The nature of postseasons

Thursday 3/21/24

The men's NCAA basketball tournament begins today--or at least as how I think of it--and this caused me to reflect on the nature of sports postseasons.

I'd say that in this tournament and the NHL playoffs, the best part is usually the beginning. Everyone is playing, identities are being determined, you don't know what's going to happen, there are upsets, cool and weird things occur, and so forth. Some teams lose faith, others find it.

In the NBA, things tend to get better later. The same with the NFL, though you're more likely, I feel, to see a compelling NFL Wild Card game than you are an NBA first round game, but there are more good first round games now in the NBA than there used to be.

Then we have baseball and its current bastardized iteration. In the past, when less teams made the playoffs, the World Series was usually where it was at rather than the league championship series. Do you know who the Twins, for instance, beat in the 1987 ALCS? It was the Tigers, but probably only a Detroit fan would know that now. Baseball "classics" have often been World Series: 1912, 1960, 1975, 1986. Obviously there are exceptions to this old rule--the 1980 NLCS, for example. The 2004 ALCS. The baseball postseason is now about knocking off the rust in short order if you were one of the better regular season teams record-wise and who gets hot for a week or three.

I don't know enough about the women's NCAA but I would surmise that the more compelling games come near the end of the tournament.

Anything can happen at any point in the men's NCAA college hockey tournament.