The Big News this week is that the charlatans that run the sport formerly known as college football has a handshake deal with ESPN to double the number of teams only two years after tripling it. Yes, your school’s program can join the playoff after winning 8 games so long as they can lock down the #22 seed. I’m only a casual observer to Bill Connelly’s work, but he compiled a nine-item checklist about how sports fall from grace. They are:
- Don’t take your core fans for granted.
- Don’t change too much at once.
- Keep your product where your audience can see it.
- Keep the participants (as) healthy (as possible).
- Don’t make your title race too hard to follow.
- Fans hate fights over money.
- Too much inequality sucks (or at least, it doesn’t help).
- You don’t have as much control over everything as you think.
- Understand your roots.
While the leaders of the Saturday version of football have
clearly lost the plot, the owners and players are also heading toward a lockout. Some of the things that may come out of those discussions is whether or not to update the baseball’s postseason. Baseball’s changes to its postseason have been on a more modest timeline. Changes to the playoff structure have occurred about every 15-20 years or so (pandemic and work stoppage season workarounds aside). However as recent as 2022, the single Wild Card Game in each league was shelved for a three-game series along with a third Wild Card added. So by MLB historic expansion rate, their next change should be in the late 2030s. I mean, that’s not the same as increasing your playoff field by 600% in three years, but it’s quicker than usual.
Well, I’m 300 words into this and I haven’t asked your opinion. How many MLB playoff teams is too many? I always felt that the NFL’s 12 teams out of 32 was their perfect format, but that’s too many for my taste for baseball. I think 8 is fine if you’re going to only have a month-long tournament with only best-of-7 maximum per series. If Baseball wanted to have a 6-team round robin with 30 games, then an eleven game World Series, I would be down for 14 teams. But I’m also the outlier here. You all tell me.
