What's Wrong With The Playoffs?

The NFL playoffs are upon us and your hometown Pittsburgh Steelers are once again on a Super Bowl hunt. The team brought home 12 wins this year, but that was not enough to win the division since the Baltimore Ravens have the same record and beat the Steelers both times this year. So now, while the Ravens get the two seed and a week off, the Steelers have to travel to Denver to play the 8-8 division winning Broncos.

Now I'm not a homer, in fact, I really don't care all that much for the Steelers. What I can say is that I have a big problem with the Steelers having to play this game on the road. Without going into too much detail, I believe that the better team should always be granted home field advantage. So how do you determine who the better team is? Well, it would make sense to look at how they performed in the 16-game regular season, right? The Steelers won 12 games while playing in a tougher divisions than the Broncos, who won 8. It doesn't take too much else to prove that the Steelers are the better team here. However, they have the disadvantage of playing on the road just because Denver played in a weaker division this year (a completely random variable, and you know how I feel about random variables). People can say that division winners should be rewarded all they want, but I feel that a playoff berth is reward enough, no 8-8 should ever get home field over a 12-4 team.

Such is with baseball. In the Major Leagues, the three division winners get playoff berths and then the team with the next best record gets the final spot. Now is that fair? I would say no. Last year, it worked out that the best 8 teams record-wise made the playoffs, but that's not always the case. Why should a team with more wins be held out of the playoffs with less wins just because of a random difference in the competitiveness of the division that year.

Let's say the National League Central is absolutely horrible this year and the Pirates magically win 88 games and finish in first. Let's also say that the Phillies win 100 games, the Marlins have a big year and win 92 games, the Giants win the West with 95 wins, and the Diamondbacks win 90 games of their own. You have 5 teams there, and the Pirates are the worst team of the bunch with two less wins than the Diamondbacks. In a perfect world, who should go to the playoffs? I would say the four best teams. The Pirates would have an incredibly unfair advantage of having to win two less games just because of the rest of their division was bad. The Diamondbacks would have outplayed the Pirates by two games in the long season and would miss the playoffs just because they had to compete with the 95-win Giants. How can anyone think that's fair?

I'm not saying that the right move is to get rid of divisions entirely, because they do have some purpose for the regular seasons. Rivalries are made through divisions, which helps the sport in many ways. Also, travel is made easier for teams and fans since the teams are grouped by their proximity to each other. However, determining playoff berths and seedings is made unfair by the division setup.

If I was the unbiased commissioner of one of these sports, I would probably get rid of divisions entirely. Of course, strength of schedule is a thing that would have a huge influence here and you can't really do anything about that. Not every team can play the same schedule, so you can't possibly make everything perfectly fair. However, they should at least try to get as close to perfect as they can, right? In football, I'm getting rid of divisions, being extremely precise with scheduling, and letting the six best win totals into the playoffs. Same thing for baseball, and in fact ESPECIALLY for baseball just because of the randomness of the short playoff series. Any team can beat any other team in a 5 or 7 games series. Letting a worse team into the playoffs is unfairly giving the best teams a worse chance to achieve their ultimate goal.

Getting rid of divisions is a pretty ludicrous suggestion, and it is never going to happen. However, it would make the playoff systems more fair, you can't argue that.