[stupac2]

Ranking teams based on their losses is so incredibly misguided.  How many times do we see the teams that don't have the best records, winning championships in playoffs?  It happens routinely.  Tomorrow one such team will win the World Series.  The L.A. Kings finished 3rd in their division and won the Stanley Cup last year.  The year before, a Wild Card team won the Super Bowl.

Please for the love of Pete, can we just give each Big 5 conference champion a berth in the playoff, and then have a committee select three at-large teams?

The problem is "tradition", which says that the goal is naming the "best" team. Of course, no one actually grapples with what "best" means and how you determine it. Every other team sport uses a playoff with defined paths to berths for a reason: it's the only sane way to declare a champion. Trying to name the "best" team is completely futile even if you manage to define it in a coherent way, which you probably can't.

[stupac2]

Ranking teams based on their losses is so incredibly misguided.  How many times do we see the teams that don't have the best records, winning championships in playoffs?  It happens routinely.  Tomorrow one such team will win the World Series.  The L.A. Kings finished 3rd in their division and won the Stanley Cup last year.  The year before, a Wild Card team won the Super Bowl.

Please for the love of Pete, can we just give each Big 5 conference champion a berth in the playoff, and then have a committee select three at-large teams?

The problem is "tradition", which says that the goal is naming the "best" team. Of course, no one actually grapples with what "best" means and how you determine it. Every other team sport uses a playoff with defined paths to berths for a reason: it's the only sane way to declare a champion. Trying to name the "best" team is completely futile even if you manage to define it in a coherent way, which you probably can't.