The Age of Aquarius

Great thread, thanks for starting it. A few things that have turned me off, and away, from the game I grew up loving: 1) Instant replay. Mistakes happen: GMs draft bad players, coaches call the wrong plays, players drop the ball, refs miss calls. They are the only ones that get a "do over". I know it's nitpicking, but go watch the Bills/Oilers wildcard game (aka, the Comeback). It would have been The Blowout if it was played today--the Bills got so many favorable calls in the second half. "But they shouldn't have gotten those calls in the FIRST place lol". I get the counter-argument, I really do, but without instant replay, you can have momentum. The crowd gets into it, and it influences the refs whistles. But now? Every scoring play is reviewed. PSHHHH. Let em play Rog. 2) Scheduling. Time to realign the divisions, or at least mixup the scheduling formula. I can tell you who the Bills are playing for the next 50 years, save 2 games. And the kicker is, it's the same slate of games as the Pats/Dolphins/Jets. No wonder the same teams win every year. Give us a damn last place schedule, and let the Pats play a first place schedule. There are too few games, and too many teams, for this much scheduling homogeneity. I proposed in another thread a 4 division format, I won't get into it here, but the NFL is long due for realignment. 3) Cheating. This really should be number 1... But the owners are more concerned with revenue sharing than the integrity of the game. Pats got busted for cheating a decade ago, and hammered for it, then cheated again. Brady and Beliceck should be banned for life, their accomplishments should be stripped, and the Super Bowl losers should be crowned de-facto champs OR no title awarded that year. They will never do this, because of VEGAS and all the money they make, but the Pats gamed the system and got caught. Players, coaches and fans HATE that it happened, but you wouldn't know that because sites like PFT manipulate comment sections and post votes to make it look like "no one really cares about this". bull ****. Everyone cares, and it's why people are tuning out. The "greatest" team of this generation are cheaters, and owners want it to go away quickly so the profit margins stay high.

I wrote this before St. Louis moved to Los Angeles, and before the results of the 2015 season played out, but the same principles apply--for your consideration: With Relocation to Los Angeles, NFL has Chance to Right Divisional Imbalances At the midpoint of the 2015 NFL season, a familiar scenario is unfolding in the AFC’s Southern division: the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans are tied for the division lead, each with a 3-5 record. The Jacksonville Jaguars, with a 2-5 record, sit half of a game behind both clubs. The winner of the AFC South will ultimately be granted not only a spot in the NFL postseason tournament, but the advantage of hosting a playoff game over a team who will likely sport a much better record. This problem is nothing new for the NFL. In the 13 seasons that have taken place since the NFL realigned to 8 divisions (each with 4 teams) to accommodate expansion into the Houston market, there have been 52 wildcard games. 18 of those (35%) have been hosted by a team with a worse record than their opponent. This phenomenon has occurred at least once in 11 of the 13 postseasons since 2002--most notably in 2010, when 3 of the 4 games took place in host cities with teams who had a record inferior to their opponent. The closer one looks, the more faults one can find with the NFL’s post-realignment structure. Since the 2002 restructuring, a total of 24 teams with a better record than at least one of the 12 playoff qualifiers have been excluded from postseason play. The most egregious of these infractions occurred in the 2008 season when an 11 win, defending-conference-champion Patriots team was left watching the tournament on TV, while also-rans such as the 8 win San Diego Chargers and 9 win Philadelphia Eagles qualified for the postseason tournament. The problems created by the league’s 2002 realignment happen because of a simple flaw in the structure of the divisions: they are too small. A four team division is not a large enough sample size in a 32 team league to justify a playoff representative on an annual basis. Selected randomly from a field of 32, four teams could (at any one point, but specifically at seasons end) be sub .500 clubs. This problem compounds itself when one considers the equitability in the NFL’s scheduling procedures: teams within a division play essentially the same slate of games, with the exception of 2 games, across a 16 game season. This lack of variation creates scenarios where 4 teams can have a “down year”, while simultaneously fighting through a more-difficult-than-average slate of games. The implications of these structural flaws show themselves in seasons like the aforementioned 2008, when an 8 win campaign was good enough for the San Diego Chargers to qualify for the playoffs, or 2 years later, when the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks repeated the feat. Both teams hosted playoff games, and with the advantage of playing 2 or 3 time zones away from their playoff opponents, both teams advanced past the first round. The solution is simple enough, and with relocation to the Los Angeles market looming large on the horizon, the league has been gifted the perfect opportunity to rectify the situation: divisions must grow in size, and with the NFL playoffs allowing the 4 teams with deserving records to earn a bye to the second round of the playoffs, a four division structure seems the most logical. Below is a mockup of a 4 division structure in a post-Los Angeles-relocation league: Eastern Division: Ravens, Bills, Patriots, Jets, Steelers, Browns, Bengals, Colts Southern Division: Falcons, Panthers, Texans, Jaguars, Dolphins, Saints, Bucs, Titans Western Division: Rams, 49ers, Seahawks, Chargers, Raiders, Chiefs, Broncos, Cardinals Central Division: Cowboys, Eagles, Giants, Redskins, Packers, Vikings, Lions, Bears Whichever form the divisions would take would be at the discretion of the 32 team owners. In this specific example, some sense of tradition is honored, as the current NFC East and Central were grouped together, as well as the majority of the AFC East and Central. A point of merit to this structure, however, is the fact that the 3 teams in the running for relocation to Los Angeles (San Diego; Oakland; St. Louis) would all be placed in what could be termed the “Western Division”, making any additional relocations to Los Angeles a simple affair. The logistics of the NFL playoffs would be greatly enhanced under such a realignment proposal. The 4 teams earning a bye in the playoffs would lend themselves to the natural distinction of “division winner”: a designation of greater importance when 7 clubs are beaten out for that honor, as opposed to 3. With a league composed of only 4 divisions, conferences themselves could be abolished in favor of the 12 most deserving clubs qualifying for postseason play: the 4 division winners, and the remaining 8 teams with the best records. Assuming the NFL maintains its re-seeding procedure following Wildcard weekend (whereby the lowest remaining seed plays the team with the best record in the Divisional round), the possibility of the 2 “best” teams in the league meeting in the Super Bowl becomes much more likely. The final piece of the puzzle comes in scheduling logistics. The NFL ardently adheres to a rotation formula established during the 2002 realignment, whereby teams cycle through both conference and inter-conference matchups on a set cycle, and inter-divisional-variations to an teams annual slate of games is limited to 2 contests determined by order of finish from the previous year. With 8 team divisions in place, the NFL could move to a scheduling formula based entirely on order of finish, while still maintaining an emphasis on divisional matchups: Within a division, the top 4 finishers from the previous season would play one another 2 times each for a total of 6 games; each of those clubs would then play the remaining 4 divisional opponents 1 time for a total of 4 games; finally, the top 2 finishers in each division would play the other top 2 finishers, (teams 3 and 4 would play each team that finished in 3rd and 4th place, etc.), for a total of 6 games. Thus, the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots 2015 schedule would have consisted of: (2) divisional matchups against: Indianapolis Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals; (1) divisional matchup against: Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets; (1) 1st place finisher game against the 1st and 2nd place teams from each of the other 3 divisions: Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks, Dallas Cowboys, and Green Bay Packers. For comparisons sake, the New York Jets (who finished with 8 fewer wins in 2014) would have played a slate of games against: the Cleveland Browns (2x); Buffalo Bills (2x); Baltimore Ravens (2x); New England Patriots; Indianapolis Colts; Pittsburgh Steelers; Cincinnati Bengals; Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Tennessee Titans; St. Louis Rams; Oakland Raiders; Chicago Bears; and Washington Redskins. 2 things become clear when looking at such a scheduling formula: divisional matchups are honored to a greater extent than currently (10 games per year as opposed to 6); and good teams must play harder games the following year, creating more compelling matchups across the season. The NFL has an opportunity this spring to amend many of the errors inadvertently created during 2002’s realignment. In doing so, they can create a more balanced-product, which will be enhanced in several ways: bad teams will be left out of the playoff tournament, while truly deserving teams will host playoff games; the Super Bowl can be a matchup between the 2 best teams in the league on an annual basis; and scheduling formulas can create compelling matchups across the regular season, as well as leveling the playing field between the good and bad teams from the previous season.