It's a question the administrators of every sports league must consider: what's the "best" number of teams to put in the knockout round for our league championship?
For the NBA and the NHL, as well as the college basketball world, the strategy has long been to put in a ton of teams, as many as can be comfortably included, in search of the best TOURNAMENT they can create. Because the two pro leagues play series at each round, it prevents the longshots from advancing unless they're really hot for a LONG time. (For the 68-team NCAA basketball tourney, the "best" team RARELY wins. But the winner usually comes from the top ten or fifteen, at least.)
For Major League Baseball and the NFL, a much lower percentage of the league is invited into the post-season. (For about a decade, by comparison, 16 of the NHL's 21 teams were in the playoffs, so teams winning 30-40% of their games regularly made the playoffs, and the 82-game season was effectively meaningless.) The NFL includes 12 out of its 32 teams; MLB, 10 out of 30. That means that with very rare exceptions (we're looking at YOU, NFC South!), the teams that make the post-season "deserves" to be there in the sense that they have winning records, and that they've shown that there's at least a chance that they could win the whole thing. (In contrast, no #16 team in the men's NCAAs has ever won even a single game in the tournament! Talk about undeserving! And they want to expand the playoffs? Please....) In both pro football and baseball, the last-seeded team has won the whole thing, and recently, too. (See: Steelers, Pittsburgh; Giants, San Francisco.) Most observers think this percentage is about right, if a lack of call for 'playoff reform' is an indicator. (FCS football, as well as Divisions 2 and 3, have similar arrangements.)
FBS football, however, has always been contrary.
Remember, less than twenty-five years ago, there WAS no true "post-season" in major college football. They relied on polls of newspapermen and coaches to name their champion, resulting in split championships, violent disagreements, and yearly controversy. The junkies of the game would say that those arguments were precisely what made the game so exciting. But reason began to make inroads in 1992, after two straight split national championships, and the "Bowl Coalition" and then the "Bowl Alliance" made some half-hearted attempts to match the top two teams in a bowl game. With the realization that...well, that there was more money to be made by joining rather than fighting, the Rose Bowl joined in 1998 to create the Bowl Championship Series (running out of names!), which used various, ever changing criteria to choose "the two best teams" to meet in a championship game. Now, it was (sort of) decided on the field.
Yeah, but...
Now, of course, we have a four team tournament, still with no more definitive criteria than "the four best teams" as selected by a room full of experts, to decide the national title. Purists will tell you that the small number of entrants makes every game of the season, and guarantees that they will have a deserving champion. Others, of equally honorable motives, say it should be eight or even sixteen teams in said playoff. (Still others of a different bent notice the potential money to be made from more playoff games...) And, of course, there are a few old-timers who want to turn the clock back and count votes. Who's right?
Who knows? Depends on your taste. Do you want the playoffs to reward the SEASON'S best team? Or the best at the END of the season? Or are you more interested in having an EXCITING post-season? It's hard to argue that there's a problem going to eight or sixteen when the FCS (with the same kind of college kids and about the same number of teams involved) invites TWENTY-FOUR teams into the postseason successfully. By percentage, since the basketball folks take about one-fifth of their clientele (68 of 320-something), 24 out of 128 would be about right. (But old-timers would have conniption fits!)
In the end, it's whatever you prefer. It's what the PURPOSE of the postseason is for you. We have our own preferences, but frankly, it's not that terrible to have a variety as you move from sport to sport! And it could be WORSE, purists! Wasn't it Indiana who used to allow EVERY basketball team into the state high school playoffs, all in one big bracket? How about one big ten-round football tournament with all 759 four-year college teams involved, from FBS through NAIA? Or even an eight-round event with just the 252 division 1 teams (and we can add the top three D2 teams and the D3 champion to round up to a perfect 256!)!
Pick your poison.
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