a little diddy from this morning's sf chronicle:
01-19) 16:38 PST -- Wade Phillips, coach of the Dallas Cryboys (Cowboys? Whatever) has focused public attention on the fundamental flaw in the NFL's playoff system: Games.
After the Cryboys lost to the Giants last week, Phillips concluded that the better team lost. He said so publicly, for the benefit of those of us who don't know much about football and tend to judge teams by misleading stats, like "wins."
When you play games, stuff happens. Flukey plays, strange calls, injuries, moments of greatness, twists of fate. Those things detract from the purity of the sport.
Phillips is right. We need an entirely new system.
Something like this: After the regular season, you get groups of writers, coaches, barbers, whatever, to vote in various polls. Each group is chosen for its unique agenda, bias, regional favoritism and knowledge gaps. You toss all the polls into a computer, kind of like the way sausage is made.
In a gala ceremony we'll call Operation Hairball, the computer spits out the names of the two "best" teams, which then play in the Super Bowl. That game should be eliminated, too, because the better team almost always loses, but without the Super Bowl, the alcohol and avocado industries would collapse. It's a trade-off.
All the other teams would play one another in a bunch of random, meaning-free "bowl" games.
This season, though, we know which team is No. 1: The Cryboys.