18 game season (split off)

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

it's not a fact at all. Really it isn't. You people say this "mathematical fact" and throw the term around so much you have actually started to believe. You can believe that theory or have that opinion, but its not a FACT! And there is no hard evidence to back it up! Because you don't know how many teams will be alive heading into those new final 2 weeks of the season or how many teams will be fighting for how many spots. For it to be a "FACT" you would have to know that. And you dont' know that! So to say there would be more meaningless games is a guess. Not a FACT!!

They are called statistical model.  It is we know for a fact that the more games there are in the season the more games at the end of the season will be meaningless.

By way of example lets take the simplest of leagues.  It has two teams.  Team A and Team B.  Also assume ties can't occur.

It has a one game season.  Number of meaningless game 0.  The one game will always be meaningful.

This gets boring so they extend the season to three games.  The first two games are always meaningful.  But there is a 50% chance the last game is meaningless.  If the same team wins both games.  

Wanting more TV revenue they expand the season to 5 games, now the first three games are always meaningful, there is a 25% chance that the game 4 will be be meaningless and  62.5% chance the final game will be meaningless.  

So we jumped from 0% for the last game being meaningless to 50% to 62.5%.  

Guess what happens if we jump the season to 7 games.  Yup that's right the chances of meaningless games goes up.  However, it should also be noted that the number of meaningful games went up.

In a 1 game season on average we only had on meaningful game and 0 meaningless.

In a 3 game season on average we had 2.5 meaningful games and .5 meaningless.

In a 5 game season on average we have 4.125 meaningful games and .875 meaningless games.

[MikeO]

that doesn't make games meaningless. For a game to be meaningless it means the outcome doesn't matter. There is no way to judge that the outcome of those 2 extra games won't matter. That's why it isn't a "FACT".

And as hoodie just noted " the chances of meaningless games goes up". Yes, "CHANCES" hardly a FACT that they will!

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

It is a statistical fact that the expected number of meaningless games will rise. 

FACT, not an opinion, but a FACT. 

Just like it is a fact that there will be more days with a temperature over 60 degrees in Miami in 2011 than in NYC. Unless you want to say that is just an opinion and I base it on just chances.   

[fyo]

And as hoodie just noted " the chances of meaningless games goes up". Yes, "CHANCES" hardly a FACT that they will!

Holy crap, I think my brain just died.

[MikeO]

Holy crap, I think my brain just died.

No from reading your posts for months now, that happened a long time ago 

[fyo]

No from reading your posts for months now, that happened a long time ago 

I'm not the one having problems understanding simple mathematics or continually misattributing claims.

Anyway...

Increasing the number of regular season games has two distinct, but similar, effects on the meaningfulness of games that have been somewhat conflated in the discussion above.

#1: The more games a team plays, the less each individual game counts toward the total. At 16 games, each game is extremely important (but not as important as it would be if there were fewer games in a season). When approaching MLB / NBA levels, each game barely counts. The risk here is that fans start to feel that an individual game isn't as important. An increase of 2 games isn't likely to skew that much, IMHO. That's just a guess, of course, but I really don't see this making much of a difference. The biggest problem is probably that division games are less important, since there would (most likely) be more games outside the division. Still, not a huge deal, IMHO.

#2: This is the kicker and the one the league really needs to pay attention to. With more games in a season, there are going to be more seasons where more games toward the end are going to be meaningless. Like the above, this effect is obvious. The only thing that can be done to reduce this effect is to fiddle with the scheduling, moving more "important" games to later in the season. The league has already done this by making all week 17 games divisional games. Well, it's certainly possible to move more divisional games toward the end. It might seem strange to have ALL the divisional games in the second half of the season, but it would certainly decrease the risk of meaningless games. There's also the game between teams that finished at the same place in the rankings (#1 playing #1 etc). This game would PROBABLY be a tough game for the top teams and would have a greater chance of significantly impacting wild cards (with the same argument that divisional games are more important than other games -- not only do you win, but your competitor loses).

Mike, do you have any issues with the points above? Let's try to resolve that part before moving on to ratings and viewers -- two other distinct, if related, topics that seem to cause confusion and/or disagreement.

Oh, and could I just ask one thing? Who is "you people"? You keep writing that and I honestly don't know who "you people" refers to. It kinda makes you sound like some paranoid guy who thinks everyone is conspiring against him.

[Sunstroke]

No matter how meaningless the extra two games are, they'll still mean more to me than a couple of August preseason games. It will also increase the length of the fantasy football season, which is ten times groovy on my calculator.

...I honestly don't know who "you people" refers to. It kinda makes you sound like some paranoid guy who thinks everyone is conspiring against him.

We* definitely don't want MikeO to feel that way...




*(We = the people who are conspiring against him.)

[fyo]

No matter how meaningless the extra two games are, they'll still mean more to me than a couple of August preseason games. It will also increase the length of the fantasy football season, which is ten times groovy on my calculator.

I'm not even counting the preseason games, they're so irrelevant. The way I look at it, it's strictly a move from 16 to 18 games. If it has the effect of changing the number of preseason games, so what?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The league has already done this by making all week 17 games divisional games. Well, it's certainly possible to move more divisional games toward the end. It might seem strange to have ALL the divisional games in the second half of the season, but it would certainly decrease the risk of meaningless games.

You would quickly get to an area of diminishing returns.  

I am all for the last three games of the season being divisional only games.  

Under out current system...having all week 17 games be division decreases the likelihood of meaningless games not only in week 17 but also week 16, week 15 etc.

If we change that so all week 16 and week 17 games are division only it decreases further decreases the likelihood of meaningless games in week 16, week 15 etc.  But does absolutely nothing to further decrease the likelihood of a meaningless game in week 17 vs. the week 17 divisional games strategy.  

We could have a plan of having all of the last 6 games be divisional.  The net effect of that is a team with a 1-7 would in theory still have a chance at winning the division and hence decrease the number of week 12 meaningless games.  But seriously if your team has a 1-7 record and a mathematical chance at winning the division do you really think as a practical manner it will keep the fans of that team interested until the record falls to 1-8?

However one further plus side of having more divisional games late in the season is it increases the likelihood that a team that is playing good football in December of making the playoffs.  By having lots of late division games it decreases the likelihood of backing into the playoffs, having gone 8-0 in Sept & Oct and then 2-6 or 3-5  in Nov and Dec.  And I am all for not only increasing the number of meaningful games but for also having the teams that are playing the best, being in the playoffs.  

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I'm not even counting the preseason games, they're so irrelevant. The way I look at it, it's strictly a move from 16 to 18 games. If it has the effect of changing the number of preseason games, so what?

Huge effect. 

One as someone who does not live in my home team's market it is very difficult for me to see preseason games on TV.  And they aren't all that interesting anyway. 

Two, more importantly for STH, they are forced to by the two home preseason games at the full face value for a game that is meaningless and is very difficult to resell for even a fraction of the face value.  This would reduce that to one.  Giving them more value for their money. 

[fyo]

One as someone who does not live in my home team's market it is very difficult for me to see preseason games on TV.  And they aren't all that interesting anyway. 

So why do you care if you can watch them?

Yeah, it sucks that season ticket holders have to pay for them, but that's 90% fake anyway. Let's say you unbundled the preseason games... anyone think the cost of a season ticket would decrease?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

So why do you care if you can watch them?

So now I would get to watch 18 games I care about and miss 2 games I don't care about instead of watching 16 game I care about and missing 4 I don't care about.

Yeah, it sucks that season ticket holders have to pay for them, but that's 90% fake anyway. Let's say you unbundled the preseason games... anyone think the cost of a season ticket would decrease?

Doesn't have to decrease, just has to increase by less than about 12% for a net increase in value.

Lets say tickets are $100 each.  Season of tickets cost $1000.  8 regular season games plus 2 preseason games.  But the effective price is $125 each (1000/8) plus 2 useless pieces of paper. 

If you take away one of the home pre-season games it now because $111 per game and one useless piece of paper.

Even if you have a 5% price increase the effective cost is $117 per game.   

[fyo]

Doesn't have to decrease, just has to increase by less than about 12% for a net increase in value.

You misunderstand me. Irrespective of any change in number of regular season games, if preseason games were forcibly uncoupled from the season ticket package, do you think the price would decrease? I.e. you'd be paying for 8 games instead of 8 games + 2 preseason games. I'd argue you'd be paying the same damned thing.

[fyo]

Just to add... IMHO, the only reason the preseason games are even affected by this is that the league needs those weeks. The rest is just spin from the league... the players don't care. Playing time for vets isn't going to be vastly affected, so it'll mostly be 2nd, 3rd, 4th stringers and those guys actually NEED to playing time.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

You misunderstand me. Irrespective of any change in number of regular season games, if preseason games were forcibly uncoupled from the season ticket package, do you think the price would decrease? I.e. you'd be paying for 8 games instead of 8 games + 2 preseason games. I'd argue you'd be paying the same damned thing.

But they aren't uncoupled.  The chances of them becoming uncoupled as pretty close to nil.  

But lets assume the extremely unlikely were to occur a state legislature passes a law making the practice of bundling pre-season games with regular season games illegal then yes I would expect the price of regular season tickets to jump dramatically.  Maybe not the full 25% increase, but close to it.  

Actually I think it would be a sound business decision for a team, even absent a demand.  

Here is what I would do if I bought a team.  Take the $100  game ticket.  Increase the face value by 20% to $120.  Decrease the face value of the preseason tickets to $40.  Give the STH to option of purchasing the preseason tickets at a half off face value - $20 each.  Net - net: for STH that want preseason games they pay the exact same $1000.  For those who don't want them  they save $40.  So I would expect zero complaints from existing STH, most of whom would consider the new system fairer than the old one.

Now I take all the $40 tickets that I didn't sell to STH for $20 each and sell them either as individual tickets at $40 making me more money than the current system.  But the bulk I sell at $20 thru my group ticket sales office that is also running a 50% off program  on pre-season group tickets to high school football teams, pee wee football leagues, scout troops etc.  Getting people who could not otherwise afford to go to a regular season game into my stadium for a pre-season game and building and enhancing my fan base with the next generation.