SHOULD NFL GO BACK TO SIX DIVISIONS?

In a SportingNews.com item that was slapped together while distracted by television coverage of the election results carefully constructed on a syllable-by-syllable basis, I made the case for getting rid of the current NFL standings format and reverting to three divisions per conference. The reason? By ensuring that one out of every four teams will make the playoffs and host at least one postseason game, there’s a chance that mediocre teams will get undeserved advantages in January. The full item is right here. Read it and then come back for the rest. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.) There’s another reason for scrapping the current system, which I frankly didn’t think of while focusing so intently on the voting numbers the structure and tone of my SportingNews.com column. Under the current system, every team from one division plays every team from two other divisions, every year. While it creates a strong sense of balanced competition for the teams who are competing for the guaranteed spot that comes with winning a given division, it can be horribly unfair when it’s time to compare teams from different divisions for wild-card berths or bye weeks. This year, for example, the teams of the AFC East play the teams of the AFC West and the teams of the NFC West. That’s eight games against a collection of generally weak teams; two of the eight are 4-4 or better, six are 2-6 or worse. Meanwhile, the teams of the AFC North play this year the teams of the NFC East and the teams of the AFC South. In the NFC East, every team is above .500. In the AFC South, three of four teams made the playoffs last season -- and one of them is 8-0. We also wouldn’t be opposed to an even more radical adjustment, such as reducing the field to two eight-team divisions. The league could then scrap the home-and-home thing (which arose in the days when there weren’t enough teams to fill out a full-season dance card), and adopt the college approach of playing every team in your own division each year, at home one season and on the road the next. That would leave nine games to be played against other teams (eleven if/when the season is expanded to 18). Since we’re way off on a tangent now, we’d split those extra games evenly between the other division in the conference and the teams of one of the divisions in the other conference, with the specific teams to be played derived from a formula based not simply on the prior season’s outcome, but based on the average won-loss records of all teams over the past five years. And for that one extra game, we’d assign to each team a rival from the other conference, and those two teams would play every year. Think of it. Eagles and Steelers, every year. Redskins and Ravens. Rams and Chiefs. Jets and Giants. Raiders and 49ers. Cowboys and Texans. Let’s take all of this even a step farther. How about four conferences of eight teams each? The playoff seedings would then be determined without regard to the current AFC/NFC format, with the winner of each conference securing one of the top four seeds and the next eight teams awarded on an at-large basis. Then, a normal playoff tree would emerge, and if in the end two teams from the same conference meet in the Super Bowl, so be it. Back to the original point, if I can remember what it was. While having eight four-team divisions makes for an organized and impressive overall structure, there are serious problems with it, which can best be addressed by scrapping the current approach and getting creative. That said, there’s a fine line between thinking outside the box and just plain kooky talk. Let us know which category you think we’re in.