| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Response 13 (Samey)

Page history last edited by Samey Abdulrub 12 years, 4 months ago

     What’s more interesting than football playoff games? Football fans like me love to watch football playoff games whether its college or professional. The atmosphere of the games is intense and exciting. Teams battle it out for 60 minutes in hope to reach the top and win it all. They play all season so they could secure a spot in the playoff picture. The way the college playoff is set up with the bowls and NFL playoff is set up with the eight divisions is a bad idea and should be changed. My audience would be to all the football fans and the committees of both college and professional football. My purpose of this paper is to show fans that the way football playoffs are setup today isn’t a really good way to set it and I plan to evaluate this through three criteria: corruption, unfairness, and how it hurts the sport.

 

     One of the criteria, unfairness, happens in both college and professional football but most people oversee it. The way the NFL playoffs are set up today, there are eight divisions: four in the AFC and four in the NFC. In each conference, the division winner with the best record is awarded home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. The division winner with the best record, as well as the division winner with the second-best record, receive first-round byes and host a divisional (second-round) playoff game. The other two division winners in the conference host wild-card games. Then, of the 12 remaining teams in the conference, the two with the best records play wild-card games on the road. The problem with that is now the divisions is too uneven. Teams that have a losing record still make the playoff because their division sucks. Last year the Seattle Seahawks made the playoffs with a record of 7-9. The playoff setup gives away the chance of good teams making the playoffs. For example, this season the NFC North division has three great teams that include the Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, and Chicago Bears. It lowers the chance of these teams to make the playoffs because their division is harder. The AFC West division includes Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders, and Denver Broncos. This season the Oakland Raiders have the top seed with a record of 6-4. The Detroit Lions on the other hand have a record of 7-3 and are third seed in their division. The level of difficulty in each division is too uneven to keep the NFL playoff bracket setup the way it is now.

 

     Unfairness in college football isn’t as easy to spot but it definitely does occur. Ever since the creation of BCS Cartel, Division 1-A college football has become more about money and revenue and less about the fairness and equal competition expected by football fans. In an article written by Mark L. Shurtleff, he says, “In a letter to the Department of Justice, 21 economists called the BCS a "mathematically dubious rating system," that shields major-conference schools from competition. It systematically denies thousands of athletes a fair chance to prove themselves the "Best in the Nation."” If you think about it and look at the past few years then you would realize that what Mark is saying is accurate and true. The BCS gives unfair competitive advantage to teams in six elite Automatic Qualifying (AQ) Conferences so they can get richer at the expense of the rest. Since 1998, the non-AQ teams have been allowed to play only seven times in the 114 slots open in the 57 BCS Bowl games receiving only 14 percent of the $1 billion payout. University of Florida President Bernie Machen said in the article, "When I was at Utah, our athletics budget was around $20 to $22 million per year. Our budget here is $85.5 million . . . and the major difference is the bowl revenue and TV revenue . . . but all SEC schools got the same amount of money that we got. And Utah could beat a lot of SEC schools. That's the unfairness." The BCS and the way its setup is demoralizing the sport. In the 2010 season, 10th-ranked Boise State (one loss) from the non-AQ Western Athletic Conference was denied a BCS Bowl while three two-loss AQ teams got to play and score millions of dollars. Another example is in 2008, undefeated Utah of the non-AQ Mountain West Conference was denied a shot at the championship because the cabal required AQ one-loss teams to play each other. If these don’t strike you as unfair, then nothing will.

 

     Another criteria in which I could support my evaluation is that it hurts the sport. Teams that have hard divisions are discouraged to play at their best because of how tough their division is and knowing that they don't have a big chance of making it to the playoffs. For example, In the NFC North division the Minnesota Vikings might be discouraged because in their division the Green Bay Packers are undefeated, the Chicago Bears are 7-4 and so are the Detroit Lions. Knowing that, they will start to slack off and lack the motivation to win and perform at their best with those odds against them. Same thing also occurs with teams that are good and have a weak division. If their division isn't really that good and the team has no competition in that division, then the team will also begin to not perform at their highest level because of the fact that they already know they secured a spot in the playoffs with their weak division. An example would be in the NFC West division. The division consists of the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Sehawks, Arizona Cardinals, and St. Louis rams. The San Francisco 49ers currently have a record of 9-2. The closest team to them 49ers in the division is the Seattle Sehawks with a record of 4-7. As a result of the weak division, the 49ers don't have to worry about not making it to the playoffs. They will then begin to bench their best players to save them for the playoffs which takes the competition out of the games that fans are expected to see when they watch the games.

 

 

WORK CITED:

 http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/2011/10/01/20111001con-bcs-shurtleff.html

http://www.nfl.com/standings 

 

     

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.