Determining the Best Pro Sport Teams
It is hard to match the intensity so many people possess about Professional sport teams. The arguments go on ad nauseam. On Sunday many hours before the kick off of the game ‘experts’ fiercely debate which teams will when and why. If the teams are remotely close in talent and coaching, these debates are relatively useless. When experts become part of a group contest to see who correctly picks the most game day wins, the winner is likely to be in the 60th percentile for the year.
The reality is that most of these games are not that predictable. Clearly talent and coaching are only part of the factors which contribute to which team will win the game. How annoying is that to those who are so certain their team is the best? Common sense, which is not in abundance in these matters, tells us if we really would think through which team is best, sports would be no where near as popular. Pro football, in the United States, is the most popular Professional sport precisely because endless, and endless is really the proper word here, unpredictable things can happen almost on any given play of the game. There are probably a hundred unpredictable and uncontrollable things which can insert themselves at any time. The pace of football is about right to let personal tension rise with about every play of the game. There is just enough time for our personal anxieties about the team we root for to rise to a crescendo and—— about as oft—as not, the unexpected happens. Of course there will be missed tackles, dropped passes, poor throws, interceptions, missed field goals, fumbles, etc but when these things happen makes a big difference. A missed field goal is forgotten but not if it is the kick which will win the game at the last minute.
It is important to understand that it is all this uncertainty which motivates us to get so excited during a game. Some people revel in all this uncertainty and emotional intensity and others don’t really like being dragged through all this emotional turmoil for several hours. There is little rationality to be had about all of this when push comes to shove. The reality is that who wins the game has no real impact on us in our real life (minus being stupid enough to bet a lot of money on a game). Whatever the nature of our daily life, it goes on whether our team wins or loses. Some get really emotional during and right after the game, but most get over it rather quickly and settle down emotionally until next week’s game. Others remain upset or elated for months, even years.
The above brings us to the question: How can we best determine which teams are best in any given season? We can argue, and argue, and argue until tempers flare and those doing the arguing actually believe they are absolutely, without doubt, correct in their conclusions about the best team. On television they sometimes become apoplectic while reacting to another expert’s differing opinion. I guess it is all good theatre.
I have known many a person who is smart enough to become an expert “after the game” and spends an endless amount of verbal energy explaining why one team won and the other lost—as if has this any relevance to which team is the best team. Of course the team lost because the receiver dropped the ball in the end zone on the last play. Was this any part of the same person’s argument as to who would win the game? It might even be the receiver who has dropped the least number of passes all year.
Ok, predicting a winner with accuracy is impossible because of so many uncontrollable, unpredictable factors in the game. That brings little consolation to those who want so badly to determine which team is really better than the other. The teams which win the fewest games can be ruled out as the best teams. And statistically speaking, the team which wins the most games over the season is most likely the best team, except of course if another team’s best player hadn’t been injured for most of the season that team might have won the most games, or if two teams could switch coaches maybe then the other team would win the most games, etc. In sports like baseball and basketball, so many games are played over the season that maybe who wins the most is the best team. But then we have easier divisions than others, better weather than others if it is an outdoor sport, etc. Yet whoever wins the most games in a season may well be as close as we can come to declaring the best team for that year.
However, all fans want a playoff series in which the stakes can be driven high for individual games. This works best for sports in which 4 out of 7 determines the winner of a playoff series and not so well in a sport like football where there needs to be a week off between games. Another drawback in football is the injury situation. Whichever team gets to the playoff with the least injuries to their best players gains an advantage, which of course is an unearned advantage.
I resolve all this by picking the best team via their season records, and viewing the playoffs as exciting entertainment which stops right there—entertainment. The wealthy owners of our professional sports of course view the playoffs as just another way to increase their wealth. Everybody, for differing reasons, love the playoffs, so they need stay. What is not a surprise is that the NFL does the worse job of making the playoffs remotely fair. They can’t do anything about the one loss and you are out aspect of the playoffs, but they could at least make that one game as neutral as possible. If playoffs are going to be played in January and February then all playoff games should be domed stadiums in a neutral site. 90 plus percent of fans are going to watch the game on TV, so let’s not pretend the affluent fans which can afford tickets to playoff games are the only fans that count. The other 99% count too. With everything on video from every angle put an official in the booth and let him correct egregious errors such as the missed penalty against the RAMS in their game with New Orleans. Because the the NFL structure of the playoffs we have a team in the Super Bowl which was put there by a blatant referee mistake and another team in the playoffs because they won a flip of the coin. If a game ends up tie, why would only one team, by a flip of the coin, get a chance to score more points? And why can’t, with all these super smart computers, given the right data, let properly fed computers decide which teams are in the playoffs? Some divisions are stronger than others, some schedules are easier than others. Maybe I and most others can’t take all this into consideration, but a good computer can do that almost instantly when programmed with the needed data.
The following stats were released in 2009. I couldn’t find the more recent years stats, but there is enough here to establish the relationship between best record for season and the Super Bowl or World Series. Strangely, couldn’t find any stats for basketball or hockey.
Teams that won the Super Bowl with the most wins during regular-season:
19 60s: 1 of 4 (25%)
1970s: 8 of 10 (80%)
1980s: 6 of 10 (60%)
1990s: 4 of 10 (40%)
2000s: 2 of 8 (25%)
In 2009, for the fifth consecutive season, the team with the best regular-season record (Tennessee Titans, 13-3) did not win the Lombardi Trophy. The previous season, the New England Patriots and Tom Brady (right) were 18-0 in 2007 heading into the Super Bowl and lost. The last team with the best record to win it was the Patriots in 2003.
Since 1969, only 12 teams have claimed baseball's best record and gone on to win the World Series.
It seems that one can enjoy the adventure of playoffs, be realistic that they are only entertainment and not view them as proving much about which team is better. “May the best team win” is a nice comforting thought, but not yet possible with all the unpredictable things that can happen in a game like football. I tend to follow particular players and coaches these days. Even then many factors creep into the evaluation. For example, how much of the New England Patriot’s success is due to Belecheck or Brady? The two have never been separated from each other so it is just speculation. Those times Brady was injured the Patriots kept on winning which makes one wonder how well Brady would do with a different Coach. With a mediocre coach Aaron Rodgers usually had to thread a needle to complete a pass. With a better coach the receiver would be more open because of a well designed play.
Football is exciting. The goal, it seems, is to enjoy the excitement and not become obsessed that these playoff games really prove which team is best. In both of the last games the winners could have been reversed if the bad call had gone against the RAMS and Kansas City had won the coin toss in overtime. Clearly, in overtime each team should get possession of the ball once before any winner of the game is declared. And the missed penalty in the Saints game should have been caught in the booths—especially when the player who committed the egregious foul did so on purpose since he thought the runner was going to score a touchdown and he just wanted to put an intentional hit on someone out of anger. In the Chiefs game both quarterbacks were simply marching down the field in the fourth quarter (34 pts scored in the fourth quarter) and so a coin toss allowed one quarter back to do it one more time. Game over, not that Brady had done anything to deserve an extra chance to go down the field.
