Op/Ed: Best Playoff Format (of NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL)

What is the best postseason format? Would it be Hockey with their 16 team start? Could it be Football with the Wild Card lead? In my opinion, the best playoff bracket would have to go to the March Madness Format.​
by Lucas Bell

I don’t know what it is about it if I am being completely honest. I can’t tell if it is the fact that it looks really chaotic and a lot is going on which makes it look fun to watch, if it's a simple loser knockout bracket, or if I just like basketball. If we’re being honest, it is all of them. I really like how action packed it looks just looking at the front of it. I also really like how every team gets a chance to play in it instead of just being knocked out as soon as the season is over. 

Another thing I like is how simple they make it. With the Baseball and Football formats they make it to where the two first teams that play whoever wins have to play a whole new team instead of playing the winner of a different matchup. I know why they do this. I just don’t really think it's the best to watch. Don’t get me wrong it is a smart way to make things fair, but this is my opinion. March Madness for the NBA just makes their brackets and formatting just simple and satisfying. I feel like it is way more fun to watch and it catches the attention of whoever is watching, making them think “Who will come out the winner?”

There is a playoff format for every sport, but they're pretty much all the same. Football, Baseball, Hockey, etc. I mean I guess Soccer is the same format as Basketball, but Soccer sucks. I am not trying to be mean about it either, it's just that compared to Basketball, Soccer is at the bottom of the barrel. An average Basketball playoff game gets around 4.50 million views on average while a Soccer playoff game gets around 450k on average. 

Basketball has been around for a long time. Basketball dated back to 1946. That was around 80 years ago. There have been approximately 78 championship games played since. The Los Angeles Lakers have 16 of those titles. It’s mind-boggling because most teams only have around 2-5 championships. The San Antonio Spurs have the most playoff appearances however. 
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Basketball is just an all around fun sport to watch. The playoff bracket has very good formatting that other teams don’t. Football, Hockey, and other sports do theirs differently, but when it comes down to my opinion, I prefer to say that NBA formatting is the best for the playoff games.