The unintended cost of parity

The War Room Detroit Lions — The Den
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17 games is a long season
Yet each nfl game carries significant importance with such a small sample size and one off games to determine who is best

Then amplified in playoffs where seeding , match up and play be injury , one game can be so impactful.

This season has already seen so many over time games
Improbably endings like lions narrowly losing to Ravens as one of nfl best teams vs worse team

Can’t crown champions yet and some teams struggling , say KC , still seem like a good bet to be relevant but

Whst does it mean to league ? Is it better having a product where the lesser team still has a good shot at winning or is it better to truly see the good teams just be better ?

Giants and Packers , Ravens stlll rode hot streaks to be crowned

But was it luck of the one game format ?

Will we see the league’s best team crowned this year ?

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I reject their notion that there are four (4) division races that are over. There literally isn’t a single division that is locked up at this point. If they want to say they think they know who is going to win the division because of their record and how much better they are…that’s fine. But that also contradicts the idea of having a bunch of mediocre teams without teams that stand out.

I think the league is at its best when there is a level of consistency amongst the best teams. If you pick the best 10 teams in a given year, fans seem to like at least 6 or 7 of them to be the best the following year and slowly change over like that. Not wholesale changes from year to year. And ratings also show that fans prefer when there are dominant teams as well. But they also love a good underdog story. But mixing those things together, fans seem to prefer an underdog to take on the juggernaut and win the title…rather than a championship game with 2 underdogs playing eachother. Flipping it to basketball they want to see Raptors/Warriors…not Bucks/Suns. I’m sure you guys can do your own baseball and hockey analogies to that.

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Agree

The article was kind of relevant to my point in mediocre teams in nfl

Thinking would we like if one got hot
Or lucky yo go on a run

And since talent is close

And if a team has an off day , since it’s one and done

Who was it seattle ? That hit into playoffs with losing record by winning division ? Did they win the playoffs game too That year ?

When bears made playoffs and missed the game winning field goal , if you watched bears that season it wasn’t a surprise kicking game caught up to them

I think I like the consistency approach to a season to find the best team yet with parity and design of nfl games

Theyre all often close in score

But I also don’t want to just wait for the last seconds of each game to see QB go 45 yards fir a long field goal to win.

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A team with a losing record has only made the playoffs a few times, but they had all won their playoff games except for Washington last year (lost to Tampa). The beastquake game with the huge run by Marshawn Lynch was the year you were thinking about. Seattle had a losing record but beat the Saints in that game.

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Yea that’s the one and interesting they’ve all won too

Add a bad ref call here or there and it can really impact outcome
Yet in football
It would be hard to play a best of series

As each game , in football probably gets harder and harder the more familiar they get with each teams playbook

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Lions fans find the league more parroty than full of parity.

Some of this boils down to people meeting their emotional human needs. People who are certainty drive want to do and see the same shit every time.

Variety driven people want to see it mixed up more.
Integrity driven people want to see gladiators enter the field of athletic competition, and watch them collide and figure out who the better team is on that day.
Others may want to see GB or DAL win at any cost, even if it ruins the integrity of the game.

It’s an interesting conversation.

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So in a league designed to revert to the mean, we revert to the 5th Standard Deviation.

We Are American Exceptionalism Personified!

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unnnnnfortunately. LOL.

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Hilarious

I like when the good great teams emerge
And the. Great games with those best teams.

I prefer division championship week games because it often is 3-4 of best teams

And so many Super Bowls were blow outs.

While I thought 2014 lions were robbed because the defense was so good

I also think it makes sense the offense failed them since that was their problem during regular season too. For all the investment in offense , they weren’t very consistent maybe blame Lombardi or Staff or Caldwell