Bills-Eagles Super Bowl? Don’t Count On It.

With the World Series (of Baseball) and election season upon us, I was already thinking about playoff formats…and was further intrigued after checking out the latest NFL futures:

As you look at those options, I suspect you’re having as hard a time as I am seeing anything other than a Final Four of Buffalo v KC and Philly hosting either Dallas or San Francisco. And if that’s what we get, great. I’ll follow that up, though, by saying don’t count on it. Not with the limited but discouraging evidence provided by the NFL’s one-year-old expanded postseason.

In case you’ve forgotten, last February’s mostly forgettable Super Bowl featured a three-seed beating a wildcard team. Not sure how that last sentence hits your ears, but for this frontrunning curmudgeon, it explains why the game isn’t and won’t be the stuff of myth a decade or four from now: Nice as it was for Motor City survivor Matt Stafford and potential GOAT defender Aaron Donald to get that coveted ring on their respective resumes, the Super Bowl was mediocre-adjacent because it featured something other than two of the NFL’s very best teams. In the shadow of Hollywood, a pair of C-listers jumped the velvet rope to boogie in pro football’s most exclusive club.  

Gonna caveat everything from this point forward by letting you know I do like having more games to watch, bet on, and allow me to put off writing what you’re reading right now. Of course I enjoyed last January’s already-legendary divisional round. I just need to cast my vote in vain for our leagues to conduct postseasons based on merit (except you, NHL: Your perennial two-month tournament of chaos is a different animal…but to quote Jules in ‘Pulp Fiction’, we’re talking about one charming motherf—-ing pig, eh).

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With all due respect to USC/Notre Dame 2005, Tennessee/Bama 2022 and any other worthy classics one might nominate, the greatest college football game of the last half century is the 1984 Orange Bowl between Nebraska and Miami. 

The Huskers were a juggernaut and the clear-cut #1 team in the land going up against a newfangled Cinderella from the state of Florida. The game was a gem on every level (if you don’t believe me, you can watch it on YouTube), but what still resonates for me is the nobility of Nebraska head coach Osborne: In the final minute, trailing by seven, his Huskers turned a 4th-&-8 into a touchdown – on an option! – to get within a point of the national title.

With 3rd-ranked Texas and 4th-ranked Illinois already having lost earlier in the day, Nebraska was a cinch for the national title if they kicked the extra point to tie the game. Instead, Osborne went for it and the two-point try failed, but it’s his self-policing honor that stands out all these decades later. The night that started with Nebraska as a prohibitive 10.5 favorite ended with the underdog Canes launching a dynasty.

It’s been downhill ever since. 

Alright, sorry…that’s hyperbolic, at least without acknowledging Miami’s win wasn’t the first huge upset in (what amounted to) a championship game. It did, though, further deepen sports fans’ bottomless appetite for upsets. Osborne’s choice that night was owed to the clarity of the moment and based on the notion of merit: If his team was better, they needed to win head-to-head. Brave, but like Shula’s Colts in Super Bowl III, the loss reverberated… probably informing the shape of postseason tournaments. 

Remember, at the same time in college basketball, March Madness was just starting to break big thanks to big upsets in the title round. In ’83, Jimmy V’s NC State team pulled off a wild one of Phi Slamma Jamma in the ’83 CBB title game, then Rollie Massimino’s Nova crew did the same to John Thompson’s mighty Hoyas. 

Meantime in that era of the NFL, every season seemed to end with another in a line of heavyweight NFC teams destroying the AFC’s sacrificial lamb in the Super Bowl. The NBA title went to either the Celtics or Lakers or no one at all. The Islanders ruled the hockey world for four years…right up until the Edmonton Oilers ruled the hockey world for the next six years.

College sports were suddenly more exciting, less predictable. Of course the professional sports leagues wanted a taste of that. As extolled in this space previously, I love dynasties. They are the yardstick by which a generation is judged vs all the other generations…but I get the desire to provide a more entertaining product.

So it’s no surprise, then, by the end of the 1980s, the NFL added an extra wildcard to both conferences. And by the end of the next decade, MLB added more playoff teams. More games? Fun. Better chance of random results? Eh. 

I understand why Middle-earth rejoiced when Frodo and his fellow hobbits beat the heavily-favored Sauron and his army of loathsome creatures…but that’s because it felt like a true upset. More and more, though, because of the expanded playoffs and the salary cap (that, at the end of the day, punishes teams for having success in the draft and on the field), slightly-above-average talents like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Kirk Cousins beat mighty adversaries Thanos and Aaron Rodgers so often, it hardly feels special.

I’m fine with the college playoff. Twelve teams is better, I guess, for anyone who likes watching football games…but I can’t think of one season in which the fifth-best team could make a reasonable argument they deserve consideration for the title. It’s why (x10) March Madness is fun…but a bizarre way to determine who’s best. Forget participation trophies, March Madness is an entire participation tournament. Go .500 in a relevant conference, you get a bid.

But now college is swinging back in the direction of the professional leagues. CFB is about to dump its Final Four – composed every year of exactly zero dead weight – to a Dandy Dozen. March Madness is looking at expanding to 96 teams, which begs the question: Is the tourney’s name gonna expand to Valentine’s-to-April Fool’s Day Madness?

The games are all so close. The regular season is being marginalized. There’s very little air between the great and very good and mediocre teams…so the more teams jammed into the postseason, the more likely that lack of difference will get exposed.

Bottom line, go ahead and bet the Bills to win the Super Bowl…but sprinkle a little something on the Dolphins, too. Recent history tells us either of the two results is perfectly realistic, no matter how imperfect the latter might feel.

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BEST BETS EVER OF THE WEEK

(7-6 last week, 53-41 on the season)

TCU -9.5

Penn St/Indiana o53.5

Georgia -8.5

Tenn/Georgia u66

LSU +13

Clemson/Notre Dame u47.5

Miss St -13

Cal/USC o59

–

Falcons +3

Packers -3

Dolphins -4

MIA/CHI o44

Vikes -3.5

Chiefs -12.5

SEA/AZ o50

BAL/NO u48

Enjoy the games, and remember: I hope your team wins…unless they’re playing my team.