I had an idea for what the NFL could do to cut down on travel and make the season more interesting. They could schedule the games World Cup style. Every division would be a group, and they would play each other team once or twice round robin style, The games would all be played at the stadium of whichever team won the division last year. Top two teams in each division move on. Then a second group stage with say, the NFC South and North, the NFC East and West, and so on playing each other. After that the remaining teams would play each other in the traditional playoff format. This would make for a nine, twelve, or fifteen game season, depending on if they go with single or double round robin for the first two rounds. Do you all think the fans would be interested in this type of format? Would it work out in practice?
My apologies. This should have gone in the game room. I’m not sure how it ended up here, and with this new board, I’m not sure how to report this to the moderators for a forum change.
I flagged it for a move to The Game Room for you.
Umm, ummm
They do, it’s called divisions… and there are four of them in a division …
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I’m not sure what benefit the system proposed has over the current system. Teams play their division opponents twice a year already, so that’s 6 of the 16 games. They play one division in their conference each year (4 games) and one team in the other conference (4 games) plus 2 additional games within their conference based on standings the previous year. There are lots of other factors that go into the schedule such as days rest, travel, home vs away, and TV ratings.
So the round robin rounds basically take place within the division, but it’s based on the full season, not just a few games. Only one team in each division is guaranteed to move on; with the wildcards you can get 2 or possibly 3 teams from a division into the playoffs.
I don’t see much benefit from this change.
You may need to understand how group play works in the World Cup to understand how it has little resemblance to how divisions work in the NFL.
I think the only benefit would be reducing the schedule and limiting travel.
The benefit would be cutting down on travel and number of different sites where games are played during the age of Covid-19. For comparison, see how the NBA is doing vs. MLB, which has already had two teams with multiple cancelled games due to an outbreak of Covid-19
The core of what you’re really proposing is that the NFL puts each of its divisions together into a bubble. Like MLB, it seems like both the NFL and the NFLPA have had little interest in doing any sort of multi-team bubbles, but given the issues that MLB has already run into with teams having positive COVID tests, I strongly suspect that the NFL won’t be able to complete their season under their current format.
The NBA is a little different. They’re literally all staying at the same place and playing the games in one location. The scheduling format doesn’t really have anything to do with it. NHL is doing something similar (with two locations instead of one).
Also, the NBA and NHL are only playing their playoffs in bubbles – they aren’t trying to play a full (or partial) regular season under such restrictions. As a result, half of the teams in both of those leagues will be going home (and thus, leaving the bubble) after a couple of weeks, and the entirety of those schedules will be less than two months.
My man, group play is round robin, just like the NFL’s divisions, except they play them twice.
Now, if we are talking about for the safety of the players, then yes, maybe division only until the playoffs.
NFL teams play 10 other games outside their division each season. What the OP is suggesting is getting rid of those 10 games completely. That’s dramatically different, wouldn’t you agree?
Sure it’s different, the World Cup is a giant playoff. So I see this as a suggestion to the NFL to not play a season and go straight to playoffs. Except, they want and have a way figured to play the season also …