“The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.” Phyllis Diller
Hello ladies! So we have less than a week to the Super Bowl and I know that many of you are getting your last minute party ideas together. In many ways the Super Bowl party is like the best of both worlds. The women can congregate around the food unimpeded while the men, who usually hog the food, are glued to the television. Super Bowl is a tough time for me, not only because I actually watch the game, but I also can’t seem to leave the glories of the smorgasbord behind. The best scenario though would involve the women moving into the living room to watch the game as well. That’s where I can help.
I feel like most women think of the Super Bowl as just a good party excuse only. Not so! Part of the beauty of the Super Bowl, apart from the game itself, is all the toil and excitement that led up to it during the Playoffs. Truly, when you watch the Super Bowl, you know that you are watching the two very best teams in the nation, nay the world. Seriously, the Playoffs are exciting! All season we watch teams play each other every week with the Playoffs as their goal, culminating in all the pomp and circumstance of the Super Bowl.
The road to the Playoffs is affected by two things: the division and schedule of your team and how well they play, illustrated by the Win-Loss record. Let’s go into what I mean by a team’s schedule. I know you smart-asses out there are thinking “We know what constitutes a team’s schedule, Vanya” but I promise, it’s more complicated than you guys think. It’s not just pairing your team with other teams; it’s putting your team into a division and then pairing your team with other teams. Ok…here goes. The National Football League (hereafter referred to as the NFL) is comprised of 32 teams. These teams are then split exactly down the middle to form two separate conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Within these two conferences, the teams are then split into divisions, containing 4 teams. These divisions are very, very important to the teams in them. Out of the 16 regular season games that each team plays in a season (not counting the preseason and the postseason), that team must play two games against each of its fellow division members, giving an added weight to the divisional games.
I know that this sounds confusing but it really isn’t. To illustrate this, here are all the NFL teams included in their respective divisions.
AFC South
Houston Texans
Indianapolis Colts
Jacksonville Jaguars
Tennessee Titans
NFC South
Altanta Falcons
New Orleans Saints
Carolina Panthers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
AFC North
Baltimore Ravens
Cincinnati Bengals
Cleveland Browns
Pittsburgh Steelers
NFC North
Chicago Bears
Green Bay Packers
Detroit Lions
Minnesota Vikings
AFC East
Buffalo Bills
New England Patriots
New York Jets
Miami Dolphins
NFC East
Dallas Cowboys
New York Giants
Philadelphia Eagles
Washington Redskins
AFC West
Denver Broncos
Kansas City Chiefs
San Diego Chargers
Oakland Raiders
NFC West
Arizona Cardinals
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks
St. Louis Rams
Now I know that you’re looking at this thing and wondering how on earth they decided which teams would be in which divisions. I’ll be honest…I’m not quite sure. However, I know that they took into account previous rivalries and similar localities but there are some divisions that just don’t seem to match. The AFC East, for instance. I mean—what is Miami doing in there! Especially when they could have been included in the AFC South. Whatever.
The point is that the teams in each division basically have to fight each other for a place in the Playoffs. Here’s the reason: the winner of each division automatically goes to the Playoffs. And that is really nice when you’re working all year just to get the Super Bowl. The Playoff picture looks like this then; there are 4 spots, one for each division in a conference, and 2 Wild Cards spots that go to the other teams in the conference with the most wins. I’ll take these past playoffs as an example. In the NFC, New Orleans, Minnesota, Dallas, and Arizona won their divisions, which left Philadelphia and Green Bay to grab the two wild card spots. On the AFC side, San Diego, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and New England won the division and New York (Jets) and Baltimore were wild cards. The NFL takes into account the W-L records for each of these Playoff teams and awards the teams with the best records, the coveted home field advantage, not to mention an extra week off! Thus each playoff-bound team is given a "seed" or position to play within it’s own conference.
And the playoff seeds go something like this:
AFC
#1 Indianapolis
#2 San Diego
#3 New England
#4 Cincinnati
#5 New York
#6 Baltimore
NFC
#1 New Orleans
#2 Minnesota
#3 Dallas
#4 Arizona
#5 Green Bay
#6 Philadelphia
Once in the Playoffs, where your team is seeded (#1-6) becomes the most important thing. Not only does it show exactly who that team will play first but also when & where. For example, because Indianapolis, San Diego, New Orleans, and Minnesota are the top ranked teams, they get the first week of the Playoffs OFF. Pretty nice, eh? Also they get home-field advantage in every game, which is also very nice (unless #1 plays #2 and then #1 is gets home-field.) Also according to the rules, lowest seeds always get paired with highest seeds. Thus, Philadelphia traveled to Dallas, Green Bay to Arizona, Baltimore went to New England and the Jets drove to Cincinnati. At the end of the weekend, the teams left standing were Baltimore, New York, Dallas, and Arizona. The second week of the Playoffs those 4 teams then traveled to the #1 & #2 seeds. Arizona went to New Orleans, Dallas to Minnesota, Baltimore to Indy, and finally New York to San Diego.
We have finally arrived at the all-important Conference Championships. By the 3rd week of the Playoffs, the remaining teams must play to see who wins their conference and, by extension, who goes to the Super Bowl. The AFC Championship was played by Indianapolis and New York and the NFC was played Minnesota and New Orleans. At such a high level of play, you can usually count on really, really good games. Indianapolis won the AFC and also their right to defend the AFC in the Super Bowl, while New Orleans won the NFC.
So, ladies, after all that confusing jargon, we are back to the beginning. On Sunday, starting approximately around 6pm EST, the Super Bowl will feature a showdown between the AFC and NFC, between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. Who you cheer for is up to you but remember these two teams earned their right, the hard way, to play in front of you that night.
