after the game is played. If it’s a close, entertaining, competitive game, then that’s all we can hope for, records be damned.)↵

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