Quote: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.

But in a tight division (for instance the NFC North) you can go from third place to playoff place with a couple of wins, keeping the division interesting right until the final weeks. A couple of wins in a seventeen team division might not get you as far.


Look at the English Premier League (which has 20 teams) and you'll see that midway through the season half the teams stand little chance of breaking into the top six. Ok, it's a bit different because some teams are financially much better off, but if a few of the better NFL teams start to run away with a 17 team division, the rest could very quickly be playing for draft position.


But I accept there are arguments for a large division too.

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