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Losing battle Chiefs' Hunt not likely to get playoff field expandedPosted: Monday March 24, 2003 9:22 PM
PHOENIX -- Lamar Hunt is about as reasonable and unassuming a man as you'll find in the NFL. The only owner the Kansas City Chiefs -- née Dallas Texans -- have ever had speaks softly at all times and is known for being a superb listener. But Hunt is fighting a losing battle at this week's NFL annual meeting, because those traits don't serve him well in his effort to convince the league that it should expand its playoff field from 12 to 14 teams. Hunt could talk himself blue in the face this week at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and it's still not likely his voice will be heard. There's simply too much opposition to his argument, as well reasoned as it is. "There's always support for expanding the playoffs by teams who don't make the playoffs," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said dismissively Monday, when asked about the playoff-expansion proposal that Kansas City and New England jointly sponsored. Dissed by the commish, who is normally among the most cautious of men. That about sums up the daunting task of persuasion facing Hunt, whose Chiefs haven't qualified for the postseason since 1997, toward the end of the Marty Schottenheimer era. When it comes to the number of playoff teams, the strong sentiment within the league is that less remains more. "Do we want it where everybody gets in the playoffs but one team?" asked Steelers owner Dan Rooney, one of the more level-headed members of the world's most exclusive club. "We have a good system. We ought to keep it. Otherwise, you might as well start the season in December." Truth be known, Hunt isn't really in favor of increasing the size of the NFL's playoff field to 14 teams. Nope. He'd eventually like to see 16 teams qualify. In other words, an unprecedented 50 percent of the league. Why? So the NFL could wave bye-bye to the idea of postseason byes. With 16 playoff teams, everybody would be playing in the first week of the playoffs, with eight big games unfolding and absolutely nobody receiving a free pass into the divisional round. Crazy? Not really. What could be fairer than making everyone travel roughly the same road to the Super Bowl? "For equity of competition, I can make a very strong case that the bye week is very unfair," Hunt said, adding that his Chiefs lost at home in the divisional round the past two times they had first-round byes, in 1995 and '97. "The bye week is contrary to the idea that we try to sell: that in every game, both teams have a fair chance. "It's just a tremendous advantage to have a bye. If for no other reason than you're not exposed to losing a game that first week. Byes are [against] the good competitive level of what we want in sports." Ironically, it's the huge advantage that a first-round bye might give to one team in each conference that will doom Hunt's efforts to see the playoff field expanded to 14 teams. In such a format, only the top-seeded team in each conference will receive a first-round bye -- as opposed to the top two teams in each conference in the current system -- with the other 12 teams pairing off in the wild-card round. "Many clubs are going to view that as moving the competitive disadvantage in the wrong direction, not ameliorating it but exacerbating it," said Tagliabue, showing off his vocabulary once again. "From a competitive standpoint, I think the biggest factor [against the proposal] is having one team in each conference with a bye. There are some owners who think that's a way of foreordaining the two teams in the Super Bowl, and that's not going to be viewed as a positive." Hunt concedes the point, because he knows the 14-team postseason is at odds with his premise regarding competitive fairness. But he's trying to move the league to a 14-team format because he knows it's a stepping stone to 16 qualifiers and no byes. In a league that makes major rule changes in an evolutionary process, progress always comes incrementally. Knowing there's no way the NFL will jump from 12 to 16 playoff teams in one fell swoop, Hunt is willing to split the difference and delay the fighting of his ultimate battle. "Probably not," he answered when asked if he ever could see the league making such a radical move. "Probably 14 is a logical extension." Hunt has been around long enough to know that the league likely won't act to increase its playoff field until it makes sense in the eyes of the NFL's almighty god: television. That's why the playoff-format issue may not be resolved until the league's TV contract is up for renewal after 2005, or at least until the NFL decides it needs a couple more money-making games squeezed into its postseason viewing schedule. But Hunt, one of the AFL's founding fathers and a man who appreciates the role that TV played in the explosion of pro football's popularity in the 1960s and '70s, can't for the life of him figure out why the league doesn't see the financial and marketing wisdom of the no-bye format. "I don't know any business that would say, 'We've got these four best teams, the most attractive teams, with the four best records, and we're not going to put them on television this week,'" Hunt said. "'We're going to put them in the freezer for a week and we're going to be televising lesser teams,' which is what it amounts to. That's very unusual. "Most sports try to feature a Duke or a Kansas or the Lakers or Yankees. And what we're doing is taking our four best teams and saying we're not going to show them on television." But one man's wisdom is another man's folly in the NFL. The league's competition committee made a commitment to review the playoff format in conjunction with a two-year analysis of the new divisional realignment and scheduling format, and that checkup isn't due until 2004. Meaning that Hunt and others who support increasing the playoff field -- like Dallas owner Jerry Jones, Minnesota's Red McCombs and New England's Bob Kraft -- could stand on their heads in Tuesday's scheduled discussion of the issue and they still wouldn't be within a country mile of gaining the necessary votes for passage. "There are a lot of people that are for it, but I don't know if they have enough votes," Rooney said. "You need 24. I don't think they have 24." The bigger-is-better crowd not only doesn't have 24, but they also don't have that fairly important 25th non-voting member of the club: Tagliabue. The commissioner on Monday made it clear where he stands on the playoff-expansion issue, telling the league's full membership that it would be "prudent" to wait at least another year to tackle the 14-team postseason format. "From the fans' standpoint, we've got a pretty good system now," Tagliabue said. "And I say 'pretty good' as a form of understatement. Most everyone in sports recognizes that we have the best playoff system, that the regular season means something, and to get to the playoffs you have to be a good strong football team." Which, come to think of it, might explain why the Detroit Lions are in favor of Hunt's plan. "I know I liked it," said the Lions embattled CEO/president Matt Millen. "I don't know how everybody else felt about it. We're trying to push it to 24 [teams], so we can get in."
Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.
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