And with that I realize what I said went completely over your head and have no idea why I even bother responding to a simple minded fool like you. Jesus Christ, finish highschool and learn some basic math and logic and develop some reading comprehension. In fact you should get off your computer right now and don't ever respond to someone's post again, until you work on that last part. This is why I hate attempting to have intelligent discussions in forums. If you ever found out just how ignorant you are you'd die from embarrassment. Please don't have offsprings.
Well some of the reasons it might match up in the past and not now is because in the past you had many more teams doubling up, phins made 3 in a row, vikings made 3/4, steelers 4/6, broncos 2, 49ers 2, cowboys 3/4, bills 4, broncos 2, pats 3/4. And now nobody was gone back to back since 05 you have steelers seahawks, colts bears, giants pats, steelers cardinals, saints colts, packers steelers, giants pats. You don't have any back to back appearances, but the closest you have is Steelers 3/6. Giants/Pats 2/5, Colts 2/4. So few teams have put together dominant runs. The two teams that probably could have, the Pats and Steelers were derailed by injuries and the Steelers having a young QB. In 05, Seahawks were 13-3, Steelers 11-5. Because of tiebreakers, Steelers ended up the 6th not the 3rd and 11-5 could have gotten the Steelers #2 seed in the NFC depending on tiebreakers. In 06, Bears were 13-3 and the Colts 12-4. So while seeding was off, their records were very close. In 07, huge disparity 16-0 vs 10-6. But the 10-5 team played the 15-0 team very very closely to end the season. 08, not much to see here. 09, Colts 14-2 and Saints 13-3. Again seeds differ, but actual records very close. 10, 12-4 vs 10-6. Mind you the 10-6 packers could have been in first place in 4 other divisions. 11, 13-3 vs 9-7, but the 9-7 beat the 13-3 team once already missing a WR and RB. As you see some years have a huge disparity when records come into play, but other years the difference between the teams in the super bowl is one or two games but considering what division they are in and conference their seeds can be drastically different. While yes it is strange that 1-6 has won one super bowl each over the last 6 years, isn't it odd that the NFC has won the coin toss 14 years in a row heading into the previous super bowl. Sometimes it just happens. Are we to suppose the NFL makes sure the NFC wins the coin toss? 12 teams only started making the playoffs in 1990, so that makes sample size smaller, and divisions realigned in 2002 making the sample size for recent results even smaller. We don't know how much this could affect the results of the playoffs. You could be right the NFL forced parity, but they might have done this with salary cap, divisions realignments. Who knows, but it is much different to compare the situations in the 70s to the situations now and try to draw a statistical analysis. The best would be since 2002 where division alignment and # of wild card teams has not changed. We just reached 10 years of this, so very very small sample size.
absolutely, they sure didn't play like a 9-7 team in jan/Feb. If completely healthy(who is?) and playing all year like that they win 14 games or so but in a division that wasn't great they did go 9-7. Either way you guys got it done and we didn't.
I also did the same analysis using regular season record, better seeds & record, etc. Winning record probabily % is slightly better than seeding but very close. For example from 1976 to 2005, the team with the better winning record won 79.2% of all Superbowls and lost 21.8% of the time. Winning record has historically been a very good indicator of SuperBowl success. In the case of the same seeds facing off, the advantage usually went to the team with the better regular season record. But from 2005 to 2012, the better record also lost the majority of the time. Now you could easily explain this with strength of schedule, but when it comes to seeding, it no longer explains it because the 1 game advantage remains. In fact when you consider both, better winning record and seed, they lost 89% over the past 8 years with the only exception being Pittsburgh over Cardinals. The issue is if you look at the chances of winning any particular SuperBowl, it's roughly 50/50. From 1976-2005 the #1 seed has had a 56% historical winning percentage, #2 seed 44%, and #3 and #4 were a dead even 50/50. So basically history teaches us there is hardly any advantage once you make the Superbowl. So the big red flag isn't that lower seeds are winning all of a sudden, but rather the #1 seed as well as the team with the better record or seed is losing at about 83%. The lower seeds shouldn't have an advantage either. And it's not just winning that is the issue, but rather the appearances in the Superbowl. Making the Superbowl. When you consider the fact that in the past 8 years, 10 of the 16 seeds that have made the SuperBowl have been #1 and #2 seeds, and the winning chances are historically 50% for any seed, there is a big red flag when the lower seed wins 86% of the matches and the lower seed and lower record wins 89% of them. It should still be roughly 50/50. And if there was an advantage over the time span, it should still favor the top 2 seeds because of the bye week. Even over the past 8 years the top 2 seeds appeared in the SuperBowl at a ratio of 5-3. Which is off compared to history, but we can assume that might have something to do with the lower importance of the regular season winning record. For example, in any 8 year time span prior to 2005, the highest rate of appearance in a Superbowl for any seed other than the top 2, was 25%, between 1998-2005(3 Nr.4 seeds and 1 Nr.3 seed ). Before that it was 19%. Over the last 8 years they are appearing at a rate of 38%. And again, NO changes have been made to the playoffs system. The issue isn't just that they are taking it all, but that they're even there this often in the first place. Take the Olympics as an example. The USA and other large countries win more medals than any other country primarily because they enter the most competitions and compete in the largest number of events. So they should win the most medals. That is normal. Same thing with seeds. The top 2 seeds appear in far more SuperBowls, so they should also win more of them over a particular time span. Well, that's no longer the case. And the problem is, no changes have been made to the playoffs system since 1976 that might have explained the pattern changing. There were no changes in the 2000's and certainly no changes in 2005 to the playoffs where the strangest patterns and anomalies started taking place. The easiest way to see what I'm talking about, is to visualize it: Notice the typical pattern both in the winning and losing columns in blue. Primarily dominated by the #1 and #2 seeds. That's normal. Even when you have the #1 or #2 seed win or lose multiple Superbowls in a row, it's not really unusual because of how much they have historically dominated the appearances in Superbowls. Notice the rarity of any non-top seed. But now notice the difference in red. The red flag is the seed parity you see in the past several years in the winning column, especially all 6 individual seeds winning a SuperBowl in 6 years. Those are lottery odds. This never even came close to happening prior to this time span. Not even in the losing column, which statistically has a higher chance of seeing this pattern show up. And once again, even if you were to assume near perfect strength between seeds, the bye week still makes this pattern an improbable one because the playoff system is designed to give the top 2 seeds an advantage of playing 1 less game. Seeds 1 &2 only have to win 3 playoff games(including the SB) to win the SuperBowl. Seeds 3-6 still have to compete in and win a total of 4 playoff games to win a Superbowl. That has not changed. The losing column maintains the same pattern which is also very weird. In order to have more bottom seeds win superbowls more frequently, not only would some sort of change been necessary to the playoffs system(not just the regular season), but one would expect to also have more bottom seeds appear in and lose more superbowls. But that's not happening either. Now reports of game fixing for either odds or big market teams go back as far as the 1940's, but seeding and winning correlations usually behaved fairly normal. Since 2005, things have gotten really crazy and the biggest change that took place in 2005-2006 was the flexible scheduling system where basically the games that draw the biggest TV ratings get the prime time spots. But what does that have to do with the playoffs and SuperBowl? Or does it have everything to do with it? The NFL couldn't possibly be interested in having record-breaking audiences in the playoffs and SuperBowls leading to record breaking sales and billion in profits...could they?
