Canadian football’s unfair playoff format can and should be changed
Make it a one-division league, or at least have teams with best records play at home
Here’s an undeniable fact about the Canadian Football League: For the past three seasons, the team finishing fourth in the West Division has been rewarded with an easier playoff matchup — at least on paper — than the team that finished third. That is just plain wrong. I get that the league wants to keep its traditional East-West playoff system going because it’s the best way to set up a truly national Grey Cup game. But it’s not the fair way of doing things and it says here the CFL should seriously consider some changes to right this wrong. This is not a small sample size. It’s not a one-off. It’s an ongoing trend. This is three consecutive seasons in which the regular-season imbalance between East and West has led to unfair playoff matchups due to the crossover rule, in which the fourth-place team in the West goes to the East for the post-season if it has more points than the third-place team in the other division. Now, I know full well what people will say against this argument. No team has ever won the Grey Cup after qualifying for the playoffs through the crossover. This is true, but it’s going to happen sometime. And just because no team has won the Cup that way, it doesn’t make the system right. The B.C. Lions have a 9-9 record and will cross over to play the 8-10 Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the East semifinal this Sunday. Meanwhile, two teams with better records — the 12-6 Saskatchewan Roughriders and 10-8 Winnipeg Blue Bombers — will meet in Regina to decide the West semifinal. And the 9-9 Edmonton Eskimos, with a better record than the Tiger-Cats — who get a home playoff game — missed the playoffs entirely. It just should not be that way. Another thing people will say is Eastern teams have won the last two Grey Cups. Again, it’s true, but you can question whether the teams that won even really deserved to be in the Grey Cup game. In 2016, the Ottawa Redblacks won the Grey Cup with an 8-9-1 regular-season record, which would not even have been good enough to get them into the playoffs in the West. They finished first in their division and hosted the East Final, which they won, before upsetting Calgary for the league championship. In 2017, the Toronto Argos finished 9-9 and followed the exact same path as Ottawa to a Grey Cup title. Again, they would not have made the playoffs in the West. Under a different playoff format, both teams could have been lower seeds and would have had to play multiple games on the road to get to the Grey Cup. That brings us to some suggestions for what could work as an alternative. The easiest solution, but also the one that would face the most resistance, would be to make it a no-division league, with the top six teams making the playoffs. Yes, it would eliminate the East-West Grey Cup at times, but it’s already possible for that to happen with the crossover format. Each team would play every other team twice, with a couple extra “rivalry games” per season for each team. If and when Halifax gets a CFL team, it would be an easy 10-team division, with each team playing all others in a home and home. Under that system, Edmonton would be in the playoffs as the sixth seed this season, while Hamilton would be out. By their records, that’s the way it should be. If people can’t get their heads around that idea, how about a tweak to the current system, one that would reward teams with better records. Here’s how it could work: If the second-place team in the West (or the East if it ever happens) has a better record than the second-place team in the other division and there is a crossover situation, that team should be the one that crosses over and hosts the East semifinal. For instance, Saskatchewan (12-6) would host Hamilton (8-10) in this year’s East semifinal, while Winnipeg (10-8) would host B.C. (9-9) in the West semifinal. Edmonton (9-9) would still get the shaft, but in terms of more appropriate seeding and fairness based on the regular-season standings, it could work. There is a slight argument to be made that the standings are skewed because of the imbalanced schedule (teams play some opponents in their own division more often than those in the other division), but that’s not enough of a difference maker in my opinion. This system would solve the problem. It would prevent fourth-place teams from getting any kind of advantage and would reward both the second- and third-place teams in the West for having superior records. Saskatchewan should not have to play a team like Winnipeg in the first-round of the playoffs when B.C. gets to face a Hamilton squad with an inferior record. That exact scenario can and should be fixed.