Quote:I prefer the 6x6 idea to the divisions of seventeen (which could make a lot of teams in the bottom half of the table irrelevant part way through the season)


Can the NFL cope with such a big leap in numbers though ?


And more worryingly, what happens if one of those international teams fails ?

 

Actually the 17 and 17 design works better in most ways due to the fact that teams stop getting to be in safe divisions.

 

A good example is New England, they can go 14-2 or they can go 9-7 and likely still make the playoffs due to their division. They're competing with three bottom feeding teams, but if you take away the safety of the get into the playoffs free button that the division winner gets then suddenly a team that is 6-6 going into December has a more realistic chance of making the playoffs if they're 10-6 because there isn't an 8-8 or 9-7 team taking up a spot by default because they were lucky enough to be in the right division.

 

Not to even mention the fact that everyone actually playing everyone else in the conference evens out the schedule in a way we've never seen before. No more feasting on the dregs of a bad division.

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