Your points about the NFL are correct.

8 different league winners, 4 wildcards. There are 32 teams and you only play 16 games. Given that you play everyone in our division twice (one home, one away), giving you 6 games.

Then you play another division from your own conference, given an extra 4 games, 10 in total.

Then you play a division from the other conference, giving you another 4 games, 14 in total.

Finally you play the two teams from your conference that finished in the same position in your conference in their division the previous season. (if you finish 2nd, you play the two 2nd placed teams) it is 2 because you already play your own division and another, so these finish off the 4 divisions in a conference.

So of the 32 teams you do not play 18 of them (over half) so in the NFL the Playoffs are needed. you cant call the team with the best record the champions because they might have had 16 easy games.

People without a good knowledge of other sports should not speak about them. there are reasons why some sports have playoffs (need playoffs in the NFL's sake, similar for the NBA). In fact there are quite a number of sports that have Playoffs because the teams do not play everyone (or play some teams multiple times and others only once)

Super League is not like that, except for the Silly Magic Weekend Idea we play everyone home and away the same amount of times.

NFL
NBA
MLB
MLS
NHL
20/20 Cricket
YB40 Cricket

All have unbalanced seasons which means they do not play everyone, or play some teams much more often than others. This system warrants a Playoff structure to determine the winner. Having a system where everyone plays everyone else (like we have bar the magic weekend) does not merit a Playoff system.

It would be interesting to know which sports with balanced seasons have playoffs, obviously us and RU. but which others?

The play offs are not popular.
Crowds are low and reducing every year.
Last year we got 6700 v Catalans and 7100 v Leeds. To me those figures are attendances, I find them difficult to call crowds in a 24000+ stadium.
I like first past the post, the best team over 27 rounds are exactly that, the "best team".
Somehow we have managed to separate the "Champions" from the "best team in the league" they are now separate matters.
Also I'd like the Magic/Tragic moved to the C Cup. Then we'd have a proper league with 26 games, 13 home 13 away.
A good idea I read on a forum was that the three trophies all have the same prize money and medals/rings.
The last thing we need is a re-structuring!

That's Warrington and Wigan's fault... Not the play offs.

Yet in its biggest competitions football uses a league-play off system as well. And bar the premiership has a play-off in every other league.

I don’t particularly want to keep it at top 8. As I have said numerous times on this thread all the formats have their positives and negatives.
Frankly I don’t particularly like one play-off system over any other, I really don’t think it matters that much, its like asking what your favourite number is, it’s a pretty arbitrary preference. The cream will always rise to the top and whichever system we use we will get the best teams playing each other at the end of the year to decide who is champions. It really really isn’t as important as Wigan fans make out. The point I have been making is that ‘intensity’ will come from lowering the disparity between the top teams and the bottom, not tinkering with the play-off format which will just switch it from a situation where the big clubs don’t have to play at 100% to qualify, to one where the smaller clubs don’t play at 100% because they can’t qualify, neither are preferable outcomes.

But when it comes to knockout competition, the cream doesn't always rise to the top. Only in a round robin league competition can this be assured. When in comes down to a one off game, an injury, a bounce of the ball or a refereeing decision have as much impact as the performance of the teams, especially when the teams are so close in standards.
Over the course of a season, the impact an injury, a bounce of the ball and a referee decision has, is minimalised.

That’s nonsense, a round-robin doesn’t ensure the cream rises to the top at all. In fact, in my opinion it does it less so because it places un-due importance on churning out regular victories against teams which clearly aren’t the best.. Its like comparing Lennox Lewis to Vitali Klitschko. Klitschko has a better win percentage but in reality he has spent most of his career knocking out the bum of the month, Lewis on the other hand fought the big boys but got a bit complacent against a couple of pretty average fighters. Should the losses against Rahman and McCall really take away from the victories against Tyson, Holyfield, Ruddock, Klitschko, Tucker etc? Should Wigan’s ability to churn out victories against London and Salford be the deciding factor over who is better between Leeds and Wigan?

League and play-offs is the right structure in my opinion, it makes the demand that a team and a squad be able to sustain regular form, and in the heavyweight title fight. For me the champion team has to be able to do both, they have to win with regularity, but when the spot light is on them they can’t be weighed, measured, and found wanting.

You have clearly lost the plot and happily on an anti-Wigan rant... How the hell do you compare boxing to a round robin, when you say yourself that boxers pick their fights!!!

Go lie down...

One of smokey's worst ever and that's saying something.

It s demonstrably not the case that if whoever finishes top doesn't win the GF it's their fault. In fact it is simplistic nonsense to suggest it is.

Go back to when Bradford won it from third. Saints and Leeds were above them.

Throughout the season Bradford had struggled with injuries to players like Hape and other key players. They all returned a few weeks prior to the play-offs and so were rested, fit and ready to go. Leeds were at full strength as well.

In contrast Saints who finished top lost Long to broken jaw courtesy of Terry Newton and also lost several other key players such as Sculthorpe. They didn't win a play off game and it wasn't a surprise to anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the sport. Due to their squads injuries and the fact both Leeds and Bradford were full strength Saints didn't stand much of a chance and so it proved.

If people want to argue "that is sport" and "injuries happen" and it was tough luck on Saints that year then fair enough but to suggest it was all down to Saints they didn't win from 1st in 2005 would obviously be a ludicrous thing to do.

Of course fans of the play off system don't even like to say"that is sport" or "injuries happen" as they would then be acknowledging there is far more luck involved in winning a knock out than winning a league which is an argument against their precious play off system.

That’s some very strange paranoia, im not sure what was anti-wigan about it at all. In fact the only time I mentioned them was pretty neutral. My analogy with boxing wasn’t really anything to do with boxers picking their fights, more an illustration that they are defined by the big fights, not by churning through nobodies.

firstly, and pretty famously, Leeds werent at full strength come the end of the 2005 season. Secondly, why do you give saints a pass for their injuries at the end of the year but not Bradfords at the beginning?

But in a round robin you don't avoid anybody!!! DOH!

Who, besides this strange diversion you have jumped on, is talking about avoiding people?

in the hope that third time is the charm and you will understand this time, im not talking about fighters picking their fights, that is completely irrelevant to what I am talking about. I am simpy providing the analogy that like fighters, rugby league teams, are defined not by churning through the also rans but their match ups against the best.

SmokeyTA V DaveO!
Just what I've been waiting for!

I'm backing DaveO on this

PS

(I'm guessing DaveO's reply will be something along the lines of Injuries over a 2/3 week period can totally decimate a season if it happens in the playoffs whereover a "League" season those issues are minimised as there are 24/25+ weeks left to make it up?).

Much the same as making the rewards for finishing top much more lucrative & attractive hence making teams who are competing at the top end of the table more incentivised to win as many games as possible to finish higher.

Although I dont want to go back to a pure league system I prefer it to the current 8 (Or the crazy splitting the season after 11 rounds into groups of 8 rubbish).

I'd rather have the Top 2 and let them have a 3 game play off than the current 8.

As for the use of playoffs between American football teams, and European football teams , a totally erroneous argument as they are a way of bringing different leagues together, not the same people who play all season. So its a completely different thing.

And everyone here knows thats a snide jibe at Wigan et al over the last couple of years when Leeds have won it from 5th.

I would also argue that "Great" teams will be measured in other ways, Challenge Cups won, Winning Trophies in other teams back yards/hemisphere, doing it week in week out and not cheating their fans by only playing when they want to and the players measured against their counterparts from other Hemispheres and how they matched up to them when it mattered.

Each person will look back at those things and make their own judgements to the respective merits of each team they compare.

That's the whole point; injuries at the start can be overcome over a full season, and tend to average out between teams anyway. We could afford to lose, say, Sam, MM and Lockers for 3 games during the season, and it wouldn't much matter if we lost all three games, but if they were missing for the playoffs we'd struggle.

A boxer can pull out of a fight with an injury. Wigan couldn't pull out of the semi final cos Sam T was injured last year could they??

Can't compare the 2 really.

Last years playoff semi is perfect example - our best players last season, McIlorum and Sam missing, and Tommy L only half recovered from broken ankle.

The Challenge Cup also provides teams with the big game, perform on the day, knockout style platform to prove they are that kind of team. Combine that with winning the Championship by finishing top and you win the Double, the ultimate achievement.

If you are going to start behaving like a 15 year old emo girl ill leave you to your tampons, paramore and poetry about how everyone is mean to you.

Its not a snide jibe at Wigan at all, Leeds have lost twice to teams below them in the play-offs, they were the first side to lose in a GF against a 3rd place team, its not more a dig at Wigan than it is a dig a Saints, Wire,and Leeds.

This seems a point smokey wants to ignore, given that basically the only 2 posts he has ignored in this thread say exactly this.

Comparing playoffs in a sport with an unbalanced season (where everyone does not play everyone else) to a sport with a balanced season is pointless, silly and just wasting time.

As i previously said, it would be interesting to see if any body knows of any other balanced season sports that have play offs to decide the champions?

Yeah they also wear funny gloves and dont have a shirt, thats why its an analogy and not just a list of things that are exactly the same.

Here are some more for you, Colin Montgomerie has 31 european tour wins, the 4th most in history, spent 400 weeks in the top 10, topped the european tour earnings list, won the european order of merit a record 8 times including 7 times in succession, 4 european tour player of year awards, and never lost a singles match in the ryder cup. Colin Montgomeries career is defined by the fact that when the bright lights of the title matches were on him, he couldnt get over that line.

Tiger Woods has 78 PGA tour wins, nobody really cares, he has 14 majors, everyone cares.

Asafa Powell has broken the ten-second barrier 88 times, more than anyone else ever (legally) He holds the 5th fastest time ever, and has been a world record holder, he has won commonwealth and IAAF world championship finals. In a few years no-one will remember him because he choked in every world and olympic final he was in.

Usain Bolt has 4 individual olympic medals and is the most famous track and field athlete in the world.

Champions are made in the heat of battle, when the best faced the best with it all on the line. I dont know why we would want to remove that from our game.

between 2007 and 2009 4 points over three seasons separated Leeds and Saints, 4 points. 1, 1, and 2. There was no better, fairer or more entertaining way of separating those two great sides than pitting them against each other in front of 75 thousand people winner takes all.

Why are you not talking about team sports, do they not suit your argument?

Every major rugby competition of either code in the world

BTW we dont play each other the same number of times and havent since super league 2. HTH