Revised Sports Thinking

So, there was a great post on the Puck Daddy Yahoo Sports blog today about the way NHL fans (and probably most other fans of major league sports in North America) overvalue the end of year tournament (playoffs) instead of the long haul through the ebb and flow of the season. This was the key quote:

There's this illogic in North America that places the importance of a season not on the 82-game, six-month slog of a schedule, but rather on a 28-game-at-most, needlessly drawn out crapshoot of a lottery. One which rewards luck rather than an ability to win, a lot, for more than half a year. I'm not sure what it is that makes people think the playoffs are so much more important than the regular season.

I agree with this. Sure, the Stanley Cup is the ultimate prize in the sport of hockey, but let's not short-change the President's Trophy. It's a significant accomplishment. The best team over the course of six months may not be the best in the six (or more like ten) week tournament in the Spring. Vancouver fans find themselves saying the same thing this year that I did last year: President's Trophy nice...Hoping for Stanley Cup.

What's interesting to me is that this isn't the case in the sport of soccer. Ask a Manchester United fan if they would rather win the Barclay's Premier League or the League Cup (which is somewhat akin to a tournament) and I am pretty sure the Premier League title is the one they want. Maybe the better example in England is the FA Cup, but I think the result - what they prefer to win - is the same. This is the same in Spain's La Liga, or the Dutch Eredivisie, or any other league around the world.

Again, I get that all North American sports crown their champions in a post-season of some kind. But that phrase is telling: post-season. We should put a little more value on the "season." After all, it is where the fans spend more money - 41 home games versus a max of 16 in the post-season.