Fan Bias

Take a look at the AFC playoff picture prior to week 16 this year and parity is alive and well as eight teams contend for two wild card spots. Anecdotally anyway, it seems that most NFL games are close, many even going down to the final two minutes. Playoff teams often seem to come from nowhere, having suffered miserable seasons just a year earlier. And, upsets are so common that the adage “On any given Sunday” seeps into any conversation regarding one team’s chances of defeating another.

This notion of parity in America’s number one pro sport league contributes to its popularity. After all, what’s better than watch a sporting event between two evenly matched teams where you, the fan, have no idea what the outcome will be?

However, rather than rely on stories or impressions, I thought I’d dig deeper and see if parity truly does exist in the NFL by examining hard numbers.

There are a few potential ways to measure parity but I’ve decided to do so by looking at how many of the NFL’s 32 teams have made the playoffs over the last 10 years. It would seem to me that an NFL team’s ultimate goal is to make the playoffs and thus achieving that goal would be a good measure of success.

Given that there are 12 playoff spots each year, over a ten year period that comes out to 120 aggregate spots. If there is absolutely no parity in the league (in other words, if the few dominated the many), we’d find that only 12 teams made the playoffs over that time, each of them doing so 10 times. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if there is 100% parity, we’d find that all 32 teams make it just about four times each (3.75 to be exact.)

So, I crunched the numbers, and here’s what I found. A whopping 31 teams made the playoffs over the last 10 years (with expansion team Houston having the ignominious disctinction of not having done so.) On the surface this would appear to confirm a high degree of parity. Upon closer inspection, however, as one might expect, the picture isn’t quite so clear.

It turns out that 67 of the playoff spots (56% of the total) were dominated by 11 teams (34% of the total.) And, 91 of the playoff spots (just above three-quarters of all the spots) were taken up by 17 teams (just over half the teams.)

In other words, it appears that while every team in the league does have a realistic shot to make the playoffs, there is indeed a pecking order such that most of the power is concentrated in a few of the teams.

Below are the number of playoff appearances for NFL teams over the last decade.

9 Appearances (1 team)

• Indianapolis: 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

7 Appearances (1 team)

• Philadelphia: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008

6 Appearances (6 teams)

• Tennessee: 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008
• Seattle: 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
• Tampa Bay: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007
• New York Giants: 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
• New England: 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
• Pittsburgh: 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008

5 Appearances (3 teams)

• St. Louis: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004
• Baltimore: 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008
• Green Bay: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007

4 Appearances (6 teams)

• San Diego: 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008
• Dallas: 1999, 2003, 2006, 2007
• Minnesota: 1999, 2000, 2004, 2008
• Miami: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2008
• Denver: 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005
• New York Jets: 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006

3 Appearances (6 teams)

• Washington: 1999, 2005, 2007
• Jacksonville: 1999, 2005, 2007
• Oakland: 2000, 2001, 2002
• Chicago: 2001, 2005, 2006
• Atlanta: 2002, 2004, 2008
• Carolina: 2003, 2005, 2008

2 Appearances (3 teams)

• New Orleans: 2000, 2006
• San Francisco: 2001, 2002
• Kansas City: 2003, 2006

1 Appearance (5 teams)

• Buffalo: 1999
• Arizona: 2008
• Detroit: 1999
• Cincinnati: 2005
• Cleveland: 2002