Quote:Yup. It's only happened twice in history. It's about to become 3 times (most likely anyway) this season.

So, that's 3 times in the past 6 seasons. It is becoming frequent. Idk what is causing this to happen now (parity,, salary,, ownership?). Really, I have no idea why it's occuring.

But, the fact is that it is occuring now,, with regular frequency. I'd say 2 seasons in a row, and 3 of 6 seasons is definitely frequent.

If it continues,, there will likely be some type of reseeding change to the playoffs. I seriously doubt they'd do away with divisions. I doubt they'd do away with division winners automatically qualifying. But I could definitely see them reseeding to where a team with a losing record in the playoffs has to go on the road. A change of that sort could happen.

If this "trend" doesn't continue the next few years, there will be nothing to worry about.

I'm assuming the argument for reseeding is "fairness", but I don't believe it achieves that goal consistently if at all. The schedule can be kinder to one division over another depending how the year plays out and that could conceivably even happen in successive years for a team with how other teams and divisions fortunes can sometimes drastically change from year to year with injuries and offseason roster turnover. I'm fine with favorable schedules allowing for teams to get into the playoffs, but rewarding 2nd place teams with a home game seems to be going way too far. It's essentially trying to fix a perceived problem by creating another, mainly propping up a 2nd place team whose record might be inflated by what divisions they got to play that year or by having 2 bottom feeder teams in their own division. The best and consistently fairest course is the way it's currently set up. You win your division and you host a playoff game with no "ifs", "ands" or "buts" about it. Being a wildcard is and should remain a consolation prize. You want a home playoff game? Win your division. You can control that. You can't control whether you get a favorable schedule or not. Could reseeding happen? Yes. Should it? Absolutely not.


As to why teams with losing records seem to be winning divisions occasionally all of a sudden, I think it's helped by having 8 divisions instead of 6 like we did before the 2002 season. That being said I don't expect it to be an every year occurrence even with 8 divisions being the likely reality for the forseeable future. Even if it does become more frequent, I think the above rationale still holds.

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