National Football League

Bursting the NFL playoff expansion bubble

Published May. 6, 2015 1:01 p.m. ET

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By Marty Gitlin

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s invite every NFL team into the playoffs! Sure. Why not? Talk about television revenue! So what if the Super Bowl falls on Mother’s Day?

OK, that’s exaggeration for effect. But when Roger Goodell and the league start talking like expanding the postseason is only a matter of time, one must stop and consider if they care more about making money or preserving the sanctity of the sport. They are coming dangerously close to stepping over the line and don’t seem to care.

It appears that 14 or even 16 teams will be permitted to join the dance by as early as 2016. The latter figure would result in half the league gaining playoff berths for no other reason than to line pockets.

The NFL is not alone in that desire among major sports leagues. More than half of all NBA and NHL teams make the playoffs. Certainly, television and gate revenue have motivated both leagues to expand the postseason in the past.

But that’s comparing apples to oranges. The series in basketball and hockey is the great equalizer. Teams that finish around .500 must defeat the elite in those sports four times to advance. The notion of an eighth seed defeating a top seed, though it has happened, is very rare. The cream always rises to the top, but such is not necessarily the case in football, where one hot quarterback or defense, or one bad performance on the other side of the ball can transform a mediocre team into a dangerous one for one Sunday afternoon.

In the NFL, it’s one and done. And the prospect of a first-round upset is very real. Remember the 7–9 Seattle Seahawks knocking off the New Orleans Saints in 2010? Making matters even worse, they did so at home because they had won a weak division.

The regular season must continue to separate the deserving from the undeserving or it is rendered virtually meaningless.

Adding two or four teams to the postseason assures a team with a .500 or losing record will qualify just about every year. And it would be an embarrassment to the league if one of those teams heated up at the right time and won a Super Bowl.

The regular season must continue to separate the deserving from the undeserving or it is rendered virtually meaningless. The playoffs should be reserved for the best teams, teams that have really accomplished something, or it is forever cheapened. What is the achievement of qualifying for the postseason if it is done with as many losses as wins? The NFL is opening itself up to that scenario going from a rarity to a regular occurrence through such an expansion.

Yeah, this argument is coming from a 58-year-old codger who remembers when the first round of the playoffs was the conference championship and the Super Bowl was only a twinkle in the eye of founder Lamar Hunt. And it’s coming from the guy who recalls the postseason in baseball consisting of the American League and National League champion battling in the World Series—all day games—and listening to those games in class with a transistor radio pressed against his ear.

But this is not about a sort-of aging man yearning for the good old days. This is about logic. This is about a desire for the postseason not to be watered down with teams that haven’t earned the right to play for the big prize. Although the NFL has reached a level of parity that allows the majority of teams to fight for playoff spots into the last week or two of the regular season (and that can be viewed as a positive for the fans), six teams have earned playoff berths since 2006 with eight or fewer wins. That is a borderline travesty. The league will be sprinting over that border when (not if—it appears obvious) it expands the playoffs to 14 or (shudder) 16 teams.

Yes, it’s admirable that the NFL has sought parity in a desire to maintain interest from fans of as many teams as possible and for as long into the season as possible (except in Cleveland, where they generally start talking draft in early November). But there is a fine line between the push for parity and the cheapening of the regular season.

League officials have not even attempted to justify what is now an inevitable move. In fact, the reasoning behind it has not even been mentioned. They fully understand and apparently even embrace the assumption that it is motivated by greed and only greed.

Someday perhaps they will be sorry. They will be sorry when a 6–10 team somehow slides into the playoffs or a 7–9 team plays for all the marbles on Super Bowl Sunday and they are left to hope against hope that it doesn’t win and make the league look very bad.

Then again, maybe not. Because when those that run the NFL weigh profits against the sanctity of the league, the latter doesn’t matter.

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