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Reimagining the NFL’s divisions for a brave new — and international — world

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The assignment was simple: reimagine the NFL’s divisions from scratch.

That’s an intoxicating responsibility. As any good all-powerful being should do, I consulted with counsel. In this case, the inimitable Deniz Selman, a game theory expert who I figured had already given this plenty of thought. He had.

“I think the divisions are too small and the winners are over-rewarded with seeding and home playoff games,” he wrote. “I really like what the UEFA Champions League are doing starting in a few years with an open table instead of ‘groups’ in the first round. (The World Cup should 10000000 percent be doing the same when they go to 48 teams but are not doing so and will regret it when that first tournament becomes known for the inevitable blatant collusion, which will happen, but that’s another story.)

Which led to one of his many schedule pet peeves.

“The segmentation of the seeding (division winners and non-division winners in essentially separate standings) also means there are many ‘dead’ games or, even worse, games which only mean something to one team at the end of the year,” he wrote. “Without that segmentation, the probability that a team has something to play for in the last week is much higher. Like if a wild-card team could earn a home game over a division winner, that would be another standings battle which is currently not possible due to ‘divisions having importance’ being an objective. Going from three to four divisions obviously made this problem bigger.

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