Multiple times, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, has speculated about expanding the league’s playoffs. Two more teams would be added if this happened, and according to Goodell himself, the proposal will be getting “serious consideration” (1). This is a bad idea, and if it were to happen, it would take away from the regular season and its meaningfulness, enable worse and undeserving teams to make the playoffs, and the reason Goodell is doing this is only to make more money off of game revenue.
The NFL regular season is meant to be meaningful, entertaining, and important. If this proposal were to go through, the games during this time would lose relevance, as it would be easier to make the playoffs. Personally, I love to watch the regular 16 week season, and I believe making larger playoffs is lowering standards for how good you must perform in the regular season, in order to have a chance to make a run to the Super Bowl.
The playoffs and Super Bowl have always been reserved exclusively for the best teams in the NFL, and that lets the fans to watch only the best and most entertaining teams compete. The past 3 Super Bowl winners have each had a win percentage of more than 0.5625, which is regarded as a successful and good season, yet with more teams getting into the playoffs, teams with win % as low as .500> could slip into the playoffs, even though they’re undeserving (2, 3). It would be horrible to have lackluster organizations be rewarded for mediocre play, which is yet another reason why this playoff system proposal is bound to fall short of what the NFL Playoffs should really be.
Roger Goodell made 44.2 Million dollars in 2012 (4). Is that enough? Apparently not to him, as playoff games bring in more fans, and thus more tickets which cost more money, all going to the league. Adding 2 more games to this earns the NFL millions of dollars, but downgrading the quality of games just for the gain of money you are already swimming in, is greedy (1, 4). That much money is already enough to be set for life on, why is it necessary to do this just in order to profit? This shows how wrong the motives are for this proposal, shedding light on the greedy attitude Goodell takes on when supporting this.
The proposal to expand the National Football League’s playoffs to two more games is a horrible idea. Lacking valid and important motives to go through with it, as well as taking away from what makes this league and its playoffs so special is awful, so it is important not to support this ridiculous idea.