I want the games that were played to be more important. You want them to be less important. You want to say that a set of three or four games is more important than 16. I'm the one that says play it on the field. You're leaving it to chance and small sample sizes.

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Fire Phil Emery

I like the fact that this bothers you, Irish Boy. I really do. Small shit bothers me too but not the NFL playoffs.

Hey, guess what: you need games to do all that. Lots of games, if you're going to do it with any accuracy whatsoever. Once again: I'm the one saying we should look more closely at the large group of games. You guys are the ones saying that it's the small sample size that matters. I'll just keep repeating this until it sinks in. I want the games to be important. All the games.

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Fire Phil Emery

No, thats wrong. The Bears were 11 seconds away from an extra win that would have put them in the playoffs- Important. Had the Bears shown up for the 2nd half in Houston, they would have been in the playoffs- Important. The Raiders traveled cross country and beat the Bucaneers to knock them out- important.

Every game is important in the regular season. There are 6 teams from each conference that make the playoff. Every NFL team starts the season with that goal. They're all important and this is one of the dumbest POVs I have ever heard of.

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NHL and NBA playoffs suck. Way too many teams. Half the teams make it. That's wrong.

MLB and NFL have the perfect amount of teams.

Philadephia sucked against Washington week 16- not important, I guess.

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Fire Phil Emery

I bet the Nos/Riles mult is in heaven right now watching his two favorite posters IB and FC going at it.....

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Why is six the magic number for playoff teams. Why not four? Why not 8? You and Beardown need to explain why six is the perfect number. Without that, it's just an assumption. Most of it is just focal point bias. It currently is six teams, so we say that six makes sense. If it was currently 8 teams, or had been for 2 decades, then you guys would be arguing about how 8 teams from each conference makes sense. You need something stronger than that.

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Fire Phil Emery

Here's a simple question: forget for a second whether it would be a good idea or not. Would the "best team" win a 32 team tournament in the NFL.

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Fire Phil Emery

Minnesota put the ball on the turf 7 or 8 times against the Falcons at home. They needed a last second FG at home to beat a Giants team who played backups for over half the game. They got to beat up on the pathetic Lions twice. Yeah, thats a 1/4 of the games they played this season, fair enough sample size? Beating an 0-16 team twice (indoors), crapping the bed for 7+ quarters at home in a win-and-you're-in situation, and thats your 4th best team in the NFC?

Thats precisely why they play the playoffs. Nobody says you have to watch them or enjoy them, but to suggest that they are diminished because its 'one game' is preposterous.

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But this is when Philadelphia "needed it" and "the best teams rise to the top" and all the other cliches. So why not then? Doesn't the best team always win when they need to? Philly is supposedly the best team in the NFC, right?

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Fire Phil Emery

Yes. If you had an 8,12,16 or 32 team tourney, the one that comes out is the best team.

Solved. Let's talk about strippers and hookers.

Then why not just do that?

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Fire Phil Emery

Cuz you should always avoid putting teams under .500 in the playoffs. The NFL has never had a 7-9 team make the playoffs. 8-8 has been the lowest. That's why they have the perfect system.

WHY!?!? If the best team will win, then it doesn't matter if we let the Lions into the playoffs along with everyone else. Why not just include everyone to be safe.

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Fire Phil Emery

Like I said, we can play this game all day. I'm never gonna convince you.

I go nuts thinking about death and if there is an after life. That must drive you insane as well, Irish Boy.

IB Can you define good team and give me a few examples. Even the good teams have bad games and bad teams have good games. Those count in the end.

Bears should have a good defense. I don't think they do. Their offense played better than I thought they were capable of. I thought their record would be 4 -12 they went 9-7, are they a good team? How could they get into the playoffs? I don't really understand your argument.

IB you sound as if you are faulting the "mediocre" teams that beat the "better" teams and giving better teams a pass because they should be better, but they had a "bad day" (powter). that is a mind splittingly bad argument. if the giants were better than philly why didn't they beat them? if the panthers were better, or the falcons were better, than the cardinals--why did the cardinals beat them?

did jake delhomme really deserve to get to the superbowl this year? even if he didn't turn the ball over 6 times against a "bad team"? did eli manning, after his horrific performance against the eagles D, deserve to play in the NFC championship any more than mcnabb, who was passable, and in some ways, pretty damn good?

that's why you play the games--yes, the cliche, loud and proud. that's what sports is about. greatness is achieved through more than just building pretty stats and playing sound fundamentals. it is about rising to the occasion and sometimes, snatching victory from the claws of defeat.

that is a measurement of greatness. if the cardinals win it all, you can take nothing away from the fact that they played better than the "best" teams--and if that is the case, the interpretation of what "best" is can be altered. best can mean best fundamentals, best stats, it can also mean best team on the field that day, regardless. who wanted it more, etc. those cliches are there for a reason. it's not a media-created thing. it's a sports-created thing.

the colts were a better team than the jets, but the jets beat them, and gave us the merge of the AFL and NFL. sounds like in your mind, that should have never happened. and it's one of the most dramatic stories in sports history.

you say the cardinals don't deserve to be hosting the NFC championship, but when the bears were in their "race for the divison", considered a marginal team by most people (even bears fans) you were asking the question "which team scares you?" and though you (rightly) said it was doubtful to make the playoffs, you weren't counting them completely out--you were still trying to come up with scenarios in which the bears could make the playoffs (i'm not talking about your tongue-and-cheek road to the superbowl thread).

so you would be ok with the bears, a mediocre team, making the playoffs, and even hosting the NFC championship? well, i wouldn't blame you entirely since you are a fan. but what you're saying is an insult to cardinals fans (yes there are *some* out there) when you say they don't deserve to be where they are. i'm sure most panther fans are more pissed off that their "great" team couldn't handle the "mediocre" cardinals. but i'm sure they're giving the cardinals credit. and brandon jacobs, while an athlete and thus may be not very bright, even gave the eagles credit after they beat the giants.

i don't think anyone'll miss you not watching the rest of the games, though.

Because it happens all the time. Worse teams beat better teams every single week in the NFL. When the Browns beat the Giants in the middle of the year, we didn't think "oh, they must be the better team", because if you define "better" only like that, then you'll end up with complete circularity. Every team will be better than every other team, because there's a victory chain in there somewhere (unless, of course, you're the 2008 Lions)



Maybe so, but this is what happens when you let in lesser quality teams. Sometimes they win. If we expanded the playoffs to 32 teams, I guarantee you that there'd be some bad teams beating good teams every once in a while. You can throw up your hands and say, "oh, they must be the better team after all", but why ignore 16 weeks worth of evidence because of the circumstances and coincidences of one game? This is, after all, why every other sport plays their playoffs in series- because the best team doesn't always win one game.



I think people are confounding arguments of mine here, so I'm going to try to separate them. I don't think teams should make the playoffs because they have the most stats. I think they should make the playoffs based on who has the most wins, just like everyone else. I just think that the number of teams should be less. People keep saying stuff like "you don't play the games on paper" and "you play the games", and I agree; that's why I want to make the 16 regular season games more important, not less important. Does anyone deny that my plan would make the regular season- the "games"- more important?



If the Cardinals win the Super Bowl this year, God help us, it should put an end to the fallacy once and for all that the Super Bowl winner is somehow the best team in the NFL. Look at it this way. Let's say that there was an extra game after the Super Bowl between the Super Bowl winner- we'll say, the Cardinals- and the Steelers, Titans, Giants, Ravens, or Colts. You had to bet your life on one of those teams. Which one do you choose? Isn't it a no-brainer that you'd have to choose the Cardinals, even though you know, deep down, that you can't be very confident in the pick, even though they were the "best team' and all that?



Occasional upsets are fun and exciting. That's why I'm ambivalent about the Giants winning last year- I think it sucks when a team that played so poorly during the season wins the Super Bowl, but it was exciting the way that the season built up to the Super Bowl with the Patriots. Complete chaos and a total destruction of the meaningfulness of the regular season- the "games- is neither fun nor entertaining in my opinion. It makes me feel like the last 17 weeks were a complete waste of time, we could have accomplished the same thing in five weeks with a giant, randomized tournament.



Yes! This should be the point where you say, oh my God IB, you were all right all along. The Bears could realistically have done the same thing the Cardinals have done- and it would be absolutely laughable to insist that they are one of the best teams in the NFL. After all, the Bears very nearly beat Atlanta on the road- playing them at home would have been much easier- and I don't think Jake Delhomme imploded because he was so intimidated by the Cardinals defense. This could have been the Bears, and think how scary that should be! That doesn't mean I don't want the Bears to be a sucky Super Bowl champion, but it would be a joke to insist they were the "best team" or even one of the best teams in the NFC.



I'm saying I'd want it as a Bears fan, but it would suck as a fan of the NFL. The Bears as a team should not have had a chance to clinch a playoff spot in Week 17. The cutoff should be higher. What's worse, a team should not need a mediocre Bears team to lose in Week 17 to make the playoffs. The cutoff should be higher.



I never said I won't watch the games. I'll just know that, if the NFC wins the Super Bowl, this year's playoffs were a farce. Go Steelers (or Ravens- at least they were 11-5)

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Fire Phil Emery

Ask any fan or NFL player if they would rather be on a team that goes 15-1 four seasons in a row and loses in the playoffs, or a team that goes 9-7 or maybe 8-8 2 or 3 years in a row, but wins the Super Bowl twice.

I'll take the latter 8 days a week. Championships are important to me. If you want to place great importance on regular season wins and stats, call up WR and watch the Colts.

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This is the other thing I don't understand: I'm trying to make the Super Bowl more important by making sure that only the teams that performed the best during the regular season have a shot at winning the championship. Mediocre teams winning the Super Bowl debases the Super Bowl. I want the championship to be more important. That's why I want to limit it to only the teams that have performed the best over the course of the season. Why would you think I was insisting otherwise?

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Fire Phil Emery

More teams in the playoffs = more games, more $, more ratings, more hype, more entertainment. Unless you discover a way for Roger Goodell to replace all that with just a single Conference Championship game, the division system is the way its going to be. The truely great teams need to rise up and play well against these so called mediocre teams. Pittsburgh has, the rest of them did not. So, love it or leave it.

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I still don't understand. What have the Cardinals and Eagles done to show they aren't the best two teams in the NFC at the end of the season?

The Eagles went 2-1 against the "best" team in the NFC and the Cardinals completely outclassed the second best team in the NFC.

The goal of any sport is to be the best at the end of the season.

I think you'd have a much stronger case to make last year with the Giants upsetting the Patriots at the last second in the Super Bowl than you do this year.

The games I saw the past two weeks showed me that the Colts, Titans, Panthers, and Giants were not the best teams in the league.

The regular season champion is largely the team that is most successfully able to beat the bad non-playoff teams with great regularity. 20/32 teams are non-playoff teams. Therefore, a majority of those regular season wins come against teams that aren't considered to be good.

That's why regular season records are misleading. Being able to beat the teams on your schedule, which on average will have nearly 60% non-playoff teams, is not a good indicator of your actual ability. There is more randomness to a regular season record than a post-season record since it's safe to say that any team that makes the playoffs is at least a competent team.

In the playoffs, you remove the clearly bad teams since no team has ever made the playoffs with a losing record, and some of the average teams, and then you play on an even field. The supposed "better" teams even get a home playoff game.

I have more confidence saying that a team that goes 3-0(with the knowledge that they were one of the top 4 in the regular season) or 4-0 is the best team in the league rather than a team that went 13-3 while on average playing 60% of games against non-playoff teams.

I honestly believe that the Cardinals are better than both the Falcons and the Panthers. I honestly believe that the Eagles are better than the Vikings and the Giants. I don't care that they were 9.5-6.5 and another team was 12-4. That 2.5 game gap has been nearly closed by the 2-0 in the playoffs.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!