Niners Nation After Dark: MLB Playoff Expansion And The NFL

Welcome back to Niners Nation After Dark, home of the division that has people pondering changes to the playoff format. Last season, as the NFC West scuffled its way to a 7-9 division champion, media and fans across the country were complaining about the need for a change to the playoff system. Some went for the simple approach of simply determining home field advantage for games based on record alone. Others went so far as to say that a crappy division champion shouldn't even make the playoffs if they don't have one of the top six records in the conference.

I bring this up at this point in the offseason because Bud Selig has broached the idea of expanding the MLB playoffs to ten teams instead of the current eight. The idea would be to add a wild card team in each league and have the wildcard teams face off. The winner of each wildcard would then advance to face the top team in the league and you'd have your eight team quarterfinal. That opening "wildcard" round would be either a best of three or single game.

Whatever you think of the baseball playoff, I recall somewhere seeing discussion about adding two more playoff teams in each conference, bringing the total to eight teams. Would people be interested in something like that? If you remove the first round bye, do you try to give some other incentive to the top couple teams, or is home field enough?