Although I’m no great fan of American sporting exceptionalism, with the single nation crowning their sporting teams as world champions despite them rarely venturing beyond their own shores, the United States have a habit of getting things right when it comes to the fixturing for those major leagues, particularly the NFL.
As there are 32 teams in the NFL, it would be impossible to have all of those teams play each other even once in the course of a season. The NFL is the result of the unification of the two major gridiron competitions in the 1960s in what is now known as the Super Bowl era. The Super Bowl was then and is still played between the champions of each of those competitions – the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference – although the unification is more stringent, with games throughout the regular season played between teams from both conferences.
To get the fixturing down to only 16 games per team in the regular season and have it considered a fair competition the NFL created divisions within the conferences. Each conference comprises four divisions – north, south, east and west – of four teams apiece.
The fixturing is then settled in the following manner:
- Each division has home-and-away games against the other three teams in their division, totalling six games.
- Each team plays each team within another division from the same conference, totalling four games. The divisions rotate through a three-year period and also on a home-and-away basis.
- Each team plays the team in the other two divisions of their conference that placed in the same position in the previous season for two more games.
- Each team plays each team from one division in the opposing conference. The divisions rotate through a four-year cycle and also on a home-and-away basis, totalling four games.
This is a total of 16 games for each team in the NFL. It is predictable and fair.
Some years back I wrote an article along these same lines in the West Australian but that article considered a 16-team competition, as was the format of the AFL at the time. Now we have an 18-team competition – the idea of conferencing is mute but the idea of divisions still sits well.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
This is my proposal, and the idea behind it is the creation of a fixture that is uniform and fair.
We start by forming three divisions of six teams:
First division
West Coast, Fremantle, Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Brisbane and Gold Coast.
Second division
Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Melbourne, Richmond and St Kilda.
Third division
Greater Western Sydney, Sydney, Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Geelong.
In reality St Kilda and Geelong could swap positions, but I grouped the third division according to the propensity of Hawthorn, the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne to play home games away from Victoria and Geelong having its own home ground outside of Melbourne.
Each team in each division plays the other teams in their division home and away every year, totalling ten games.
Each team plays all other teams once a year on a home-and-away rotating basis, totalling 12 more games. This is the 22-game scenario that is wanted by the AFL at this time.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Now, there are some situations here that seem at first to be irregular, such as the travel requirements of the first division, but it is actually very fair.
The teams in the first division would need to travel interstate to four teams within their division and to three teams within each of the other two divisions. That is ten games interstate, exactly what they do at present.
GWS and Sydney would need to travel interstate three times within the first and second divisions and four times within their own division, totalling ten times but the other four teams in the third division would also need to travel interstate three times within the first and second divisions and once to GWS and Sydney, a total of eight games.
(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
The second division teams travel interstate four times a year, three to the first division and once to either GWS or Sydney. There is of course the possibility of a Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon or Richmond playing Hawthorn, the Western Bulldogs or North Melbourne in Hobart, Launceston or Canberra, but that is highly unlikely considering the massive following of the big Victorian clubs.
Those of you reading this who suffer from myopia will probably be asking how is it that a Victorian team in the second division travels ‘only’ four times. The reality is a home-ground advantage is only achieved when that team is hosting a team that does not regularly play at the home team’s ground.
That means that the teams in the first division have to travel ten times but those same teams have a true home-ground advantage on ten other occasions.
The teams in the second division have a true home-ground advantage on four occasions as opposed to their four annual travels. Nobody in their wildest dreams can tell me that any team in the second division hosting another team from within their division has a home-ground advantage. It simply dissipates. Almost every one of the 30 games played within the division would be at the MCG.
The trade-off for having to travel often is that that team would acquire more home games with a significant advantage.
I would even suggest that the winner of each division is guaranteed a finals berth irrespective of finishing position on the overall ladder, but in the 21 seasons of this century that scenario would have played out only once, that being 2016, when St Kilda was the highest-placed team from the second division in finishing ninth and would have displaced North Melbourne in finishing eighth. In retrospect that would have been a good situation with the very in-form St Kilda winning six of their last eight games and North Melbourne winning just two.
The advantages of this fixture are enormous. The continued rivalries of the big Victorian teams being played out twice a year. The continued rivalries of the Western Derby, Showdown, QClash and Sydney Derby and of course the developing rivalries between teams from within divisions.
Then there are the financial dividends generated by such rivalries and a sense of equality in the fixturing.
The AFL does not need more games, it needs games of substance and relevance that in turn create interest and intrigue.
Bangkokpussey
Roar Rookie
It would be interesting to see if you did a "Chris Scott" or not if you were playing "home" games every year against Geelong at Kardinia Park, let alone "home" finals. Or 6 to 8 games at home compared to the current 12 or so.
Marcis Plume
Guest
It's moot not mute! lol.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Well you’re right about the fact it can’t be “fair” per se because you can’t move cities closer together in a comp based on the VFL, hence mostly Melbourne based sides. That doesn’t mean the AFL gets away with it’s shabby treatment of basically every non-Vic entity without people like me willing to criticise them. THAT is my point on here. The same AFL that only fixtures non-Vic teams to get the Tassie games the Tasmanian government was financing to promote tourism…with not one Vic based team with no Tassie affiliation being fixtured there. And they wonder why the Tassie premier is telling them where to stick it, and basically saying: “give us a timeline to get a license for a side, or stick it up your butt.”
RT
Roar Rookie
I don't know why you are so angry. I never said anything to suggest expansion didn't help VFL clubs, again putting words in my mouth. I simply pointed out your comment that the AFL success is soley due to the huge success of the WCE is downright stupid, though I didn't use those words. I am not doubting that expansion led to bigger TV rights and the current AFL success, but to put it down soley to WCE is ludicrous. The explosion of TV rights didn't happen when WCE arrived, it was some 15 years later, in time for the 2002 season (jumping from $13 million to $100 million per season). [A history less is better with facts that rantings by the way.] By which time we had Freo, Adelaide and Port. I suspect their additions would be a factor, wouldn't you? Expansion was a pre-requisite for such rights, but to get there the AFL needed to understand the value of its product and having Foxtel come along didn't hurt either. As for the article, the author looked to be addressing fairness, rather than saying we have to have conferences because we have a lot of teams. In that regard he had a good plan in that it is fair when comparing teams within a division. However with only 1 team being guaranteed a finals spot per division it hardly matters and I would say if you went down that path, 2 teams from each division would have to qualify. I think as a spectator I would get sick of playing the same teams every year for the double up matches and would want it to rotate around. However I don't expect you to understand that because you don't even follow AFL, you just come on here to regularly complain about the travel of Perth teams. :laughing:
Micko
Roar Rookie
And I’ll add mate, I picked one specific thing to “nitpick” to go easy on Ukraine Tiger, who at the end of the day put his/her time and effort into writing the article, in what’s supposed to be a supposedly “fun” hypothetical thought experiment, so I didn’t want to be a grinch. It was completely ridiculous to equate US & Australian professional sport as they have nothing in common, and the fact that conferences are necessary for US pro sports leagues, but aren’t feasible for Australian sport at all. But it was just supposed to be “fun” so I decided not to let rip on Ukraine Tiger (who for all I know might be 11-15 years old or something?).
Micko
Roar Rookie
I don't care, I don't really follow the AFL. If you're that ignorant about the importance of the West Coast Eagles in setting up the VFL to become the AFL by putting in a huge cash injection that propped up several ailing Melbourne clubs, plus singlehandedly helped boost TV rights with Seven through the roof, then I can't help you Richie. You have your head jammed so far up your own backside Richie it's not funny. I've noticed your needlessly obnoxious and arrogant attitude on here for a long time. Even when I'm trying to give you a history lesson about the dire situation of the VFL in the 1980's and how expansion (particularly WCE) helped that comp to thrive, you just stubbornly refuse to accept it. The premise of the article as a whole is ridiculous, and deserves to be mocked, not just the one statement I deservedly mocked. The USA has 300+ million people, meaning their sports leagues will generally have 30+ teams. Australia is roughly the same size as the contiguous US, with not even 10% of the population of the US, and with only 5 large population centres spread out around a desert continent. It's just not feasible to have US sport style conferences because there simply isn't population here to sustain 30+ team sports leagues in two dozen cities...because there ain't even a dozen cities in Australia that can sustain professional sport in a national league!
RT
Roar Rookie
The AFL success is down solely to the huge success of the West Coast Eagles Say that slowly 3 times and if you still believe that to be true then give up. You call me obnoxious but you are the one who nit-picked one statement of a pretty good article just so you could make some point about travel that you've made on these pages a thousand times before, but never offered a solution to. That's obnoxious.
Micko
Roar Rookie
I'm not even a West Coast fan buddy, just telling you the truth. You Vics don't like hearing the truth about the AFL though. I don't think that'll change judging by your obnoxious attitude.
RT
Roar Rookie
Excess sooking...so you are finally looking in the mirror. You keep putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about TV rights. You are questioning if I am arrogant, yet you stated the AFL success is solely due to WCE. Maybe you should have looked in the mirror a bit longer.
Micko
Roar Rookie
And yes Ritchie, there's a lot of excess sooking from some locals, I agree. They sound like kiwis with the amount of sooking they do sometimes. But if you're so arrogant that you can't understand how the non-Vic clubs have helped the sport by making the VFL financially successful, and transforming it into a national sporting colossus, then that's on you.
Micko
Roar Rookie
The AFL success is down solely to the huge success of the West Coast Eagles, don’t delude yourself Richie! The VFL was a broke comp, with broke clubs struggling to remain afloat. The only way for the VFL to achieve financial success was to try to become a national comp, started by South Melbourne’s relocation to Sydney for 1982. The WCE (naively) willingly paid a huge fee to enter the comp in 1987, which helped prop up all those struggling Melbourne clubs, not to mention WCE had to pay for those same clubs to travel to Perth to play. The TV rights the VFL could gain by clubs like WCE being in the comp meant the success of the comp’s future, with huge tv rights deals being the norm from then on.
RT
Roar Rookie
You could also say it seems ridiculous to join a competition with 13 of 14 teams based on the other side of the country and then complain about the travel.
Micko
Roar Rookie
There is no trade off. If Melbourne based clubs wanted to invest in their own stadiums to host AFL games they could. Most fans I've heard from Melbourne like the convenience of two central stadiums to attend games at anyway. This is nothing like the travel burden experienced by non-Vic clubs and aren't comparable in any way shape or form. Incredibly dumb assertion from the author!
RT
Roar Rookie
The author used the term trade-off. That doesn't necessarily mean equates. In fact, a trade-off is often around two things that can't be perfectly measured against one another. The trade-off also exists in the fixture today.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Probably not. But it seems ridiculous now to complain about some perceived lack of home ground advantage for Melbourne clubs, and equate that with the travel burden from clubs outside Victoria doesn't it?
Micko
Roar Rookie
You seem to miss the point as usual. The author equates a huge burden of travel from non-Victorian clubs with 9 Melbourne clubs (& Geelong sometimes!) sharing two stadiums in Melbourne: completely ridiculous assertion!
RT
Roar Rookie
Nothing stops these poor Melbourne sides to develop their own home grounds I'm not sure the Melbourne clubs are complaining about a lack of home ground advantage so why would they develop other home grounds (other than for the fun of giving you another thing to complain about)? Nor do I hear other clubs complaining about travel. It is really just a bunch of non-Vic supporters, mostly from WA. And Chris Scott.
RT
Roar Rookie
Hawthorn probably didn't have $110 million to spend at the time.
Mr Right
Roar Rookie
The reason NFL can have a 43yo playing is due to the short amount of time they need to spend on the field physically engaging their opponents & they aren't running 5-10 kms per game. The majority of the time, Tom Brady is disposing of the ball without being tackled. And he is at a master at it. That is why he is considered as the GOAT. Unlike NBA or soccer, in an AFL game players are consistently getting physically tackled & knocked to the ground by 95-100kg players. AFL is a high contact sport requiring players to be strong & extremely fit. 34 games plus finals are way too many games for AFL athletes. It will severely shorten players careers. There are alternatives but getting all parties to agree & implement one will be extremely challenging.
Mr Right
Roar Rookie
UT, sounds like a pretty good concept to me. Just curious if there is any prospect of divisional changes if North or the Hawks change sponsors & return to playing all their home games in Melbourne?