JohnHenry wrote:I don't agree with putting all the teams into one division....for what reason? So the 5th-place western team can bump the 2nd-place eastern team out of a playoff spot, because they have one more win (but are still likely a losing team?)
Take a look at this season, with 3 eastern teams fighting it out for 2 playoff spots and the 1st-place bye. With only one division, those eastern teams would be fighting for 5th, 6th and 7th place...which hardly would drum up much excitement for the fans. The East/West Classic is the biggest sporting event in Canada each year, there is little need to change the Grey Cup format or tinker with success.
But you're assuming all other things being equal, which wouldn't necessarily be true. It's like when a team's scoring drive early in Q2 stalls with goal to go, so they kick a chip shot three points instead. Then they go on to lose the game by, say, two or three points, and people will say, "Gee, they would have won that game if they'd gotten a TD there." But this assumes the rest of the game would have played out in the same fashion — which is almost certainly false. Coaches coach to the score and make decisions —
e.g., whether to punt or kick a FG, whether to gamble on 3rd down when it's a long yard, whether to go for two, whether to run some sort of fake or trick play — based on current game circumstances, so by necessity it almost certainly wouldn't play out the same way.
Likewise I see a similar flaw in your argument. Eastern teams generally don't strive for regular season excellence right now to the same extent as western teams simply because they don't need to. In the east you can finish second and get a home playoff game with a comparatively mediocre record. Sometimes you can even pull off first place and get a bye. But if everybody were in the same playoff pool I think you'd see this start to change. It might take a few years but as I said in my last post above the E/W competitive imbalance would become less lopsided over time. You'd still get some years with better western teams but over time things would average out. As for the GC being the country's biggest annual sporting event, I'm not so sure the east/west angle is the main reason for this. It might have been in the past but I think times are changing.
Another thing is, right now, eastern teams are relatively poor draws in the west — certainly this is true here where games against teams like Ham & Tor regularly rank among our worst in attendance, and often by a rather significant margin. Part of the reason for this is that these teams are often less competitive than western rivals, so they don't really capture fan imagination as effectively. While winning matters, fans simply don't care as much about wins over the sad sacks. But if these eastern teams were forced to boost their competitive level as would be the case in a one-division league, I think you'd see the gate improve for these games and get closer to what western teams usually draw.
And to answer your pointed question: if 5W > 2E — which btw is NOT the case this year, and in fact has only happened once (in 1981, the first year of full interlocking) since both divisions began playing equal numbers of games 40 years ago — then I would say that YES, they deserve a playoff berth over the weaker 2E team because they're playing basically the same schedule: 10 games against western teams and eight against eastern. It's not like in other larger leagues where you always play most often within your own division and the records can't be compared as readily. Conversely I would also argue 4E > 2W means the 4E team deserves a berth (and a higher one over 2W if the current balanced schedule is being used, assuming 2W qualifies). So I'm not just being pro-west in my arguments.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
