The problem with the Super Bowl bye week is that it kills the momentum of the NFL playoffs. Why not take a cue from the World Cup and have a 3rd place game?
Personally, I'd love to turn on Saints vs Patriots, live from Honolulu tomorrow to satisfy my football fix.
There are two problems with this.
1. The teams won't care
2. The fans won't care
1. If Belichick doesn't care and Tom Brady's not playing, the game's not going to be worth watching. The only thing I could think of is to award the winner of the 3rd place game, with the better draft pick. But even that--the 29th instead of the 30th pick--isn't worth the risk of
injury of playing a game once you're eliminated from the playoffs. I'm not sure how to make the teams care--perhaps you could make a deal with a car company and give every player a brand new car. Would they care about that? Probably not.
2. The other problem is that fans don't generally care about preseason games, so I'm not sure how many would care about a postseason exhibition game.
The World Cup works because countries are playing for national pride and 3rd place is viewed as much better than 4th. But the same doesn't work in the NFL--"If you're not first, you're last."
So I know that it can't work, but I still wish it could. If there's something that I'm missing, maybe we can make a proposal to Mr. Goodell.
What about third place gets the third pick in the draft, then bump everybody else down? Third vs. 30th is a big difference, no?
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