Two Wild

So baseball has finally figured out what every fan has known for years: that having a single wildcard team doesn't make for a more exciting home stretch in September; it actually has the unintended consequence of being about as interesting as watching a tied hockey game in the third period.

So to fix it they've decided to add a wildcard team to each league.  Both wildcard winners would then meet in a one game playoff.  The hope is that the wildcard contenders - rather than coast knowing that they have a playoff berth in the bag - will pull out all the stops looking to win their respective divisions and avoid a winner take all playoff game.

Baseball hasn't done many things right over the last few years, but this one they nailed right on the head.  It's about time. 

With that in mind, maybe the NFL should tinker with their playoff format, too.  Given that three of the last five Super Bowl winners have either been wildcards or lower seed division winners, I'm thinking that the playoff Bye should be eliminated altogether.  By adding two wildcards per conference you would simply have the first seed play the eighth, the second play the seventh and so on, just like the NHL.  The division winners would host the wildcards in the first round.

While not perfect it would deal effectively with the one nagging issue which has plagued the league for the last few seasons: rustiness.  While taking nothing away from the Giants' playoff drive, the simple truth was that the Green Bay Packers looked like a team that hadn't played a meaningful game in a month.  They were out of synch pretty much the whole game against New York and Aaron Rodgers looked nothing like the MVP he had been throughout most of the season. 

I'm not saying that a first-round playoff appearance would've guaranteed a different result - who knows maybe they would've lost that game too - but it's quite clear that the present playoff format isn't working as intended.  Instead of being a reward for a season of excellence, the playoff bye ends up being an anchor that drags the supposedly better team down to the same level as their opponent.  These teams end up discovering the hard way that you just can't turn it on like a switch.  As the old saying goes, "You snooze, you lose." 

Something to think about...