clarinews@clarinet.com (MIKE RABUN, UPI Sports Writer) (02/05/90)
The professional football season has finally whimpered to a conclusion, leaving the NFL with a considerable mess to clean up. And as those in the various positions of authority scramble around trying to figure how big a mop it is going to take, they would be well advised to start thinking about making some major changes with the Super Bowl. It is no longer possible to simply laugh it off. The numbers have been too consistent to ignore. Numbers like 38-9, 38-16, 46-10, 39-20, 42-10 and 55-10. Of the last seven Super Bowls, only one has been worth watching from start to finish. This most recent debacle produced the most telling number of all -- the kind that sends a chill right up the NFL's collective spine. That is the one associated with the Super Bowl's television rating, which hit a 20-year low. Almost 20 percent fewer people watched Super Bowl XXIV than did XXIII. When that sort of thing happens, something has to be done. Sure, the San Francisco 49ers were going to beat any team that confronted them in the Super Bowl this year. But there must have been somebody out there who could have put up a better fight in the big game than the Denver Broncos did. The idea is to have the two best teams playing for the championship and that wasn't the case this year. It hasn't been the case very often of late, in fact. It's time to do something about that little oversight and there may, indeed, be some stirrings within the inner sanctum of the NFL. ``Anything that would work to put the two best football teams on the field and still preserve the AFC-NFC rivalry in some way is a step in the right direction,'' says Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. And Jones also says some discussions along those lines already have been held. Various proposals might be talked about in rearranging the current playoff system, but for starters here is one very simple suggestion. Instead of having teams from the two conferences stay on their own side of the fence until the Super Bowl, have them intermingle. If you then wind up with two NFC or two AFC teams in the Super Bowl, so be it. We will use this most recent round of playoff contests as an example. Under this suggestion, the Wild Card games would be left as they are. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Houston Oilers in the AFC Wild Card game this season and the Los Angeles Rams knocked off the Philadelphia Eagles. After that, things would change. Instead of having the Steelers move on to play the team with the best record in the AFC, they would take on the NFC front runner. And vice versa. That would have put Pittsburgh up against San Francisco in Candlestick Park and the Rams against Denver in Mile High Stadium. The same theory would be put to use in the other divisional games. The third-seeded team in the AFC -- Buffalo, in this case -- would visit the No. 2 team from the NFC -- the New York Giants. That would leave the Minnesota Vikings traveling to Cleveland. The Rams-Broncos and Giants-Bills games would make up one half of the bracket with the Steelers-49ers and Vikings-Browns on the other side. Such pairings would leave the top-seeded teams from the AFC and NFC on opposite sides of the bracket. But to get to the Super Bowl, those teams would possibly have to beat the No. 2 seeded team from the other conference. If Denver was able to beat the Rams and then either the Giants or Buffalo, the Broncos could certainly have been called a worthy challenger to the 49ers no matter the outcome of the Super Bowl. The chief problem with this scheme lies with that old demon television. What happens if both semifinal games are hosted by teams from the same conference? Which network gets to show which game? The TV people, therefore, may put a big nix on this idea, or any others that have a similar base. And if they do, they will get what they deserve. Which, this year, was 55-10.