Wednesday, September 25, 2019

AP NFL Poll Week 4

From 1955 to 1964, the New York Yankees won the American League pennant nine times in ten years.  Meanwhile, over in the National League, there were often wild scrambles among multiple teams.  In both 1959 and 1962, the NL regular season ended in a tie.  In 1964, the NL came down to a madcap finish featuring the Cardinals, Phillies, Reds, and Giants.  And most of those World Series were very competitive.

Now here's the thing:  reading about all of these seasons as a kid, they sounded really exciting.  In 1962, for example, there was a three-game playoff between the Dodgers and Giants, followed by a seven-game World Series.  The 1960 season ended on a walk-off homer for the Pirates.  Et cetera, et cetera.

But the whole time, baseball was bleeding fans to the NFL, and teams were moving all over the place.  The drama in the NL, and the drama in the World Series, was not enough to make up for the dominance of the Yankees.  It wasn't until later in the 1960's, after the Yankees had been down for awhile, that baseball's popularity recovered.

That's sort of what's happening now to the NFL.  For six(!) years in a row, the winner of the AFC has been quarterbacked by either Peyton Manning or Tom Brady -- and Peyton has been retired for three seasons.  Under these circumstances, people just don't have as much reason to get excited.  But I'm going to try to enjoy the drama over the NFC, and hope that we have a close Super Bowl anyway.

Here's the latest NFL poll from the AP.  Notice that seven of the teams in the top 10 are from the NFC:

1.  New England:  3-0
2.  Kansas City:  3-0
3.  Los Angeles:  3-0
4.  Dallas:  3-0
5.  Green Bay:  3-0
6.  Baltimore:  2-1
7.  New Orleans:  2-1
8.  Minnesota:  2-1
9.  San Francisco:  3-0
10.  Seattle:  2-1

The Redskins are 29th.  The Dolphins are 32d.

The best game this week is the Sunday Night game, with the Cowboys going to New Orleans to take on the Saints.  There are no other games featuring two top-10 teams.


1 comment:

  1. Also, the NFL really hurt itself by trying to paper over the Patriots' cheating to improve their chances of winning all of these years.

    ReplyDelete