Rain on the parade

Bad views of the good news that is realignment

There's one big danger inherent in the NFL's new alignment and it's been nearly forgotten in all the justifiable enthusiasm for the new eight-division, four-team setup the league will use beginning this fall.

What happens if a bad team wins a division?

If you align the teams in the divisions they'll be placed in 2002 with the records they earned in 2001, one glaring embarrassment stares right back at you: Tennessee would have made the playoffs. The Titans' 7-9 record would have been good enough to win what will be the AFC South, over 6-10 Jacksonville, 6-10 Indianapolis and expansion Houston, which, of course, did not play last year.

What is particularly glaring about Tennessee's situation is that the Titans weren't even a decent 7-9 team at season's end. They went careening into the offseason, finishing the year with a beat-up star, Eddie George, and losing the last two games of the year to the riff-raff of the former AFC Central, Cleveland and Cincinnati, both at home. The postseason seedings would have put Tennessee, though four wins shy of Miami, ahead of the Dolphins in the playoffs because Tennessee would have been a division winner and 11-win Miami a wild card.

My other problem with the 2002 scenario, based on the 2001 results, is that Green Bay and San Francisco would have been the No. 5 and 6 seeds in the NFC -- even though they tied for the third-best record in all of football at 12-4.

"I know I've been away from things for a while, and I don't know everything that's going on," said Ron Wolf, entering his second year of retirement after leading the Packers through their decade of prominence. "But I keep asking guys I know in the league: 'You mean to tell me you could go 0-6 in your division and still win it? Or you could go 6-0 in your division and still have a chance to lose it?' I don't know what advantage there is any more to be in a division."

The advantage, of course, is that while every team will have the same number of division games as before, the non-division schedules will match as closely as possible (four against teams in another division in the conference and four against a division in the other conference; only the two final games will differ) and there will be eight races to follow, not six. I see two disadvantages. Obviously, a bad team could sneak in. There's not a single team in that AFC South that scares anyone. Each has major flaws. I wouldn't be surprised if they each knocked each other off -- including Houston -- and all struggled to get to .500. The other thing that stinks is the death of regional rivalries. The NFL had a golden chance to make the Giants and Jets, Redskins and Ravens, Texans and Cowboys, Raiders and Niners play every year. Formerly they played once every three years. Now they'll play once every four years, only when their division is assigned games against the corresponding division in the opposite conference. It's idiotic to know that that if some new megastar crops up for the Niners this year, Raider Nation will have one chance in eight seasons to make his life miserable at the Coliseum. Careers often don't last that long.

The other plus about the new setup is that the weighted schedule is now diminished. That's a big step in the right direction because too many teams that finish in last place one season have ridden soft schedules into the playoffs the next year (i.e. St. Louis three years ago, Chicago last year). Though San Diego finished 5-11 last season, the Chargers had a cakewalk schedule their first three games (Washington at home, at Dallas, Cincinnati at home) that allowed for massive false hopes to grow for a team that really wasn't very good.

All in all, realignment is a good thing. But you know things will get messy one of these Januarys when a bad team cheats a decent one out of a playoff spot.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check out his Monday Morning Quarterback column every -- and you should see this coming -- Monday morning.

 

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