The crossover rewards a team for finishing fourth in their division, while punishing another for finishing third in theirs.
It’s madness.
The crossover rewards a team for finishing fourth in their division, while punishing another for finishing third in theirs.
It’s madness.
We see it all the time in the NFL with the Wild cards. Who cares. Why should you get a prize for finishing third in your division?
And what about if that fourth place team has to play a weaker 2nd place team in the other division than the team ahead of them has to play against a better 2nd place team in their own division? That is madness.
No system is perfect and there will be outliers once in a while.
So two eastern teams or of four are eliminated automatically, but only one western team out of five? Sounds fair. If you’re from the west.
Not automatically. Only if the 4th place West team has a better record than the 3rd place East team.
And the reverse would apply too: If the 4th place East team has a better record than the 3rd place West team, then all 4 East teams make the playoffs and only the top 2 West teams.
Each team in the league plays 10 games against the West and 8 against the East. So shouldn’t it be madness not to take the teams with the best records from that uniform schedule in the playoffs?
Then I misread what you wrote. It looked to me like you said four western teams play, 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 the first weekend, with the winners playing the following weekend, while the top two Eastern teams play each other those same two weekends. I didn’t see anything about a crossover
Yeah, the context was from earlier posts, referring to when the 4th place west team has a better record than the 3rd place east team.
I definitely would not want it to always be that way. But I can understand why west fans didn’t like it when 2 of their teams were automatically eliminated while only 1 east team was. The crossover mostly eliminates that, but it’s not perfect.
Well right now the division winners only have to sit for two weeks since they get a bye the first week.
But I like the suggestion because it creates an extra “pre-playoff” game for which tickets could be sold. Nor is there any need whatsoever to extend the season to accommodate the game, quite simply because it should be played mid-week. After all, the Western Conference championship was historically a best of three series played over eight or nine days, and for the first couple of decades after the CFL adopted an interlocking schedule teams came East or West and played two games over three or four games to keep travel costs down. That’s the Canadian way.
And if the teams thus squeaking into the Playoffs bleat “Unfair!”, tough! They could have avoided the extra game by finishing higher in the standings but somehow contrived not to do so.
Got it. The problem with the limitation on embedded quotes?
I lived in Calgary for years, and got very, very tired of hearing “the western final is the REAL Grey Cup.” And I really hated the crossover at first, but I’ve gotten near the point of acceptance now. You’re right, it’s definitely not perfect, but I can’t think of a better approach.
Right now someone has a bye to finish the season. It’s not a very good chance, but if Sask got first, and they have the bye for the final week, they would not play for 3 weeks. almost happened to Ottawa last year. I agree, this format is the best option. I never wanna see a two game total point playoff. Some years could kill sales and ratings.
Only other option is one big division, 1 and 2 get bye’s while 3vs6 and 4 vs 5. That is the most fair, however it takes away from two divisions meeting in the Grey Cup, even though possibly two teams from the same division could meet in the final.
IMO, leave it as it is, the crossover team should be called a wild card team. Its hard for that team to win two on the road anyway. It does suck when that crossover team still ends up with a better record than the top two teams in the other dvision, like last year, but we do see it all the time in other sports. One division last year, would of had Calgary and Winnipeg with bye’s, Edmonton hosting Ottawa in semi final 1 and Toronto at Sask in Semi final two. No way Toronto wins the cup past year with that format. almost would have been a guarantee all West Grey Cup. Does that hurt the league? I don’t think so as this doesn’t always happen, so, just leave it, last year I was biased with the Riders on the road two straight weeks against teams with worse records, however in the end I was ok with it at this time.
True but is it turning off some potential fans that there is a system that assists teams in the East and did the Toronto Grey Cup win have any value to the winners .
If the answer is yes to the first and no to the second it needs to be changed .
The first gives better credibility to the league and the second making the eventual win be an accomplishment that is more difficult and significant .
If Sask won the East last year I don’t think it would have hurt the league however they should have played a more appropriate seeded opponents on their way to the final just like Toronto should have last year .
A fifth team out east would help, I think.
And I think a schedule that is more heavily weighted against one’s own division would help. Not much chance of 4 western teams having better records than the top eastern team if those eastern teams were playing, say, 12 games against other east teams instead of the 8 they do now.
But why?
10 teams.
18 regular season games.
Home and away games against every team in the league to make those 18 games.
Then rank the teams based on regular season record. No divisions. Reward the best records for playoff seeding.
Seems ideal to me.
There is definitely logic and equity to that home-and-away against each team each year type of schedule, but I would still prefer to maintain the divisions and re-establish the mystique that used to exist between them.
If each team played 12/13 games against its own division, we would really get to see who ranks where within the division. It would also reduce travel costs for what that’s worth and ensure that more match-ups feature two teams in the same or similar time zones, which should help TV numbers. I mean how many Haligonians will stay up to watch their team play the Lions in Vancouver when the game starts at 10 or 11 pm local time?
CFL fans are so self conscious about the way that the league is perceived by non-CFL fans.
It’s the quirkiness and kookiness that make the CFL unique and great.
Just like the Rouge, having nine teams divided up unevenly into two divisions is a large part of what puts the C in CFL.
Don’t fight it. Embrace the weird.
It bothers me when people use words like “kooky”, “weird”, “wacky”, “quirky”, etc. to describe the Canadian game (especially when it’s Canadian sports writers) because it seems to denote that our game is a strange version of the US game (and therefore come across as pejorative).
Technically, our game came first (Canadian rugby football) and an early form of that game was introduced into the US (which was developed into the early form of US football, via Camp et al).
Even with adapting some ideas from the US game (Burnside’s rules), the game was still unique. It has only been since the early to mid-50s, when the game became much more closer to the American game that it began to be compared directly to it (and regarded as a version of that game).
Anyway, just had to get that off my chest.
Continue with the discussion.
Agreed. I don’t find the CFL quirky or weird. To me, it’s the standard for football.
Completely agree PTBO but then some people just watch American football for the most part and in that case it would seem that some of the Canadian rules and strategies are quirky etc. Also some don’t have a clue about the history of Canadian football.
Thank you for this post.
Completely agree.
The game was created in Canada and modified by Americans after it was introduced to them - especially the reduction in the size of the field.
For me, they both have positives and negatives relative to each other, but neither should be referred to as quirky or kooky.
Great. All the more reason to embrace it the way it is, instead of constantly trying to make it more palpable to people that aren’t CFL fans.