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NFL owners decide two more playoff teams too many

PHILADELPHIA -- In the final analysis, two extra months didn't change a thing regarding the debate over whether to add two extra teams to the NFL's playoff field.

Team owners in March were dubious about the push to expand the playoffs to 14 teams, and they're still opposed to the idea in May. With no chance of its passage by a three-fourths vote of league owners, the sponsoring Kansas City Chiefs withdrew their proposal without it even being put to a vote Wednesday, the second and final day of the NFL's spring meeting. The proposal had been tabled in favor of further study at the league's annual meeting in March.

"If anything, since March more people have come to realize it's a bad idea," said Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney, one of the league's most influential owners. "We're the best sport, so why should we follow hockey and other sports that have made their own regular season [less meaningful]?

"Every game in the National Football League is meaningful. We're the No. 1 sport, and as one of the [TV] networks said, 'If it ain't broke, why fix it?' The [owners] are definitely against doing anything for this year. I can say that for sure. But it's not settled in the future."

The death of the drive for a 14-team playoff field came as no surprise to anyone here Wednesday, given that the league's competition committee voted 8-0 against the measure two weeks ago in a conference call, virtually assuring its defeat. Still, after generating surprising support among the league's head coaches in March in Phoenix, some NFL sources had suggested that the movement to add two teams to the playoffs for 2003 wasn't entirely hopeless.

Edwards' plea SI.com's Don Banks PHILADELPHIA -- New York Jets head coach Herman Edwards -- one of the NFL's three black head coaches -- delivered a challenge of sorts to the league's assistant coaching ranks on Wednesday. Speaking at the annual coaching symposium that is conducted concurrent with the league's two-day spring owners meeting, Edwards made the case that every assistant coach who is invited to interview for a head coaching job should do so, no matter who is considered the front-runner for the vacancy. FULL STORY

"To me, it says some times people don't have good information," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue -- an opponent of the idea -- said of the proposal's chances. "All we know is that we have one season under our belt and it was premature to make any decision."

One season refers to the sum of the NFL's experience with the eight division realignment and new scheduling format that was instituted before the 2002 season. As part of that change, the league had made a commitment to not tinker with the playoff field or scheduling for at least two seasons. Wednesday's dismissal of the 14-team playoff field push reaffirms that timetable.

"We did what we were asked to do at the meeting in March, which was to go back and re-examine the whole issue from a competitive standpoint with all the statistical analysis," said Tampa Bay general manager Rich McKay, the co-chairman of the league's competition committee. "But one year into it, we still haven't seen anything bad come out of this format.

"Even when we went back and looked to see if there were a lot of obvious playoff caliber teams excluded from the postseason before the eight-division realignment, once we analyzed the numbers, the answer in our opinion was no. So it didn't make any sense to act at this time."

Judging from Tagliabue's tone this week, the league won't necessarily be prepared to act on increasing the size of the playoff field next year at this time, either, after two years of results are in from the new divisional realignment. The best bet? The issue will be tied into the league's next TV contract, which is set to expire after the 2005 season.

"It's hard to say on a basis of two seasons that you learned something that you didn't learn in the past 32 [seasons]," said Tagliabue, who Tuesday suggested that even taking the time to vote on the playoff-field proposal this week would be merely "going through the motions."

"Can we sit here and say once we get a second season under our belt we're going to blow up some balloons and say we've got some big new conclusion? I don't know. It may take two, three, four, five years, who knows? Until you see something different, you don't know what you're looking at. ... There's no urgency in terms of any immediate need to try and fix something that's not broken, and is the best in sports."

McKay acknowledged that the biggest drawback to the 14-team field in many people's minds remains the huge advantage it would give to each conference's top-seeded team, which would be the only two teams to receive a first-round bye in such a playoff format. Seeds two through seven would all face having to win three games to get to the Super Bowl.

"There's no question that it creates a bigger advantage," McKay said. "Now, whether that advantage is too big, that's in the eyes of the beholder. One thing we did look at was the results of the first and second seeds over time, and we found them to be very comparable in their success rates.

"So we know that would change with a system where there was only one first-round bye. Are there negatives to that? Yes, there are negatives. Are they overwhelming? No, I wouldn't say that, but they are such where you are definitely giving an advantage to the first seed."

In March, Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt was open about his desire to see the team one day adopt a 16-team playoff field, in order to get around the problem of handing the two top seeds such a competitive advantage. Hunt sees the move to a 14-team field as an incremental step on the way to qualifying half the league's teams for the playoffs.

"Over my dead body," said Rooney, when asked if the league could some day soon adopt a 16-team format. "That's not something we need."

While the league's head coaches are said to be strongly in favor of more teams in the playoffs, at least according to the results of a straw poll that was taken at the March meeting, McKay cautioned that the vast majority of the league isn't ready to discuss a 16-team field. Not by a long shot.

"I think 16 would be a quantum leap, where you're changing the entire outlook of the NFL," McKay said. "At that point, half the teams are now playoff teams. I don't see any real owner sentiment for 16 at all. It's still just talk and just early talk.

"It addresses the bye issue, but then again it puts the No. 8 seed playing the No. 1 seed in Week 1 of the playoffs. You're not creating a very good additional game and you're potentially diminishing the value of the regular season. And that's the No. 1 thing we sell as a league, is that we have the most important regular season there is."

It took two extra months, but the NFL has made up its mind. For now, two extra playoff teams are two too many.

Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

 

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