And comes to an interesting conclusion:
In the expansion and realignment of 2002, the NFL spit up the lessons in moral hazard it should have digested in the late 1960s. So what we have today is postseason chaos on an even larger scale: a system in which 8-8 teams host playoff games against 12-4 teams, 9-7 teams host not one but two playoff games, 11-5 teams sit at home, and a pair of nine-win teams battle for the right to go to the so-called Super Bowl.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, Between the World and Me, and We Were Eight Years in Power.