What North America can learn from Europe: Playoff Edition

  Hawks Report will begin to suggest ideas to improve American Sports based off of the English Premier League. There is an understandable difference in the culture of the two countries towards sports. But the effort will be made to show that American Sports can be like English Soccer.

  Let's start by looking at the history of playoffs in both countries. Baseball's first playoff in the Major Leagues was a series between the winner of the National League and the American Association in the 1880s and the current World Series traces its roots back to 1903. Both series were contested between the regular season champions of each league without either league holding a playoff to determine their representative. The only time baseball used a playoff is when two teams ended the season with the same record. 1969 was the first season that each league held its own best of 5 game series to determine the world series participants. The reason for the playoff was that each league had two divisions and the teams played unbalanced schedules so it made sense for their to be a playoff. The Stanley Cup has had playoffs since 1920 to determine league champions. The season was divided into two halves and the teams that one each half would  go to the playoff, unless if one team won each half they would automatically become champions of the league. That playoff style was quickly abandoned for a style in which the top two teams faced off in a two game aggregate scoring series. The winner of the NHL would go on to a playoff with the winners of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association and Western Canada Hockey League until 1926. When the two other leagues folded the NHL took sole possession of the Cup and they adopted an expanded playoff system. The NFL did not use playoffs for the first decade of existence, they simply handed the championship to the team with the best winning percentage of games that did not end in a tie. In 1933, the NFL adopted a playoff system to adapt to their two division system. The NBA has had a playoff has had a playoff since its inception and has increased the amount teams fittingly with expansion.

  Meanwhile in England (our primary example), playoffs have never been used to determine the league champions but have been used to determine which teams get promoted or relegated. Typically the bottoms teams of a higher division would enter into a playoff with top teams of the lower division to see who would be allowed to compete in the top flight the next season. Most countries have domestic knockout competitions but the tournament has nothing to do with who is awarded the league championship.  Using the English Football League system. Hawks Report has the following suggestions for how each of the four major north american sports should decide their championships.

NFL
  The NFL is probably the closest to having a meaningful regular season. With only 12 out of 32 teams, teams cannot coast through the regular season like they can in the NBA and NHL and expect to make the playoffs. Of all the leagues, the changes that Hawks Report proposes are the least drastic and here they are:

Would Rogers have been
on the bench under
Hawks Report Rules?

  1. Remove the wildcard, by adding extra teams to the playoffs you increase the chances that the team that proved themselves to be the best during the regular season will not come home as champions.At the same time, you make the regular season that much more important, the NFL has a huge problem with teams sitting their star players during the last week of the season and by having those games mean more, star players won't sit out.
  2. Have the division champion decided by division record. By doing this, teams will not be able to complain about certain teams playing an easier schedule. This would not make the other 10 games in the regular season worth nothing because they will be used to seed the division champions for the playoffs. If there would be a tie within teams of the same division and they split their head to head series there would be a playoff game to decide who would make the playoffs.

NBA/NHL
  Considering each league pretty much as the same playoff system currently, Hawks Report has decided to give them the same advice. Since each team has 30 teams are aligned into 2 conferences that have 31 divisions, the playoff system would be a little strange. Each team would play a majority of their games against teams against their division along with games against other opponents just to make sure fans don't get bored of seeing the same teams. (subnote: the NHL is currently looking at a 4 conference system)
  1. The winner of each division would automatically make the playoffs(decided by division record) and like the NFL, if two teams in the division finished with a tied record there would be a playoff. The difference would be that there would be a best of 3 series to determine the division champion.
  2. The division champion with the best overall regular season record would have a bye in the first round while the other division winners play a best of 3 series to determine who would play in the conference finals. The conference finals and league finals would each be best of 7 occasions.


MLB

Boooooooooooo!!!!!

  Baseball needs to reverse its decision on moving the Houston Astros to the AL in order for this proposal to work because we are taking inter-league play out of baseball. By doing this, baseball will be taken back to the glory days when people actually cared about the sport. The NL would be split into two divisions of 8 teams while the AL would be 2 of 7, that does mean that it will be easier to make it out of the AL than the NL but they would be two separate leagues and allowed to have different policies. Everyone in the league would play the same exact amount of games against the other division as well as among the division. This creates a system in which no one can bitch about their schedule being tougher than someone else's. The majority of a teams game would be against their own division. The overall record will be the decider for division champion and each league's two division winners would compete in a 5 game series to decide who advances to the world series. The world series would be a best of 7 occasion with home field being decided by overall winning percentage instead of home field advantage. 


  Hawks Report knows that this would make the regular season worth less to teams that are not in contention to make the playoffs but it would make it that much more meaningful to teams that are in the race. Hawks Report also has a solution to the tanking problem that will be revealed in the next couple days.