Other than Regan and Eisenhower my district has voted Democrat since the 1920s. Prior to that it had always voted Republican. A republican (or even a democrat)’s vote has little power in my state. Honestly the presidential candiates don’t even bother running political adds once primary season is over. I hear more about the adds on CNN news stories than I do as actual commercials.

A valid solution might just be redistricting but as it stands I do not believe the current electoral college as implemented is as effective as it could be. At a minimum the electoral votes awarded via senator seats seem to be a very uneven way to grant power. I did not see this touched on in the article.

As far as the math “proving it is true” I am not sure I buy that argument. There is a fixed amount of voting ‘power’ we as a nation of roughly 300 million can elect 1 president every 4 years. So if things were equal your vote would be worth 1/300M. There is a fixed amount of voting power, the electoral college system absolutely gives more power to some individual voters/districts. However this power isn’t coming out of nowhere. It is taken from some other voters. There is no “free power” to give away. The way that article reads to me is that the system attempts to give more power to smaller minority blocs at the expense of larger minority blocs. It still seems debatable whether or not that is a good thing.

Here, I found a great little simulator that shows the EC math in action.

But to summarize it goes: Head-to-head, conference record, common games, strength of victories, strength of schedule, then it has 5 more things based on points scored and allowed and total touchdowns until FINALLY you get to…… a coin toss.
In the case of the Pats, they went 7-5 in conference and the Ravens went 8-4. They both went 4-2 in division. Then the Pats had the luck of drawing the atrocious AFC West, and had the intended bad fortune of drawing the Steelers and Colts. Where the Ravens had the unluck of playing the strong AFC SOuth and the intended benefits of playing Oakland and Miami (although…)

And Scott, I don’t find that article particularly convincing. While the math is pretty fascinating the base assumptions are drastically oversimplified and I don’t agree with them. It begs the question all over the place, but that’s for another thread I suppose.

And the Chargers seem to know how to play the Colts so I’d be careful with that game.

Watch a game on TV and 80% of it is commercials or interminable announcer yapping with nothing going on on the field.

Too true. Joe Buck, John Madden, et al need to STFU. If the league would simply broadcast the on-field sound and leave the commentary to that little voice in my brain all would be well.

As someone who has the odd distinction of being both a Pats fan and an Agitator fan, I’d say you’re half right.

It sucks incredably to have the Pats missing out on the playoffs, but there’s a certain logic in having the divisions actually mean something. Win your division and you’re in makes sense if you’re going to split the teams up by division in the first place. But forcing your 12-4 Colts to go to San Diego is ridiculous, as is having 11-5 Atlanta go to 9-7 Arizona and even 11-5 Baltimore going to 11-5 Miami (as Baltimore beat Miami during the season). Change the system around, but don’t eliminate the divisions, just stop the insanity of giving .500 teams home games.

I’m a Pats fan: 11-5 and we stay home while 11-5 Miami goes to the playoffs.

Came in second place for fifth straight year in fantasy football.

I knew I would pay for Texas, Pats, Red Sox, and Celtics winning championships.

Actually, the EC provides a very important mathematical feature, it’s just that most people don’t understand it, which is why they incorrectly advocate for its removal.

3 teams from the same division can make the playoffs. This happened last year in the NFC East when the Giants and Redskins took the two wild-card spots. Had Tampa Bay won yesterday then both wildcards would have come from the NFC South, this year. But yes, only one fo them can get the first round bye, while the other team can be seeded no better than 5th.

It’s a very flawed system because of the problems Scott alludes to with sample size. I think you can’t get away from division winners getting in and I think you have to keep it to only 6 teams per conference. It’s not great but the alternatives suck.

Scott, the Electoral College is a nightmare with no real “features.” I don’t think that’s a fair comparison because the solution to that problem is readily apparent. And i imagine we would get a lot mroe debate on that topic here.

So in that case it doesn’t seem really fair to award a bye due to an easy schedule. The same would I think go for awarding homefield advantage based solely on record. In general I like the current system as there is no way for teams accross the league to have a balanced schedule, so at least we can do it within a division. But if we are talking about the schedules being balanced within a division the overall record of a team shouldn’t matter once you get out of the division. I proposed another 2 wildcard spots just because mathmatically it’s easy todo and doesn’t add any additional weeks to the season.

You do have a valid point though in that it could potentially give some motivation to teams who are already in the playoffs for that last game or two. That seems like a TV Ratings benefit, but not a particularly fair thing todo if you want the best team to win the superbowl.

The other problem with the NFL here as it relates to the playoffs is that with each team only playing 16 games, you don’t really statistically know who the better teams are, because the events (games) aren’t repeated enough to “settle down” the relative frequency of the “values” (win/loss) that occur. If you flip a coin only 16 times, the relative frequency of “heads” might significantly vary from the frequency when the coin is flipped 82 or 162 times.

So I agree with some of the other posters: fix what exactly? Is this similar to those that suggest we “fix” the problem that someone can be elected president that wins the electoral vote but doesn’t win the popular vote? That’s a feature, not a bug! If you really want to know who the better NFL teams are, then I suggest that the NFL should play at least twice as many games as they currently do. Increase the sample set size of the independent events.

The problems with your idea are 1) 8 teams from each conference means half the teams in the league make the playoffs. That just really damages the integrity of the sport. Back when there were 3 wildcard spots, some 8-8 teams made the playoffs in those spots, and there always seemed to be 9-7 teams in. That was still only 6 teams total, I think 8 would let some real crummy sneak in teams moreso than it would allow quality teams an opportunity. 4 divisions and only two WC slots has made it harder to get into the playoffs for most teams (see the Patriots) and emphasized division games. I don’t think the league should undo that.

Also, as for 1st round byes, despite recent history, having a week off is a huge help that all teams would love to have. You should reward teams who go 13-3 or 14-2 or something and encourage teams running away with their division or who are otherwise assured of a playoff spot to continue to play for one of those top seeds, rather than roll over and suck like the Cardinals did this year. Plus if you didn’t have first round byes we’d now be hearing the argument of how the Titans and Steelers get no real big advantage over the crummy Chargers because one of them would be hosting New England this weekend.

The only solution I would propose to the format is that homefield advantage and seeding is based on record. In other words, San Diego still gets in, but they would be a 6th seed and get no home games.

The Pat’s played remarkably well considering all of the injuries and came within an overtime loss to the Jets and a late loss to the Colts of being 13-3.

Watch a game on TV and 80% of it is commercials or interminable announcer yapping with nothing going on on the field. And what actually did go on on the field was only occasionally interesting. You’ve seen one incomplete pass, one stumble into the pigpile for a yard and a half, or one camera shot of coaches pacing up and down the sidelines looking oh-so-concerned, you have seen them all. After decades of watching several NFL games a week, I quit watching it in 1989. Haven’t missed the snoozefest one bit.

I see you suggest that the system is broken but you didn’t post any possible solutions.

I don’t think the system is broken at all. Within your division, 14 out of 16 games are played against common opponents. The other two are played against opponents chosen based on your success the previous year (the better you did, the harder these games are). This gives those teams that didn’t do as well the previous year a chance to catch up. This sounds fair to me.

Would you rather just seed the top 8 records? That could leave a division winner (and this year it WOULD leave one) out of the playoffs. If you’re going to do that, then why bother having divisions if winning one doesn’t matter? Or, are you suggesting that we keep the same system as far as who makes the playoffs and then seed them by record? That’s cool, except that the team that won its division now gets no compensation over one that didn’t win and made the playoffs as a wild card.

There is no perfect system and, no matter what, there will always be someone complaining about it.