SCOTT JACOBS

In 1939 college hoops instituted what would become the NCAA tournament, an 8 team single elimination playoff, to crown a champion. There were 3 rounds and none of the games were televised.  Why? Well, television didn’t exist at the tourney’s birth. Twelve years later, the tournament was expanded to 16. A few years later it expanded again. By 1975 there were 32 teams. In 1979, the season that many believe changed the game (think Larry versus Magic), the field was increased to 40. A season later that became 48. Three seasons later it was over 50. It kept expanding, it kept growing. TV and ESPN helped lead to its explosion. The 24 hour sports cycle made it an unstoppable unofficial national holiday.

By 1985, the little tournament birthed in 1939, had grown from 8 teams to 64 (8 times as much) and it wasn’t so much a playoff, it was a marathon. College hoops’ popularity had exploded and March Madness was in full bloom.

For 15 years college hoops stuck with that system and it was widely accepted as the best post-season in sports.  Then came a one game play-in in 2001, and the scary, outlandish idea of expanding to a cool 96 just a few years ago. Fortunately, smarter heads prevailed, and the field simply added 3 more play-in games, creating the First Four to nicely balance the much-hyped Final Four.

No longer was it necessary to be great, merely above average had become good enough.  VCU took their First Four ticket and seized the opportunity, shooting the lights out to an improbable, almost unexplainable Final Four appearance.

The underdog fan in all of us was pleased, while old-fashioned traditionalists were bothered.  We ended up with a Final Four which included the Rams and Butler. These were not the 4 best teams. Everyone knew that.  These 4 teams had merely survived.

More exciting? Yes. More games? Yes. More interest? Yes. College hoops had scored another outlet for Cinderella to squeak through, and everybody loves a good Cinderella. But by the semi-finals, the elusive Final Four had given us 2 of them. As a sports fan, it felt wrong. It was too much. The best teams were supposed to have knocked them off, and retain normalcy in the pecking order. Traditional powers, who had traditionally outstanding seasons were left on the outside looking in, despite their superior overall resume. All because they stumbled once along the way.

Now we have more bubble teams, more excitement for schools that once never had a shot, and the most wild post-season in all of sports.

But rarely do the best teams win anymore. Even rarer is it for all 4 number 1 seeds to make it to the Final Four. Fans call this parity, traditionalists call this depressing.

Which is why there’s a major divide between those who love baseball’s new post-season proposal (expected to go into effect this coming year) of two more wild card teams, and those who hate it.

New age fans, sticklers for maxing out more games and more races are ecstatic. Teams notoriously clipped from the post-season because of the behemoths that they can’t financially compete with, now have renewed hope.  More teams get into the playoffs which means two more games, and more cities tuning in late (better attendance figures, better TV ratings), hoping their team can get into the dance.

Traditionalists are sick to their stomach.  What started out as the World Series in 1903 is about to balloon to 10, a number not nearly as extreme as college hoops expansion, but that is until you consider the context.

From 1903-1968 you won your league or you went home.  The AL and NL didn’t play each other, expansion had yet to take over the game, and there was roughly half the teams there are today. You won your league, you went right to the World Series. Other teams didn’t collect $200 or pass go. They were done.

Like anything, some years were more exciting than others.  But baseball wanted a few more participants in their post-season, so in 1969, they expanded to 2 divisions in both the AL and NL, and a Championship series was born as a prelude to the World Series.  All of a sudden the best record didn’t guarantee you a Fall Classic berth.  Imagine traditionalists and how they reacted then?

From 1969-1984 fans began adjusting to the new system and its best of 5 series format. Then in 1985, baseball expanded each series to 7 games. Some were probably annoyed by that.  Then in 1993, the Marlins and Rockies joined the sport as expansion mates, and baseball forever changed its ways, introducing its 3 division format and a –gasp – Wild Card in each league.

All of a sudden you didn’t have to win your league or your division for that matter, to get in. You could be second place. There was strife then. Rewarding a second place team? Preposterous! But alas the sport had grown, from 16 in 1903 to 28 by 1993.  It was almost like watching evolution.

And a quick side note on that 1903 season – had there been an CS that year, the Boston Americans, 14.5 games ahead of the Philadelphia Athletics, would have had to beat Philly in a series just go get to the Fall Classic. Over a team they had shown themselves superior to by nearly 15 games.

1903-ians would have scoffed at the notion. Looking back it would’ve been ridiculous. But times were different then. People didn’t even have cars!

So is introducing a 5^th playoff team in each league evolution or devolution? Is it natural to expand your playoff field as your overall field increases? Obviously, TV revenue wasn’t taken into account at the turn of the century, because no one knew what the bleep a TV was. People were still excited about silent pictures.

Baseball is introducing more teams to the ball, undoubtedly because they expect the one game playoff in each league to generate more buzz, and it goes without saying that more teams, means more opportunities, which gives more fan-bases the chance to dream big.

I’ve read the arguments from both sides – and the big one against expanding is that it dilutes the field, further blurs what it means to make the playoffs and win your division, and merely sidesteps the fact that the Wild Card is what got us into this quandary in the first place.  Some have argued that second place should garner no spoils. Win your division or get out of the way. People remember who won the pennant back in the day. Nowadays, winning your regular season crown in your league is a footnote on a website.

Great. Here’s a cookie, now go beat that Wild Card team (or if they’re in your division), another division winner.

Stop! Says baseball.  With the introduction of a 5^th team, their belief is that the 1-game winner take all free for all will force teams to go all out, thus disposing them of their best pitcher, and weakening their bullpen, assuming they advance.  Others have suggested, that if you expanded the divisional round to 7 games, it would help restore balance to the giants over the cinderellas.

While St. Louis was a great story, their overall 2011 season was pretty forgettable (and they would have been a blip in the pre-Wild Card years, where the Giants once won 103 games and didn’t get in). They tore up the NL down the stretch, as the Braves bowed down and took it towards the end. It led to the greatest day of regular season baseball I can ever recall, another point of emphasis that this expansion, injures. The Red Sox and Braves don’t completely collapse last season if they still make it into the field as the second Wild Cards. And Tampa’s unbelievable rally would’ve been another footnote in history, because the game wouldn’t have meant a thing.

Which leaves us with this: you can’t please everyone. You can’t appease owners who pay hundreds of millions dollars for their franchise and want another way to win by letting in just the top 2 teams. You can’t please fans who want parity, but also want the top deserving teams. Baseball is already on a tilted scale as is, given the lack of a salary cap, free agency and the explosion of millionaires has flipped traditionalism on its respective butt.

So in essence, by giving each league another playoff spot, you give your smaller market teams a better chance to compete, there-by leveling out just a bit the financial gap of a joke that is the sport’s economic system.

You can’t argue for tradition but bypass the fact that free agency, expansion, and TV has changed the game. Likewise, you can’t argue for expansion, and argue that the best team will have a better chance of winning. It is in that regard that the BCS kind of has it right when they pit 1 vs 2, sans a playoff system. Some years, like this one, the gap between 2 and 3 is miniscule and debate rages.  But it’s the only big-time organization that doesn’t let a party crasher knock out the heavyweight in the playoffs.  Because there is no playoffs.

Say what you will about the BCS – and I’ve said plenty – but it’s the closest thing sports has of guaranteeing us 1 versus 2.  The NFL as we’ve seen is a beacon of parity, and winning the division and getting that home game really doesn’t mean what it once did (Just look up the first decade of the new millennium for countless examples).  In the NBA the better team usually wins, but in 1999 the 8 seed Knicks made the NBA Finals.  In the NHL it’s barely even an upset when an 8 or 7 takes out the top or 2^nd best seed.

And in the NCAA, there’s so many games that one slip-up, and the best team is extinguished for an off-night.

Of course in sports there’s also injuries, unbalanced schedules, off-the-field issues, trades, cuts, and so many other factors that can get in the way. Comparing one era to another, while fun, is usually trivial. The games were different back then, the players weren’t as strong, didn’t have the same technological advances, training, etc. Loyalty was expected, not applauded. Its apples to oranges.

So maybe, after all of this, we should just accept sports for what it is: a fun game where expansion happens. We are a country littered with obesity, and we like more, more, and a little more. Expansion is exactly that: more.

It’s like in little league, when every team and every kid gets a trophy just for competing.

We’re looking to make everyone happy when that’s impossible. But the more teams you let in, the more that go home happy.

Is that what we want? Hope for all?  Or do we want the best handful of teams to duke it out in a system that rewards their regular season greatness?

Sports don’t seem to care as much about the latter anymore.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing, simply depends who you ask.

Photos: AP, Getty

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