[dirk digler]

I hadn't thought about this but with 17 games that creates an advantage for half the league who will get more home games.


https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2020/2/20/21145464/nfl-cba-new-scheduling-proposal-pros-con

Pro: This Fixes a Loophole ...

Here’s my favorite thing about the new proposal: If this goes into effect, no NFL team can receive a bye over a team with a better record ever again.

In 2018, the Patriots went 11-5 and received a no. 2 seed over the 12-4 Chargers. That’s because the top four seeds in a conference are reserved for division winners, and the Chargers finished behind the 13-3 Chiefs in the AFC West. That’s how the second-best team in the AFC got the no. 5 seed. Those Chargers lost in the divisional round to a rested Pats team that was playing at home despite having an inferior record.

Under the new system, this couldn’t happen. While it was possible for a team without the second-best record in a conference to get the no. 2 seed, it’s impossible for a team without a conference’s best record to get the no. 1 seed. From now on, there would be more equity with regard to byes.

Of course, under this new format, the 2018 Chargers still would not have gotten a no. 2 seed—they’d still have been the no. 5 seed, and still likely would’ve had to spend the playoffs on the road. But at least they wouldn’t have gotten screwed out of a bye.


Con: … While Adding an Even Bigger Loophole

MLB teams play 162 games. NBA and NHL teams play 82 games. Premier League teams play 38 games. These schedules may seem unrelated, but they share one commonality: They feature an even number of games.
This is true of basically every pro sports league in existence. Name one!

It’s the case everywhere from Italy’s Lega Basket Serie A (30) to the NBA’s G League (50) to the East Coast Hockey League (72) to the Cape Cod Baseball League (44). There’s a good reason for this: The most inviolable rule of sports schedule-making is ensuring that all teams play an equal number of home and road games, and to have an equal number of home and road games, a team must play an even number of games. (Some college football conferences, like the Big Ten, play nine conference games. But would you expect anything else from a league called the Big Ten that actually has 14 teams?)

The NFL is going to break this rule. There is no way that teams can play an equal number of home and road games if their schedule is 17 games long. There must be nine of one and eight of another. And honestly, that’s a huge deal. If the MLB season was 161 games long—with some teams having 81 home games and others having 80—it would be unfair, but also a drop in a bucket. The NFL season is compact, and any difference between teams’ schedules has an outsize impact. If this proposal gets passed, half of NFL teams will play 12 percent more home games than the other half!

NFL owners seem to view this as an inventory problem. If the league adopts a 17-game regular season with three preseason games, they want to ensure that the teams with eight home games during the regular season will have two home games during the preseason for a grand total of 10 home dates. That’s because NFL owners charge the same price for meaningless preseason tickets as they do for regular-season tickets by forcing fans to buy preseason tickets as part of season-ticket packages.

However, the bigger problem here seems to be that the NFL is creating a competitive disadvantage for half the teams in the league. My favorite thing about this proposal is that it half-fixes a loophole that happens once in a blue moon. Yet it also introduces a new loophole that would affect every team every season. That doesn’t sound like a great proposal.