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Why all the fuss about playoffs?

Whenever you pick up a newspaper or listen to a sports report, all the talk is about playoffs.

It is the college football playoffs or the National Football League playoffs that dominate the headlines.

But when you really think about it, why all the fuss about making the playoffs?

Take the Detroit Lions, if you will.

When the team was 5-8 this season, there was some inane talk about them making the playoffs by running the table.

Remember, this was a team that had already lost to the New York Jets and San Francisco this season, and those two are two or the very worst squads going.

Sure, the Lions — who last won a playoff game was in 1983 — somehow upset New England and had a nice win over Green Bay earlier.

The Patriots, perhaps out of courtesy to former defensive coach Matt Patricia, sleepwalked through the entire game.

Packers placekicker Mason Crosby hit something like five goalposts in that defeat.

There was no way the Lions were going to beat the equally inept Buffalo Bills this past Sunday to keep their slim hopes alive — and they didn’t.

I thought back a few years ago when then New Orleans Saints coach Jim Mora was asked about the playoffs after a miserable loss by his team.

Mora replied with his famous “Playoffs? Playoffs? We’re just trying to score a touchdown …. and you talking about playoffs”?

The college playoff situation is perhaps even more ludicrous.

You have teams in contention who are running up the score against inferior opponents (Furman, Mercer, The Citadel, etc.) just to impress the selection committee.

Haven’t they figured out by now that the football factory run down in Alabama by Nick Saban is usually going to chew them up and spit them out?

But my favorite comment about playoffs came out a few years ago when former Detroit Tigers announcer Rod Allen observed that a loss by the 

Cleveland Indians could help out the Tigers in the wildcard playoff picture.

The date when Allen made the comment was April 

28.

Enough said ….

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