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Originally Posted by Philadelphia Freedom
With the toilet bowl idea would the goal be to win or lose the games? If your teams sucks (because of injuries or whatever) and you have lost enough games to be in the bottom four it might be difficult to then be able to turn it on and win games.
For example through 13 weeks this year you would have two teams that are 5-8 (I think there are three teams with this record so one of them would not be eligible to play for the top pick) and two teams that 3-10. On any given week anything can happen but the two worse teams would seem to be at a decent disadvantage. Also, since getting into the bottom four gets you a chance at the top pick I would think that this would open up the door for more questionable line-ups. Instead of having to really suck you can coast into the bottom four with a moderate level of sucess in the regular season and then still capture the top pick.
Set-up this way I would think the toilet bowl would run counter to what we are trying to do. If it was just the two worst teams playing I might feel a bit differently.
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No matter where you draw the line (four teams, two teams, whatever), you're going to have a team that is on the edge of making the toilet bowl, or making the lottery, or making the cutoff for whatever we do. That's no worse than what we have now, except that what we have now is 100% predictable in that if you coast, and are successful in getting the higher pick you are looking for.
For the toilet bowl, of course the goal would be to win the games in the toilet bowl to get the #1 pick. Looking at this years' teams, while Joel and Frank's teams you may think are at a distinct disadvatage, it woudln't necessarily be the case if there was a toilet bowl. They may have managed their teams differently, gone for some of the free agents that popped up the second half of the season, whatever, that would have put them in a better situation to win games week 15 and 16. That would be the whole point of it. Give them an incentive to be comeptitive the playoff weeks, which in turn makes them more competitve in the weeks leading up to that, and in turn making it better for everyone.
If you leave it to just the bottom two, you're not solving anything. The teams can still coast the last part of the season and know that worst case scenario, they'll end up with the #2 pick instead of the #1 pick. That's not a huge incentive to remain competitive. Also, you still get the same bubble issue with the #3 or #4 worst team throwing games to get to the bottom. The higher you make the entrance into the toilet bowl, the closer you are getting to teams that are legitimately competing for the winner's brackett playoffs.