This blog post, proposing an NFL consolation game like the World Cup’s, demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of American football. I would have commented at the site, but others commented well enough about why having a consolation game would be a bad idea (one person even pointed out that we used to have one).
To summarize why it’s a bad idea:
- There are too many injuries in football, and no one would want to risk an injury for a game that doesn’t matter.
- The outcome of the NFL playoffs isn’t a stack ranking of teams from best to worst. There is no round-robin or multi-game series’. There is just a winner, and everyone else loses.
- Similar to the last point, if we introduced the concept of a stack ranking (even if it’s 1-4) that in some respects diminishes the value of the Superbowl, which is the game, seperated by two weeks from all other games, determining one winner.
- Numerous people don’t even think it’s a good idea in soccer.
