Football Talk

Last weekend was Wild Card Weekend; this weekend is Divisional Playoffs Weekend; next weekend will be Conference Championships Weekend. You know where I’m going with this, right? Super Bowl Sunday is only three weeks away.

Sit down at a bar – and it doesn’t even have to be a sports bar – and you’ll hear guys talking about football this time of year. You don’t have to like football or know anything about football, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what is happening? The regular season is over, so what’s going on with all these games they’re playing now?

The National Football League (NFL) has two conferences called the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). Each conference has four divisions: North, South, East, and West. Each division has four teams, for a total of 16 teams in each conference.

The regular football season is 17 weeks long. Each team plays 16 games and has one “bye” week in which they don’t play.

At the end of the regular season, six teams from each conference – twelve teams in all – play in the NFL playoffs. These six teams are the four division champions plus two “wild card” teams. The wild card teams are the two best teams to not be division champions. The division champions are seeded #1 through #4, based on their regular season won-lost-tied records, and the wild card teams are seeded #5 and #6 based on their records.

In the Wild Card Playoffs, the #3 and #6 seeded teams face each other, and the #4 and #5 seeded teams face each other. The #1 and #2 teams receive a bye, meaning they don’t play and they advance automatically to the Divisional Playoffs.

Translating this to the real world: last weekend’s Wild Card Playoffs involved eight teams playing in four games. The New York Jets (AFC East) beat the Indianapolis Colts (AFC South); the Baltimore Ravens (AFC North) beat the Kansas City Chiefs (AFC West); the Seattle Seahawks (NFC West) beat the New Orleans Saints (NFC South); the Green Bay Packers (NFC North) beat the Philadelphia Eagles (NFC East). The four winning teams are said to have “clinched the Wild Card (Round).” They advanced to this weekend’s Divisional Playoffs.

Remember, there were four teams with byes (two from each conference) and there were four teams from the Wild Card Playoffs. So there were four games this weekend.

In the Divisional Playoffs, the four division winners that received a bye play the winners of the Wild Card playoffs. In each conference, the #1 seeded team plays the lowest surviving seed. So, the #1 seed plays either the #4, or #5, or #6 seeded team. The #2 seed plays the remaining team: either the #3, or #4, or #5 seeded team. In each playoff game, the higher seeded team gets the home field advantage.

Translating this to the real world: in this weekend’s Divisional Playoffs the Chicago Bears beat the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers beat the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons to advance to next Sunday’s (Jan. 23) NFC Conference Championship game. The New York Jets beat the top-seeded New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Baltimore Ravens to advance to the AFC Conference Championship game. These Conference Championship games are also called “title” games. The winners will win the AFC title and the NFC title.

In the Super Bowl, the winner of the AFC title faces the winner of the NFC title to determine the best team in the NFL.

If you plan on going to your neighborhood bar, I suggest you print this page and take it with you. Keep it out of sight. It will be your cheat sheet. When no one is looking your way, a well-timed surreptitious glance will allow you to decode some of the football talk. And if you’re feeling bold, you might even participate in the bar talk. You could try, “What’s with these top-seeded teams getting beaten by supposedly weaker teams?” Or, “Given the upsets, do seed rankings really have meaning?"

Good luck.