By STEVE KING
I like the NCAA’s recent decision that, in essence, eliminates completely, or at least minimizes, divisions within football conferences and lets those conferences use whatever method they choose to pick the two best teams to play in their title game.
Random ThrowBack Tweet from our friends @VintageBrowns
Man, we were all young once. #Browns pic.twitter.com/8MwiKNuJyq
— Vintage Browns (@VintageBrowns) May 21, 2022
In the Big Ten, for instance, the top-heavy East Division teams would likely meet in the championship game most every year while the much weaker West Division gets shut out. As it stands now, teams in the East that are considerably better than teams from the West have to stand by while the West champion plays the East champion. You might now see Ohio State-Michigan, Ohio State-Penn State, Michigan-Penn State title games.
All pro and college sports should be that way, including the NFL. The league already does a great job, but there is room for improvement. For instance, the NFC East has been bad for several years. Who wants to see its first-place finisher in the playoffs when more worthy teams from the three other divisions in the NFC get shut out? That’s right, no one.
In 1985, in possibly the AFC Central’s weakest season, the Browns won the title with just an 8-8 record while the Denver Broncos, who were 11-5, missed out on the playoffs altogether because they did not win the AFC West and they also lost out on tie-breakers to the New York Jets and New England Patriots for the conference’s two wild-card spots.
Two seasons before that, it was the opposite, with the Broncos going to the AFC playoffs at the expense of the Browns. The Browns, Broncos and Seattle Seahawks all finished 9-7. The Broncos and Seahawks grabbed the conference’s two wild-card spots on tie-breakers even though Denver had been outscored on the season by 25 points. The Browns outscored their foes by 14 points, and Seattle outscored its foes by just six.
Way back in 1967 in one of the final seasons of the old NFL before its merger with the AFL in 1970, the Browns (9-5), Dallas Cowboys (9-5) and Green Bay Packers (9-4-1) all won division titles while the Baltimore Colts finished 11-1-2 and missed the playoffs after tying Los Angeles for first place in the West and but losing the division title on tie-breakers. There were no wild-card playoff berths then.
The playoffs — the post-season tournament — needs to have the best teams. Nothing, especially some silly division alignment, should keep that from happening.
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