Suddenly, It’s Turning Into a Crapshoot

Well, let’s see, the playoffs. Football’s answer to Armageddon.

The Raiders can get in if about eight teams lose and there’s a star in the East and if Jupiter and Uranus are in juxtaposition in the heavens in the fourth house of Capricorn. Don’t count Cincinnati, Seattle, New England, Kansas City, L.A. or Miami out.

Hey, sports fans, how about a Miami-San Francisco Super Bowl? Don’t laugh. It’s possible.

Miami, which was once 1-4 in the league with one loss 28-50 and another 45-51, and two other losses in which it surrendered more than 30 points--it’s given up 30 or more points seven times this year--is still alive after seven losses. San Francisco, which has lost to the Rams, Vikings, Giants, Redskins and Saints (Saints!) and been tied by Atlanta (Atlanta!) is safely there.

I think the crapshoot nature of the NFL playoff picture quite illustrates the lunacy of college football trying to promote a tournament to decide one ultimate winner each year. Here you have the controlled environment of only 28 teams and you get anarchy at the win window.

How do you know you get a “champion” anyway? Suppose the Chicago Bears win it again? The only place they will have played a quality AFC team will be in the Super Bowl, assuming a quality AFC team wins its way there. Their schedule will have included games against Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Houston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas and Atlanta, the registered doormats of the game. They managed to miss the Giants, Washington and 49ers in their own conference and any of the tough Western Division teams--Broncos, Raiders, Seahawks--in the other.

Baseball used to have the ideal setup for choosing its all-world team. The game had 16 teams, 8 to a league, and each team played each other team in its league precisely 22 times, 11 at home and 11 on the road. Its championship series was a seven-game test. Its champion never had a strong odor of Gorgonzola rising from it.

Expansion has watered that down to an extent. An intra-league playoff of only five games was deemed too inconclusive a test after 162 games and was lengthened to seven.

The point is, football cannot be that meticulous in its choosing of champions. Given the nature of the beast, it cannot define its final winner down to a scientific certainty.

But while I’m on the subject, there is one thing it can do to cut the cards and make the deal more honest. It can do away with the overtime field goal.

That is an abomination that makes a mockery of the 60 minutes of tug-and-strain and cerebral football that has preceded it.

Field goals in the 40-to-50 yard range today are as routine as tap-in putts. That means the coin flip determines about 10 out of 10 overtime games. The receiving team has only to advance the ball to a little past midfield to lock up the victory.

There is a large body of thought that holds that the “sudden death” complex for the fifth-quarter games is wrong to begin with. Unless both teams get a possession, it is an inconclusive outcome for a game, at best. At worst, it is unfair.

In this day of “nickel back” defenses and “prevent” formations, it is no trick at all for a skilled quarterback to negotiate half a football field in overtime. When seven backs peel back at the snap of the ball and begin running toward their own goal line, the quarterback can help himself to seven yards at a crack, maybe more if he calls a running play.

Handing Dan Marino the ball in overtime is tantamount to handing Miami the victory. Faced with the scatter-back defense employed by coaches in overtimes, 8 out of 10 quarterbacks in this league find it no challenge at all to sneak the ball into field-goal territory.

It’s like playing golf and letting only one man hit. Baseball plays a full inning. If a team gets a home run in the top of the 10th, the game isn’t over. Even in tennis’ tiebreaker, both men get a chance to serve.

If football finds it too unwieldy to give each team a time at bat, the least it can do is make the victorious team get the ball into the end zone. This is especially important in the playoffs. You might otherwise, in effect, put a team into the Super Bowl by a coin flip.

The field goal is getting to be a cheap point maker anyway. Nearly all of the top 10 scorers in football history never touched a football with anything but a shoe.

To win an overtime playoff game by a 48-yard field goal is a travesty. To permit it is to make a coin-flip the deciding factor. What are we, playing football--or pitching pennies? Is it a game--or a lottery?

Don’t make the conclusive part of the game suddenly a 55-yard game. Either eliminate it--or the game will have to start drafting guys out of Vegas who are specialists in heads or tails.