This Week's Column Up

"Sprint At the End Of the Marathon"



[www.elynah.com]

A fine artice!

Just for the sake of quibbling,
[q] The whole idea behind the best-of-seven series in professional sports is that teams are inevitably going to have bad games so they should not be fatally penalized when they do occur. [/q]I always thought that the main idea of a multi-game playoff was to make more money for the owners.

A seven game series is simply a better judge of which team is better than one game. You can still lose a series due to a hot streak or luck but it's less likely.

I guess that doesn't really explain the hot streaks of Calgary, Anaheim, Carolina, et al. in the last few years.

[Q]calgARI '07 Wrote:

I guess that doesn't really explain the hot streaks of Calgary, Anaheim, Carolina, et al. in the last few years.[/q]
I think it would be easier for an NCAA team to run the table with a hot goaltender than it was for Calgary and Anaheim.

Well both parts are clearly true. Yes a longer series gives the better team a higher chance to pass, but there's no doubt that part of the appeal that leads the owners to do it is the higher ticket/advertising/tv revenue. Also, it gives the lower seeded team home revenues as well. Why make some money when you take make 3 or 4 times that?

I don't think the playoff performances of Calgary and Anaheim were flukes. Both teams had good 2nd halves in the respective years of their playoff success, having beaten solid teams in the RS.

A seven game series doesn't guarantee that the best team will win. it just makes it much more likely than a one game playoff.

Money certainly does factor into the playoff decisions in pro sports. No way to deny that.