So I was just watching the Pro Bowl and started wondering, does anyone really care about the conferences and divisions? Am I “supposed” to be rooting for the conference my team is in?
Do they serve any purpose other than to try to create artificial rivalries or to give a “second place” award to the team that wins its conference but loses the Superbowl?
Years ago they were set up to limit traveling long distances to games. A few decades ago it was a big deal to travel across the country and then play a game. The Midwest was then Detroit,Minnesota,
Chicago,and Green Bay.
I root for the …Lions. Then I want our division to do well in the playoffs. I have heard of these things called playoffs. In Detroit the memory fades. But, I even want the Bears to do well when the Lions are eliminated. That is usually the 3rd week of the season.
Ideally the most fair and IMHO best way to determine the winner of any sporting competition is to let all teams play against each other at least once. Even more fair is to let every team play against each other at least twice, with an equal number of home and away games. That way, every team has to prove itself against every other team, and both home and away so there is no home field advantage. There are and were some leagues set up this way (most European soccer leagues, the “Original Six” years of the NHL, English first-class cricket).
Now, in the NFL that’s just not possible. There are 32 teams in the league, so if the league were set up that way each team would have to play home and away against 31 other teams, for a season lasting 62 games. Even if each team played each other only once the season would still be 31 games long. Imagine the injuries, expense, and overexposure that would result in.
So the NFL has two options. They can put all 32 teams in one division, and assign each team 16 random games to play. But it makes a bit more sense to break the league up into “mini-leagues,” firstly because of the reasons gonzomax suggests (less travel if teams always play games against teams they are relatively close to), and secondly because teams which play annual games against each other build rivalries that are more closely followed. The teams in these mini-leagues play against each other twice, and in theory the teams with the best record in the mini-league can be considered the best team within it.
It’s not a perfect setup, because not all of the mini-leagues are created equal (for example, this year the AFC West was not nearly as strong as the AFC North). The wild-card playoffs were specifically created to address the disparity of divisions, so that the second-best team in a very strong division could have a chance at the playoffs.
In short, conferences and divisions aren’t an ideal solution, but they’ve worked well for the NFL. I’d say of the “four major sports” in North America the NFL has the best scheduling.
Yeah, but it’s always been kind of arbitrary. Back when the Cardinals played in Chicago, they were in the Eastern Conference while the Bears were in the Western Conference. When Dallas got an expansion team in 1960, it went into the Eastern Conference, while Minnesota’s expansion team went to the Western Conference.
And don’t forget that for awhile the “Western Division” of the NFC consisted of San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans and Carolina.
Leagues usually don’t rework their entire conference or division system to accomodate one or two expansion teams. That’s caused some of the NFL strangeness.
If you’re a pro football fan, how can you not care about the conferences and divisions? Your divisional alignment determines which teams you play twice each season, and if you finish ahead of the other three teams you’re guaranteed a playoff spot. Your conference alignment determines which teams you’re competing against for the “wild card” spots, and for the Super Bowl berth if you make the playoffs.
I don’t know that anyone is “supposed” to be rooting for anything in the Pro Bowl, or even watching it. But if you’re a fan of an NFL team, chances are that some of the players on that team are playing for their conference in the Pro Bowl, so I suppose it would be logical to root for your team’s conference.
You could, I suppose, do away with conferences and seed the playoffs NCAA-style each year, so that in any given year any team could play any other team in the Super Bowl. American professional sports, however, have never worked that way, possibly because baseball came first with the traditional American League-National League World Series. We like to see two league or conference winners play each other. I don’t expect this to change any time soon.