Poll: Should US leagues use a European league system?

[PokerFink]

TSC,

I think your NFL idea of getting rid of the playoffs and including a 'Champions League' would work MUCH better in the MLB. Consider:

1. The problem of playing extra games doesn't matter as much for MLB teams.
2. The MLB playoffs are an enormous crapshoot (see: 2006 Cardinals). There is less variance in football.
3. Travel isn't much of an issue because each league is already coast to coast.

If you eliminate the MLB playoffs, it would be easy to stretch the 162 game season into October and include a 'Champions League' for the top 16 teams or whatever from the previous year in the extra days. The non-CL teams would get some extra rest, which is a small advantage, but not nearly the advantage it is in football.

[bernie]

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2. The MLB playoffs are an enormous crapshoot (see: 2006 Cardinals). There is less variance in football.


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Yknow, I've never understood this. Football is like a poker tourney. One bad day and you could be done for the year, especially in the playoffs. With MLB, there's more games to compensate for a single bad game which makes it more likely that deserving teams make the postseason. Wouldn't that make football more variance?


b

[TheRover]

each baseball game is so high variance and each NFL game so relatively low that the extra games don't really make up for it in the postseason.

[PokerFink]

Rover is correct.

For evidence, look at football standings vs baseball standings. The best football teams routinely go 13-3 (.812) or 14-2 (.875). The best baseball teams go maybe 102-60 (.629). To go .875 a baseball team would be 142-20.

[TheRover]

or look at the moneylines for Colts/Raiders compared to Yanks/Royals.

[maxpower72]

Where this system could work and would be so much better than the idiocy we deal with now known as the BCS is college football. 20 or so top teams play in the the top league, top eight from the top league go into a playoff the others play in relegation bowls

[mosdef]

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Rover is correct.

For evidence, look at football standings vs baseball standings. The best football teams routinely go 13-3 (.812) or 14-2 (.875). The best baseball teams go maybe 102-60 (.629). To go .875 a baseball team would be 142-20.

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This isn't very strong evidence. For starters, you can't compare the winning percentages of the best teams directly because baseball teams have 10 times as many game and are far more likely to have a winning percentage close to their "true" winning percentage. For example, the Brewers are a .750 team over their last 16. Those lofty winning percentages are attainable, even in baseball, over small sample spaces.