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I also wanted to delve more into the "worthy champion" moniker. Generally, when we communicate about individual games, we use a point spread. As in "the Cowboys are 3-point favorites to beat Tampa Bay tonight."
That translates to a 60 percent chance of winning the game (overcoming the built-in 55 percent chance for home teams). Most playoff games see 0-7 point spreads. Seven points gets you to about 72 percent.
What that means is that weaker teams beat stronger teams a significant percentage of the time. A lot of games turn on one play - a fumble at the wrong time (Tyler, what were you thinking?), a missed tackle, a play-call where the defense shifted perfectly.
So granting more teams playoff spots means a higher likelihood that the best teams don't even reach the Super Bowl. But shorter playoffs leaves a lot of potential revenue on the table, and generally, fans like playoffs. The other sports handle this by having playoff series. Best-of-seven, that 60% edge becomes a lot higher. That is not practical in football.
I don't know what the ideal playoff size is for determining an NFL champion, but the long recovery time and brain-heavy individual game prep places it in opposition to whatever practical system we could come up with. No solution could possibly be ideal (it's even worse in college football, with the shorter regular season and schedule issues and sheer size of the team pool). I just think going from 12/32 to 14/32 invitations placed it significantly more out of balance.
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