The NFL isn’t above adjusting its postseason schedule to chase money.
Two years ago, the playoff field was expanded to 14 teams to coincide with a 17-game regular season. The end result was a six-game Wild Card weekend that now expanded to Monday night — and two extra games for the teams that finished in second place in their respective conferences.
The league is now on the doorstep of another opportunity to weaken the impact of its regular season standings in pursuit of cash. Damar Hamlin’s collapse and the subsequent cancellation of Week 17’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals left the NFL without a clear way to determine who’d have homefield advantage in a Bills-Kansas City Chiefs AFC Championship Game. So officials split the difference and opted for a neutral field in Atlanta.
Cincinnati’s playoff win over Buffalo meant it won’t come to that. This year.
Unfortunately, the seed has been planted for a league happy to mess with success. Over the weekend, reports swirled that the NFL was exploring options to make neutral site conference championships a regular thing. The driving force behind it, per Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer — money and further control over the playoff format.
This is a terrible, awful idea that further degrades the value of American men’s pro sports’ most important regular season. Wins and losses matter more in the compressed timeline of a 17-game slate compared to the 82- or 162-game seasons of the NBA, NHL or MLB. Rising above the fray meant a significant advantage in the playoffs.
Moving to a 14-team format sliced one of those advantages, the Wild Card bye, in half. Taking away homefield advantage in the most important game a home team can have would make sure each conference’s top seed gets shafted as well.
It’s awful for the players who grind through an extended season just to wind up having any noise or elemental benefit ripped away to play in a climate-controlled done 1,200 miles from home. It’s awful for the fans who may now be relegated to a single home playoff game and who would have to stare down the prospect of dropping thousands of dollars and vacation days for a road trip rather than watching history unfold in their backyard.
The only on-field benefit would come to the underdogs who’d get to play in a less hostile environment despite not earning it. If this proposal gains steam, its public face will likely be predicated on bringing games to more fans while improving parity on the road to the Super Bowl. But parity isn’t the problem in a league with a hard salary cap. Ten different franchises have played in the last seven Super Bowls. Only the New England Patriots have won more than one Lombardi Trophy in that span. Five of those Super Bowl winners won their conference titles thanks in part to the backing of a raucous, local crowd.
The real selling point is the money the NFL would make without the burden of going through the NFL Players’ Association to add more games. As Breer points out, neutral site games would create the opportunity for the league to auction off naming rights, a la the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl or Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl. It could award the game to the franchises that come in with the highest bid in hopes of bringing extra revenue to their stadiums and cities (at the expense, of course, of the cities and teams that actually earned it). It would control ticket sales and dispersals for suites and luxury seating.
This all adds up to millions of dollars for a league worth billions. It may be money the NFL wants; it is not money the NFL needs. Taking away homefield advantage for the most important home game of the year will only antagonize players. It would devalue the most important regular season in American professional sports, all for the benefit of vying for a spot in the Super Bowl against the backdrop of a sterile environment.
Neutral site conference championship games would only mute the voices of home fans and ensure the biggest games are reserved for the richest. It’s a terrible idea, even in its infant stages — a contingency to be used in emergencies only. If NFL owners are smart, they’ll snuff this one out before it can gain any momentum and further water down the league’s regular season AND playoffs.
