This is why playoffs are supposed to exist.
People seem to think playoffs exist just because they're fun. They're supposed to exist when you have too many teams to possibly play each other in a single regular season.
I disagree for two reasons. The first reason is that England has solved this problem by having 44 teams in their top two leagues. They don't normally play each other but they do allow for cross-mixing between the two groups thanks to pro/rel, and they also have the FA Cup which allows different leagues to play each other.
But the real reason I disagree is that the playoffs don't exist because they're fun or because there's too many teams. The playoffs exist because they're supposed to make money. Extra games and extra TV time are the real reasons.
As a separate issue I think playoffs are somewhat uniquely American because we have two separate and competing baseball leagues who eventually started to play each other for the championship. Playoffs didn't start even then as that was a result of splitting each league into divisions. Might have to do a little research to see if there were playoffs before there were two leagues. Same with the NFL. Anyone know before I head off for google and wikipedia?
The first post is entirely correct from a practical standpoint. If the sole objective of a season is to determine the best team, then you only need playoffs if (1) there is some impediment that prevents teams from playing each other or (2) you don't have enough games for everyone to play each other (or perhaps play each other home and away).
The second post, of course, is correct insofar as there are other reasons people like playoffs and leagues adopt them.
Professional baseball basically created the concept of playoffs that followed the regular season, and that was because there were two leagues whose teams didn't play against each other, so the only way to determine the best team was to have the two champions play a series. The World Series began in 1903, and there were precursor series as far back as the 1880s. But, each league still determined its champion, and thus its representative in the World Series, by single table all the way up to 1969.
In the meantime, the NFL had formed and gained in popularity. For the first dozen years, the NFL used a single table, but in 1932, they instituted a playoff to break a tie between two teams. After that, the league split into two divisions and held a championship game each year between division winners. This was necessary given that football has relatively few regular season games, so at some point of growth, you can't get everyone to play each other. Still, it was a single championship game between two single table winners.
Of course, one thing that happened over time is that playoffs became very popular and quite lucrative. Leagues also like that they kept fans engaged late in seasons as any playoff eligible team could still win a championship. This has led sports like baseball, basketball and hockey (and really even football) to expand them beyond all sense. Using MLB as an example, there is no reason for 10 playoff teams in a sport with 162 games - other than sheer entertainment value.
There are two downsides. The first, and most obvious, is that playoffs are not as good a way as a round robin regular season to determine the best team. Even baseball playoffs - with long 7 game series - are not going to top a 162 game regular season for determining the best team.
The NCAA Tournament is a great example of both the advantages of a playoff, and this first downside. There are 330+ NCAA basketball teams - way too many for everyone to play each other. So, we have this crazy 6 round, single-elimination tournament that is very lucrative and thoroughly entertaining. It also frequently ends up with the top teams losing early and teams that are objectively not the best advancing deep into the tournament and sometimes winning. College coaches have said that if you restarted the NCAA Tournament from scratch several times over, you might not get any single team repeating as Champion.
The second downside to playoffs is that they take time that could be used to play more regular season games. Think about MLS. If we kept the regular season going during the period devoted to playoffs, it would add as many as 6 more games to the schedule for a 40 game regular season. Basically, we are sacrificing 15% of our regular season - 6 games a team or 60 games overall - in exchange for a playoff having fewer games and involving fewer teams.
