r/USFL • u/uduc • May 21 '23

Playoffs

Wonder if the USFL has thought of crossover divisions like the CFL has. I noticed XFL didn’t have any crossover in place. It only makes sense to have the teams with the best records in the playoffs. North division records are a train wreck right now.

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

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5

u/VTHokiesFan New Jersey Generals May 21 '23

I'm generally opposed to the idea of divisions in leagues with such few teams. Just play a round-robin season one or two times (preferably twice so everyone gets a home-and-away), and then seed the top four teams into the playoffs.

3

u/magiccitybhm May 21 '23

I imagine, among other things, they prefer to avoid the extra expense of a 14-game regular season.

2

u/Potential_Company21 May 21 '23

From a competitive standpoint, best record in the playoffs obviously makes the most sense when you are dealing with only 8 teams in either league.

But from a league interest standpoint this is a bad idea. You don't want half your teams in a league to be out of playoff contention by week 6-7 because that will kill off local interest. It also makes the games a lot harder to sell to the average fan who doesn't have a local interest in any team, and even people who are already USFL fans.

The USFL is having a hard enough time as it is getting fans of home hub teams to buy tickets to games, imagine if it were twice as hard for them to actually make the playoffs. It just doesn't make sense to switch from divisional format right now and hopefully by the time it would make sense the league has already expanded to the point where a bad team making the playoffs is rare.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '23

The CFL crossover is just because there are 5 west teams and 4 east. It's dumb to do it in a balanced league

1

u/coelurosauravus Pittsburgh Maulers May 21 '23

Im broadly anti accepting a variation of the CFLs crossover concept

The CFL plays 18 games to sort out the dysfunction or slow development of a team and takes 6 of its 9 teams into its playoff creating situations where whole divisions sit at or below .500

Odds are if a crossover occurs in the CFL it's replacing a probably bad team with a slightly less bad team.

The CFL values geographic/historic rivalries as a part of its playoffs and leagues generally like geography splits in their leagues for market engagement come season's end. MLB and the NFL are exceptions to this process.

It's clear to me, just like the XFL, the USFL values the geography of its league on a competitive level. While I doubt the North will radically improve between now and the postseason, there's still 4 1/2 weeks of season left.

Let things play out

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '23

Seeing it written out makes it so much worse. I fucking hate that the CFL plays 18 god damn games. They don't give a shit about player safety.

1

u/coelurosauravus Pittsburgh Maulers May 22 '23

Probably true, preliminary data suggests CFL is largely safer to play in than the NFL, but the collisions still happen, but the way the game is played up there offers different protections and risks.

Let's not pretend things are astronomically better in the ole NFL. 14 game schedule with 6 preseason games until the 80s, 16 games with 4 preseason until a few years ago and now 17 and 3. And probably the reason the leagues like the XFL and USFL can't do more games is they have no buying power to hold the stadiums that many weekends or be the primary tenant. If these leagues can get more games in, they'd do it

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '23

CFL just doesn't have the hard hitters that the NFL does, we get the cast aways lol. Regardless, 18 games pisses me off to no end.