Which sport has the best playoffs?

The other day, on ESPN.com’s Page 2, Eric Neel wrote a timely piece questioning which sport has the best playoffs. With the NCAA tourney in full swing toward New Orleans, the NHL and NBA regular seasons wrapping up, the NFL thinking of expanding the number of teams in their playoffs, and all baseball fans dreaming of their team in the postseason, now is certainly a convenient time to examine the relative merits of each sport’s postseason tournament. Neel’s argument had flaws and failed to analyze several of the key factors that make playoffs great. I have taken it upon myself to correct his oversight and once and for all, decide which sport truly does have the best playoffs.

Let’s start with the combatants. The big 6. No need to go further. A brief rundown:
MLB: 8 teams out of 30, 3 rounds w/ no byes (1 best of 5, 2 best of 7), prize is ring & $$
NFL: 12 out of 32, 3 rounds w/ 4 byes, one game only, prize is ring
NBA: 16 out of 29, 4 rounds no byes (1 best of 5, 3 best of 7), prize is ring & $$
NHL: 16 out of 30, 4 rounds no byes (all best of 7), prize is the Cup
NCAA hoops: 65 out of 200+, 6 rounds no byes, one game only, prize is the hat & shirt
NCAA football: 2 out of 150+, one game winner take all, prize is the hat & shirt

For the analysis, we’ll rely on the standard 4 factors essential to any great sporting event:
-Viagra factor – which playoff makes it easiest to stay up all night long if necessary?
-The yellow brick road has potholes factor – which playoff is fairest to the best teams in the regular season yet has genuine surprises every year.
-Dementia factor – which playoff creates players, moments and/or teams that you’ll still talk about after you’ve forgotten everything else in your life
-Bandwagon factor – which playoff is best to watch if your team isn’t in it or loses early.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Viagra Factor: We all know baseball players love Viagra, Rafael Palmeiro tells us that nearly every day, but the game itself is in dire need of the little blue pill. Playoff & World Series games start so late you can’t stay up past the fifth inning even if you really want to, Thunderstix and rally monkeys be damned. Tension mounts throughout a baseball game like in no other sport, but somehow the only things that mount in playoff baseball are my eyelids over my eyeballs.

The yellow brick road has potholes factor: Again, baseball players like to follow nicely laid out routes, why else paint baselines around the diamond, as if the bases actually might move and runners may not know where to find them. In the playoffs though, mighty regular season teams routinely go down to lesser teams who are simply better built for short series. The baseball regular season remains the fairest test in all sports, unwinding like a long slow summer drink. The postseason is a shot of whiskey, a shock to the baseball system. Teams often have trouble making the transition and succumb to lesser teams, especially in the best of 5 first round, but in general, the baseball playoffs strike a good balance between the boredom of form holding and the excitement of upsets, I mean Anaheim vs San Francisco?

Dementia factor: I swear the last thing I’ll remember before I go is that my school scheduled an open house that I had to attend with my parents the very same night as game 7 of the 79 World Series. Through constant complaining and threatened school strikes, somehow the crisis was avoided I made it back in time for the game. Now imagine if I had witnessed Mazeroski, Gibson, Joe Carter, Reggie hit 3 in a row, Bobby Thomson, Carlton Fisk, the list goes on. If you can stay awake, baseball will usually make it worth your while.

Bandwagon factor: I’ve had tickets to World Series games and not gone because my team lost and didn’t make it. Several years, I haven’t even watched it on TV. With rich teams doing most of the winning and players less connected to reality then ever, baseball rates very low on the bandwagon scale.

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Viagra Factor: Football does it right. No late nights, afternoons mostly. Even their recent move to evening playoff games doesn’t leave us comatose on the couch by the 4th quarter. Even if a game went past midnight, fans would have no problem staying alert. Watching playoff football requires such adrenaline and emotional investment, you actually need time after the game to cool down before you can sleep.

The yellow brick road has potholes factor: Upsets happen in the playoffs, but with byes and strong homefield advantages, the table is decidedly tilted in the favor of the better teams. A wild card team that has to play three games all on the road is at a huge disadvantage to a bye team that gets to play all its games at home. Still, the emotion of football and the one and done format allow for upsets and surprises do happen. Of all the sports, a playoff game is played most like a regular season game in the NFL. But build in the advantages better teams have and form generally holds. Upsets happen, but they are always a shock and too few and far between.

Dementia factor: Oh yeah, the NFL will stick with you. It’s not as individual a sport as baseball so instead of remembering game ending homeruns we recall last minute drives or dominating defenses. In fact, you don’t even have to watch the game live. By the time you’ve watched the nonstop NFL Films highlights of the game for the hundredth time, you’ll swear you were at the game and sat next to a player’s wife while wearing a cheesehead. You’ll definitely remember the 69 Jets, the Purple People Eaters, the Steel Curtain, da Bears, and the Niners either in your dreams or your nightmares.

Bandwagon factor: There’s nothing quite like bandwagon jumping in football and there is one reason for it: gambling baby!! Put money on the game and soon you’ll be no better than Pavlov’s dog: every incompletion or missed tackle results in you screaming at the tv at the top of your lungs, every first down or defensive stop somehow gets you off the barcalounger to deliver your signature fist pump and for another beer. Does anything compare?

NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Viagra Factor: No way. You’re staying up to watch Shaq back into Vladi all night? Teams shooing around 40% from the field doesn’t put you to sleep? It’s too bad the only part of the game worth watching comes after everyone is asleep. And somehow the constant arena rattling music soothes me to sleep, instead of alerting me to the ball crossing halfcourt.

The yellow brick road has potholes factor: For now, you still have best of 5 in the first round so upsets can happen, but those teams don’t make it all the way. For top seeds, the yellow playoff road truly is golden. For 6-8 seeds, hope for an upset in the first round and go home. This year’s final will be either: LA, Sacramento, Dallas, and perhaps San Antonio against either NJ, Philly or maybe Detroit or Indianapolis. Write it down. All the other playoff teams can forget it.

Dementia factor: Larry vs Magic is perhaps the greatest individual rivalry of all time, Jordan was unforgettable, and I’ll remember the Sixers of Dr. J, Moses Malone, Mo Cheeks, Andrew Toney and Bobby Jones for a long time. But the real Answer is that nothing in today’s NBA is as indelible as it was 10+ years ago and those memories are already faded.

Bandwagon factor: If only because dynasties create intense hatred among fans of other teams, and the NBA is one of the last bastions for dynastic sports reign, bandwagon jumping is pretty easy in the NBA. Somehow, the NBA is like the city of Atlanta. People move in when there is opportunity, move out once its exhausted. No roots are grown so changing habits becomes easy. It begets the worst sports city in the country and mirrors the ability of NBA fans to move allegiances from one team to whoever is playing the Lakers at that moment.

NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Viagra Factor: Regular season hockey may present a boring procession up and down the ice, but somehow the playoffs transform every rush into an edge of the seat opportunity to take your team all the way to the Cup. NHL playoff games actually DO go all night but there is little temptation to turn it off. The best overtime system is a little like the universe, it’s a little too big for the normal brain to comprehend. The OT will end suddenly no matter what, but it could end after one minute or it could, and this is where the mind struggles, go forever. Players keel over from exhaustion, struggle to skate from one end of the ice to the other, can’t lift their sticks and still they play on. How long can they actually play? Will players stop trying as hard? Once you get to about the 3rd OT, the mind starts racing with the possibilities.

The yellow brick road has potholes factor: Oh you better believe it. From Steve Smith derailing his own team to David Volek trashing a dynasty to Dominik Hasek, favorites lose more in these playoffs than any other. A hot goalie is the single most decisive factor in all of playoff sports and that can cause many a breakdown on a elite’s teams road to the Cup.

Dementia factor: There are classic Stanley Cup moments like Orr’s flying through the air and the rookie Roy in ’86, but we are generally left with images of the teams, from the Broadstreet Bullies to the Edmonton Oilers and of course the flying Canadiens. Somehow these images are dim in comparison to the media lights that shine on individual achievements in other sports. Yet the NHL has indelible memories that become scarred on your brain unlike any other sport. The simple reason is because the NHL has the Stanley Cup and no other sport does. The desperate rush for the Cup is so scintillating because the real prize is the Cup and not money or a ring. And winning the Cup lets you bring it home to the people to celebrate over. The Cup becomes personal, a holy grail traveling around the area over the summer that you are in constant search of. Rumors say it was there, that it will be here, yet the Cup remains a mystery. Until one night, after you had finally concluded all those stories were just made up, in a bar at closing time with 10 people littered around the room, you run smack dab into it, and you slurp beer deliriously from it over and over, lining up time after time for just one more taste, drunk off a few gulps of beer and from adding your own chapter to the Cup’s colorful legacy.

Bandwagon factor: Being a game of high emotion and low betting, hockey doesn’t lend itself well to jumping off and on. In general, bandwagon jumping is a bad thing. But for a playoff to be truly great, you must be able to sit and enjoy their glory without the incentive of rooting for your team. Eventually even, you might start to root a bit for one team. The sport whose fans are able to sustain their passion for its playoffs after emotions have ebbed after an elimination or a loss, is special. But hockey just doesn’t do it.

NCAA BASKETBALL
Viagra Factor: What could be better than staying up late to catch #15 Cal Poly Obispo pull off that first round stunner from out in Corvallis? The satisfaction you get from staying up for the whole game and seeing the upset is so great, it’s worth staying up those nights when nothing so spectacular is possible. But whrn it does, you can walk into the office the next morning and since the games ended too late for the morning paper and nobody’s been online yet, you can tell the tale of the Latest Great NCAA Upset! That nobody else saw the night before.

The yellow brick road has potholes factor: Cinderella was a low seed on a tear in the NCAAs. They wrote a story afterwards to capitalize on the term through endless marketing initiatives such as a cartoon, movie, dolls, even a fairy tale. But they didn’t fool anyone, the real Cinderella was Austin Peay. Or was it Gonzaga? Coppin State? This tournament is special exactly because of its unpredictability and while the one and out setup may wipe out some favorites too quickly, nobody can argue about the winner not deserving the title.

Dementia factor: Nothing from any other playoffs burn as brightly in our minds as those from the NCAA tourney do. Every year there are enough wonderful moments to fill a montage to that One Shining Moment song. The NCAAs leave you with a uniquely unforgettable event each year. No other sport does.

Bandwagon factor: Once there was a time when there were no brackets. In those days, bandwagons moved quickly, traveled in the dark and stopped very rarely. It was hard to find one, let alone a stopped one you could jump on. Then Samuel Bracket published his soon to be eponymous newsletter and the bandwagon brigade slowed. Slowed enough to let people find it and jump on. Brackets became a latter day gambling, shedding light and interest on those mysterious teams from Louisiana and Idaho. With the attention came crowds and the bandwagons had to slow to pass through the crowd and everyone could jump right on.

NCAA FOOTBALL
Wait, they don’t have playoffs. They have a bunch of old guys sitting on their couches voting for teams they see one time on tv and then deciding which two teams can play in the Tostito’s Sunny Delight Orange Julius Cotton Knit Rose Colored Sugar Bowl only to be used for Great Big Fiestas Bowl game for a title.

Isn’t it obvious? It’s the NCAAs baby!! The Grandaddy of Tourneys!! The Big 6-4!! Coach K and The General baaaaby!!! The Road to the Final Four tops them all. Hockey isn’t far behind and the NFL gives you the real deal like no other, but the NCAAs beat them. Baseball tops only the NBA anymore. How can the NCAA run the gamut from both the best playoff structure in basketball to the worst for football? Do these groups talk to each other? Get in the classroom, football, and all pro sports as well, and learn from the NCAA.

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