Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazin69
I can't imagine that a race to the bottom is anything to aspire to. Especially as the entire reason the BA and HL expanded things so was because they were failing leagues that had just needed mergers to absorb rivals, weren't drawing flies to regular season and had their championship finals airing on late-night tape delay.
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People have forgotten, but for many years the NFL ran similarly to MLB. Only the first-place team in each of its two divisions made the post-season, and if two teams finished with identical records, a tiebreaking playoff game was held to determine the division winner. In 1965 the 15-team NFL had a 8-team division and 7-team division, and the NFL championship consisted of those two division winners.
This changed in 1966 when the league expanded to 16 teams and realigned into four 4-team divisions, doubling the number of post-season qualifiers. From there the gradual post-season expansion began.