In honor of the World Cup...a crazy idea for the NFL to implement!

[TTD71]

OK...its Friday PM...I have 3 hours to kill before the weekend and I just finished listening to the Costa Rica - Italy match on the radio...so let's speculate and waste some time!!!!

I would love to see the NFL switch up the schedule and playoffs in a new way entirely.

1) Keep the existing division structure of 4 team divisions, but re-organize along geographical lines and eliminate useless conference designations:

Pacific Coastal:
Seattle / San Francisco / Oakland / San Diego (Los Angeles)

Desert Western:
Arizona / Denver / Houston / Dallas

Upper Midwest:
Green Bay / Minnesota / Chicago / Detroit

Central Midwest:
Kansas City / St. Louis / Indianapolis / Cincinnati

Eastern Midwest:
Cleveland / Pittsburgh / Buffalo / Baltimore

Gulf Coastal:
New Orleans / Jacksonville (Birmingham) / Tampa Bay / Miami

S. Atlantic Coastal:
Atlanta / Carolina / Tennessee / Washington

N. Atlantic Coastal:
New England (Boston) / New York Jets / New York Giants / Philadelphia

*(In addition to this, I would start an 8-team developmental league that would serve as a place for both players who do not want to go to college as well as veterans looking to stay in the mix for roster spots...each team would get players from a separate division, kind of like a place where you stash your practice squad players; but instead of only playing for one team, they would be in the minor leagues with call-up options to their parent club if a roster spot or performance warranted it. This league would have 4 games a week during the 14 week regular season and would play on Wednesdays and Thursdays during the regular season - the NFL network would televise all games and the Thursday night NFL games would disappear to make scheduling the real NFL easier and more balanced...)

2) Play a 14 game regular season. (Games would be 6 divisional - home and home round robin - and then 4 home and 4 away games against teams from other divisions on rotational basis)...if the regular season started the last week of August instead of after Labor Day, you would wrap up the regular season on Thanksgiving week...then take a week off before moving to the Group Stage.

*(This would require another change to the existing NFL...NO MORE OVERTIME UNTIL THE KNOCKOUT ROUND....all regular season games could end in a draw; but playoffs would require an OT period under the current OT rules, followed by the adoption of the college OT rules for multiple OTs in the playoffs, with the exception being that each team's possessions would start at the 35 instead of the 20.)

3) Have the playoffs form with all 32 teams seeded into groups - with the top records getting the "favorable" draws along the line of current World Cup groups...seeded by record and tie-breakers after the 14 games, the division winners and runners up would get 2 home and 1 away game in the round robin, but the seedings would separate them so that division teams would not face off in the round robin.

4) Have a 3-game, 3-week round robin group stage...this gives the league new "playoff" games without extending the regular season more than a single game - all teams in this scenario would play 17 games (14 'regular season' and 3 'group stage')...the incentive to win games would be the opportunity to host one extra home game of the 3 in the round-robin.

5) Re-seed for the knock-out round - Group winners host the round of 16 games and the best records among the final 8 hosts the Quarters; after that, Semis and Final happen in rotating neutral sites with season ticket holders having the right of bidding on tickets first with each team getting 1/3 of the seats for sale...

6) Playoffs = Sweet 16 (Group winners host), Quarterfinals (Top 4 records of the final 8 host), Semifinals (neutral site), Super Bowl (neutral site)

To play nice with college football playoffs, the NFL playoffs could stagger around the holidays (round robin games in December, playoff rounds in January) and finish up in first weekend in February like they already do anyway...

Owners get more games (17 instead of 16, all teams would host a minimum of 1 "playoff game" every year) and more playoff teams (EVERYONE to some extent) without screwing up the competitive balance of the regular season or the playoffs - having one team per conference get a bye week is a HORRIBLE IDEA!!!

Regular season and divisional games remain, but become MORE important for seedings and group play assignments...plus some divisions remain intact while others offer some very intriguing geographical rivalries instead of forced fits like St. Louis in the West and Dallas in the East while both teams reside in the Central time zone!

Players don't have to accept an 18-game regular season...and fans don't have to see the record books heinously distorted; although by having 17 games a year instead of 16, its a safe bet that ALL records would eventually fall - which is why new metrics would be needed like all-time yards PER GAME rushing, receiving, passing, etc...

[TTD71]

Well....awkward....that only took 45 minutes....and I still have over 2 hours to kill...LOL!

I think it would be pretty entertaining every year, and imagine how much more exciting the playoffs last year would have been if the semifinals had Seattle-Denver and San Francisco-New England followed by a season ending on the kind of play that Sherman made against Crabtree and Kaepernick instead of a route of the Broncos???!!!???

At a minimum, it would allow every NFL city, no matter how excremental the team is during the year to have hope for the month of December, even if it were only for a couple extra weeks....works wonders for baseball to keep people interested in their playoff chases when they would long ago have given up in years past...

[Jr.]

That's a pretty cool idea. I don't think it would ever happen, but very well thought out

[kehlis]

Useless conference designations according to who?

Not sure you can say that and then in the same post designate people to useless regional divisions. It's literally the same exact thing.