Changes in the sports postseason over the years

The big event last week was the NFL’s Super Bowl. The hype and attention almost make this a national holiday. Even if you are not a football fan it is difficult to enter any conversation that does not refer to the Super Bowl. I remember having big get together parties to watch the game. I started thinking how championships have changed over the years and how the number of teams keeps increasing. The other part of a championship game is it seems there is only one game. When the NFL had two teams play for a championship there was a championship game followed by a consolation game played by the losing teams. This was before there was an NFL and AFL Super Bowl that Vince Lombardi made his famous “Winning is Everything,” comment and referred to that consolation game. What ever happened to athletic contests that played for 3rd and 4th place? The big change came when the AFL League was formed and became popular enough to challenge the prestigious NFL teams. Green Bay played in the first NFL-AFL championship game and the comment from Lombardi was that the upstart AFL teams were not as good as some lesser NFL teams. And until Joe Namath and the Jets came along and beat the Baltimore Colts for the championship it held true. Now it is an even match up for the most part.

The next big athletic event will be the NCAA basketball championships. This started with conference championships followed by regional championships. Even conference championships may find the team that was in first place may lose in a conference playoff game to a lower ranked team. The number of teams grew from 16 to 32 plus a wild card, to 64 teams plus a few play-in games. While it is fun to watch the games get to the Final Four and the Championship game I don’t seem to recall watching the losing teams play for 3rd place. It seems once a team loses that is the end of the season. In those regional playoff games does anyone watch a game for third place? The important thing about these games is that only the one winning team goes on to play the next round. Any game for teams that lose has no meaning other than another game. This increase in the number of teams is also true for baseball, softball, volleyball, hockey, and soccer. Looking at these playoff games how many of the teams play for a lesser rank after they lose the first game?

I remember when the National Hockey League had the Stanley Cup championship and there were only six teams in the NHL. Then the same sequence that happened in football came about in hockey. The World Hockey League brought in teams from warmer climates and the increase in hockey teams expanded. Within the divisions there are usually 8 teams in the playoffs. A team that finished first may get beat by that eighth place team in a playoff game. It makes you question why the team that has the best record is just another team in a playoff game. A little known fact is that Texas has the most hockey teams from smaller cities to the Dallas Stars. Some come and go in Austin and San Antonio but for a fan of hockey there is usually a team close by.

There are some sports where the recognition of other teams besides the champion is still recognized. In track there are podium awards for the top three teams in each event. In wrestling the awards at one time went to 8 places. In local 5K and 10K races the number of awards has increased. The winner of the male and female runners was followed by age group winners. Then to recognize the older runners the Master’s Category came into place. This is now followed by the Senior Masters (50 – 59 years) and Grand Master’s Category (60 + years). The next increase in awards was going from 10 year age categories to 5 year age categories. The point was getting as many runners as possible that qualified for an award. I remember the upper category was over 40 years old because there were very few runners above that age. One senior aged runner told me that if you want the older runners to come to your race you need to up the age categories. Now the minimum for most races is over 70 years. There are a few that include an age of 90 and over.

The best part of this system is that there are more teams that have a chance to play even if the season was not as good as they wanted. There is still that chance to have a good game and be a winner.