I’ll admit that I was a little intrigued to see which duo Fox would deputize to call the game between Seattle and Carolina. I knew that a matchup between the worst team in the NFL and a small-market host with a losing record would surely draw the network’s F-team.
So, now we know: the low men on the Fox NFL totem pole are Ross Tucker and Chris Rose. Now, before I take them to task for something, I do need to give credit where credit is due.
First, thanks to Fox for displaying unexpected reverence toward Walter Jones by televising the ceremony commemorating the retirement of #71.
Second, Tucker and Rose, even if they get stuck with the worst game of the week, are still good at what they do. You don’t get to call NFL games for a major network if you aren’t competent. (If, like me, you follow the fortunes of a college football team that hasn’t cracked the top 25 in years, you know what it’s like to endure three hours of bad narration and analysis.)
Overall, the duo did a nice job with the game. However, at one point, they said something that revealed a startling ignorance of league history. (To be fair, in the course of a three-hour broadcast, it is quite natural to say several dumb things.)
They said that no one had ever seen a division as bad as this year’s NFC West.
I guess they weren’t following the NFL in 2008, when no team in the AFC West posted a winning record. San Diego won the division with an 8-8 record.
That same year, the Arizona Cardinals barely managed a winning record (9-7), distinguishing themselves over the rest of the NFC West by default. (They fared better in the playoffs, winding up as NFC champions and before losing Super Bowl XLIII.)
Perhaps Tucker & Rose weren’t paying attention in 2007 when Tampa Bay managed not to lose the NFC South with a 9-7 record.
Apparently, it escaped their notice that Seattle emerged atop the NFC West with a 9-7 record in 2006 and 2004.
Maybe they forgot that the Jets emerged atop the AFC East with a 9-7 record in 2002.
And that just covers all of the cases since the divisional realignment of 2002. Underwhelming division winners were rarer before, when all (or most) divisions had five teams, but it still happened sometimes.
In the decade before the realignment, it happened twice. The Seahawks won the AFC West in 1999 with a 9-7 record. In the previous year, Oakland had won the division at 8-8.
So, teams with average records won six divisions since 2002, but only two in the previous decade (1992-2001).
Clearly, four-team divisions are one culprit, but the overrepresentation of western divisions in the annals of mediocrity suggests that something else might be at work.
Historically, West Coast teams have struggled to compete in away games played in eastern time zones. Perhaps this fact has put occidental divisions at a consistent disadvantage.
I have suggested before that the NFL needs to adopt a scheduling system that pits each division’s teams against its regional interconference counterparts every year. This would place every division on equal footing every year, instead of putting western divisions at a significant disadvantage three out of every four years.
One happy side effect would be reduced travel costs and decreased greenhouse emissions, as teams would log less mileage in any given year.
Moreover, the reschedule would encourage the development of meaningful regional rivalries (Tampa Bay vs. Jacksonville & Miami, Houston vs. Dallas, San Francisco vs. San Diego & Oakland, etc.), and revive the rivalry between Seattle and the AFC West.
A final point: a division won by a team with an average-looking record isn't necessarily a bad or weak division.
Usually, when a division gets won by a 9-7 or 8-8 team, it’s because it's full of bad teams that can’t win outside the division. Obviously, that is the case with the NFC West this year, and in many recent years.
However, sometimes teams with unimpressive records win tough divisions. In these cases, the teams do fine outside the division, but the war of attrition within the division wears them down, so they all wind up knotted near .500. That happened when the Bengals won the AFC Central in 1990, when the Jets won the AFC East in 2002, and when Seattle won the AFC West in 1988 and 1999.
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