Vote to add playoff teams postponed
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star
ORLANDO, Fla. — Lamar Hunt’s quest to expand the NFL playoff field by two teams will live to see another day.
How many more days is another matter. Before the end of the league meetings Wednesday, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue postponed a vote on the Chiefs’ proposal to expand the playoff field in each conference from six to seven teams.
The issue will go back for further study and could come to a vote at the league’s May meetings.
“He wanted more time to focus on it and have the television people look at it because it certainly would have implications for TV whether it goes on the networks or the NFL Network,” Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson said.
Still, the issue appears to have no more support leaguewide than in other years.
“I don’t sense it has more support,” said Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, co-chairman of the NFL’s competition committee. “I sense the league office wanted to spend some time on the television aspects of 14 (teams).”
The influential Tagliabue also is against the proposal. He believes the current playoff field of 12 teams is the right amount.
“When you go beyond that, you get into dilution and other issues we shouldn’t be getting into,” Tagliabue said. “I’ve never thought the idea of expanding the playoffs was compelling.”
The Chiefs counter the dilution argument by pointing to last season’s playoff success of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers were the sixth and last AFC team to make the playoffs, but they won three playoff games for the conference championship and then beat Seattle in the Super Bowl.
The Chiefs are also among the teams concerned over last season’s growing trend of playoff teams resting their star players once their playoff seed was secure.
“We think with only one team getting a bye in the first round of the playoffs, that would facilitate more competitive games at the end of the season rather than teams resting players,” Peterson said.
Some owners are troubled by the idea of giving a much-coveted first-round playoff bye to only one team in each conference, thereby giving the No. 1 seeds, in theory, an even larger advantage.
“As we know, having a bye doesn’t guarantee you’ll advance,” said Peterson, referring to the Chiefs’ playoff losses as the AFC’s No. 1 seed in 1995 and 1997.
If the proposal doesn’t pass this year, the rest of the NFL can probably look for Hunt to push it again next year.
“It doesn’t frustrate me that it stays on the radar because sometimes in our league that’s how good changes have occurred,” McKay said. “I think Lamar Hunt has proven that if you continue to pound away at submitting some type of proposal, you might get it and it might be in the league’s best interest, whether it’s a two-point conversion or whatever.”
No change will be made for next season, but the NFL might change the way it seeds teams in the playoffs for the 2007 season. There is growing sentiment around the league that a wild-card team with a superior record to a division champion should have the benefit of a home game in the first round.
Last year, 12-4 Jacksonville finished second in the AFC South behind Indianapolis, but the Jaguars qualified for the playoffs as a wild-card team. The Jaguars played at AFC East champion New England, 10-6, in the first round and lost 28-3.
