Schedules Will Be Balanced

The road to the Super Bowl, largely unchanged since 1970, will have several new onramps next season.

With the addition of the Houston Texans, the NFL will expand to 32 teams in 2002, and the league has been realigned into eight four-team divisions. Among the effects:

* The season will begin Sept. 8-9 (a week after Labor Day weekend), and there will be a two-week layoff between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, which, after San Diego in 2003, will be played in February.

* Several division rivalries--Arizona moves from the NFC East to NFC West, Seattle moves from the AFC West to the NFC West--have been abandoned in hopes of creating natural geographic rivalries, such as Seattle versus San Francisco and Tampa Bay versus New Orleans.

* Four division winners and two wild cards from each conference, rather than three division winners and three wild cards, will advance to the playoffs.

* And most important, the unbalanced schedule--which helped the New England Patriots and Chicago Bears go from worst to first this season--is gone, replaced by a balanced schedule.

“There will be no more last-place schedules for teams finishing fifth--no more easy schedules for people to cry about,” said Dennis Lewin, an NFL senior vice president who supervises scheduling. “One of the great things about a balanced 32-team league is that all four teams in each of the eight divisions will play mostly common opponents--14 common opponents, 14 of their 16 games.”

Said Mike Reinfeldt, a Seattle Seahawk senior vice president: “The 14 common opponents works out to 88% of your schedule. So when the dust settles, that helps ensure that the deserving teams make the playoffs.” Each team’s schedule will have home-and-home games against the others in its division (six games).

In addition, each team in, say, the AFC West will play four games against opponents from another division in its conference plus four games against others in an NFC division (eight games).

Each team’s other two games will be played against opponents in its own conference based on the previous year’s finishes. In 2002, for example, teams that were first in 2001 will play two other first-place finishers.

“Each year, every divisional schedule will rotate to different divisions,” Lewin said. “Which means that every team will meet every other team in its own conference at least once every three years--and home and away every six years. On the same rotating basis, every team will also regularly meet every team in the other conference--less often but regularly.”

That will correct some of the NFL’s previously disjointed scheduling. The Green Bay Packers haven’t played in Washington since 1979, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have never played in Buffalo.

“As an NFL player, I played just once in Washington,” Seattle’s Reinfeldt said. “I’ve been in the league ever since in various capacities--that’s 27 years--and when the Seahawks played the Redskins this season, that’s the first time I’ve seen them in 27 years.”

Most club executives seem to be looking forward to the four-team divisions.

“The intimacy of it appeals to football people,” Reinfeldt said. “You’ve got three teams to beat--the other three in your division--and you’re in the playoffs. It helps the players focus on what you’ve got to do, it helps the coaches focus, even the fans. In an eight-team division, the rivalries are too diluted.”

But the realignment will take some getting used to.

“Most of the big NFL rivalries are division rivalries,” Reinfeldt said. “And I think it’s important to preserve those. They’re moving [Seattle] out of the AFC West next year and into the NFC West, and we’re not happy about that. Our fans enjoyed hating Oakland and Denver--and now they’re going to have to learn to hate new teams. So that learning curve is a negative. On the other hand, we’re looking forward to new rivalries with the 49ers, the Rams and Arizona. The 49er rivalry, both of us on the coast, should be great.”

The realignment into eight divisions also will have an impact on the playoffs.

With eight division champions and only four wild cards, there’s a good chance that some 10-6 non-division championship teams won’t make it. It’s possible, in fact, that a division champion will get there with an 8-8 record, or even 7-9.

“That very thing has happened in the past--an 8-8 team in the playoffs and a 10-6 team stays home--and what it means is that that’s the way things are,” said Bill McGrane, director of administration for the Chicago Bears. “I don’t have a problem with it. You have a rule that everyone knows about. You play by the rules or you find another job.”

Theoretically, any one division could still send up to three playoff teams--as was the case this season when three AFC East teams made it.

“But after this, fewer wild cards can be expected to win the Super Bowl,” Lewin said. “It’s a matter of percentages. Division winners will have the best chance.”