NFL playoff expansion is put on a back burner

There will be no expansion of the NFL playoff system in the foreseeable future, because owners and coaches decided yesterday during the closing day of the league's spring meetings that the issue needed considerably more study.

No vote was taken in the meeting at the Philadelphia Marriott. The Kansas City Chiefs, who, with the New England Patriots, proposed the move from 12 to 14 teams by adding two more wild-card squads, withdrew their resolution due to lack of support.

"The conclusion was as we anticipated three years ago," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. "We need more information."

Though several NFL executives and coaches said one more year under the 32-team format should add to the chances of expanding the playoffs, Tagliabue indicated it would be more like two or three more years, with eight divisions.

The playoff expansion push actually started when the Houston Texans were voted in as an expansion team in 2000, thus creating the 32-team, eight-division format first used last season. It was accelerated by the Chiefs and Patriots because four 9-7 teams did not make the playoffs in 2002.

The Patriots, who were the defending Super Bowl champions; the Miami Dolphins; the Denver Broncos; and the New Orleans Saints sat at home while Cleveland (also 9-7) and Atlanta (9-6-1) got in. The Chiefs were among three 8-8 teams.

"I don't know what kind of chance we have of getting it done," said Kansas City head coach Dick Vermeil, who believes that some teams that were better than those in the playoffs in 2002 were left out. "Nothing happens quick in the National Football League. It takes time."

Carolina Panthers head coach John Fox added, "I think, right now, it's not going to be in the near future."

Television and radio contracts would have to be altered to change the playoff format, which is a complication, but that also can be solved by waiting because the NFL has only two years remaining on a deal it signed six years ago.

Though Tagliabue wouldn't speculate on league expansion in the next three to four years, two new teams - one relocated to Los Angeles from another city - would eliminate the fear that many owners have about the NFL's becoming like the NBA and NHL by putting half its teams into the postseason and diluting the value of regular-season games.

The commissioner also argued that giving only the top-seeded team in each conference a first-round bye "perhaps creates a very competitive unfairness by having only one bye team."

Vermeil countered, using his Super Bowl team of 1999 as an example, that the teams making the playoffs do so mostly because they have easier schedules. His St. Louis Rams played 11 teams with losing records on the way to winning the title. This year's champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, played eight teams that were below .500.

Eagles head coach Andy Reid refused to comment on the issue, saying: "I don't want to get into all that. I might hurt somebody's feelings."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Football | Playoffs are big hit needing no change

By Mike Bruton

Inquirer Columnist

It was clear from as far back as one wanted to look that the chances of an expanded playoff system for the NFL for the 2003 season were doomed, and they should have been.

Exhibit A, the fact that the NFL is wildly popular just as it exists, is too compelling to overcome.

There are numerous cities with long waiting lists just to get season tickets. NFL television ratings consistently are better than most original or episodic programming in prime time.

Going into the 2002 season, the top 10 most-watched TV programs were all Super Bowls.

Every NFL game counts, unlike in the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, in which there are more than a few yawners as the regular season ebbs along.

A regular-season NFL game has become a social event that is built on plans of parties, public gatherings and other festive trappings.

Even the draft, which may be the most covered non-event in the history of sports, draws a huge television audience.

"At this time, there is no reason to change," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said at this week's owners meeting at the Philadelphia Marriott. "We have the greatest programming in sports."

The Kansas City Chiefs - sitting at home at 8-8 last season - and the New England Patriots - with a tough schedule and a tougher elimination in 2003 because they beat Miami in the season finale to go 9-7 - were the clubs clamoring for more teams in the playoffs.

They have good points.

Teams with easy schedules have tended lately to win the Super Bowl. The St. Louis Rams, in 1999, the Baltimore Ravens in 2000, and the Patriots in 2001 all had failed to make the playoffs the previous year.

And the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the defending champions, played eight teams that were below .500 last season.

"It's a matter of being fair," Kansas City head coach Dick Vermeil said. "The No. 1 criteria for making the playoffs today are how many losing teams on your schedule. For example, Tampa Bay, the world champions, played eight teams with losing records. The Oakland Raiders [the Super Bowl finalists] played three."

Vermeil's point is that the Raiders were physically more beaten up and tired from a long, hard season, while the Bucs were having a lot of tune-up matches.

"My Super Bowl team in 1999," Vermeil went on, "I think we played 11 [losing teams].

"Some teams this year with 9-7 records didn't make it, but schedules they played were tougher" than teams that did make it.

You have to give Vermeil and the few proponents of this postseason expansion credit, even if they are trying to swim upstream against the rapids. Their logic is solid.

Yet the NFL is all about dollars, and the teams are raking them in at a prodigious rate. Not enough owners are willing to jeopardize that, and I don't blame them.

"The NFL is the one sport where it's difficult to make the playoffs," Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said. "One [team in each conference] wouldn't make a huge difference, but it's nice to continue that degree of difficulty. It allows every game of the regular season to be crucial."

The real truth is that the playoffs will never expand until the league expands again, and with the Los Angeles resolution passed, I hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet of baby NFL teams.

The first move to Los Angeles will probably be a relocation from Minnesota, Indianapolis or San Diego. But more than one owner made mention of the fact that the nation's second-biggest television market deserves to have two teams, as it did up until 1994 when the Rams and Raiders fled.

If the league goes up to 34 teams - and that's not out of the realm of possibility, say, four years down the road - the playoffs can be expanded to 16 teams, which solves the unfairness problem of giving the top seed from each conference a bye.

Fourteen teams is an awkward, unwieldy number that would bring up some problems.

"I don't like having one team as a bye," Lurie said, "and it's a sport where it shouldn't be easy to make the playoffs."

Coaches also don't like what 14 teams would do to the television format. They don't want the Saturday tripleheader, which probably would mean some West Coast team would have to play very early unless it was good enough to rate the prime-time third game of the day.

They also don't like the idea of having to play on a Friday after playing the previous Sunday and not having the proper preparation time.

The one thing the coaches can be convinced on is job security. Making the playoffs is often the cut, and more chances to do so would only enhance their ability to stay employed.

Vermeil shrugs that one off.

"All coaches are on the last year of their contracts," he said fatalistically. "That's just the nature of the business, and that's the way it's going to be."

Vermeil also said opponents of playoff expansion might be paranoid about the quality of teams going into the postseason.

The eight-division format, he said, makes that a nonstarter.

"I don't think a 7-9 team will ever make it," he said.

As for 8-8 teams, like his in 2002, Vermeil said that has a precedent in the playoffs. The league didn't fold when the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys made the playoffs with 8-8 records a few years ago.

Paranoia can be healthy when applied properly. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to get you.

But as long as the NFL is signing $18 billion TV contracts and getting even more money from NFL Properties - the league's merchandising arm - and putting up state-of-the-art stadia all over the country (with the help of public funds because cities fear losing their teams), paranoia will remain a blissful state for the 30 owners.

The guys in New England and Kansas City might as well soak up some of that blissful paranoia themselves. It's not going to change until the league gets bigger.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact staff writer Mike Bruton at 215-854-2739 or mbruton@phillynews.com.

[END OF ARTICLE]

Care to comment, FReepers?

foreverfree

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.