Is anyone, apart from sponsors, a fan of end of season play-offs to decide a title. I can understand the need for a Super Bowl in American Football and Stanley Cup in Ice Hockey because there are two seperate Leagues and to decide an overall Champion the best two from each league have to play each other. Here in the UK Rugby Union decided a couple of years ago that the League Champions wouldn't be the ones who finished the normal season at the top of the League but would be the winner of a K.O. tournament of the top 4 teams.
(The ruling was in my opinion introduced to give the other teams a chance whilst the Leicester Tigers were head and shoulders better than anyone else! They needn't have bothered as the Tigers were really terrible this year) This year Wasps have beaten Gloucester in the Play off Final and therefore are the League Champions - In the League they were 15 points behind Gloucester. I think this is a travesty. Gloucester should have taken the title on their performance through the season.

This is the same with promotion play-offs. Although I welcome Wolverhampton Wanderers into the Premier League of English football, I still question it's integrity.
Yes, it's good for the game, but is it good for the team that should have gained promotion?

I'm a huge fan of playoffs!!

NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, MLS, etc...
March Madness.

gotta love it!
and there is not really two leagues
it is all one league here in the USA
they just usually pit the Eastern Conference winner against the Western Conference winner.

SG - The football (soccer) promotion play-offs do give the fans some hope of success from the season - been there done that (too many times!) but I still don't agree with the principle of a 4th/5th placed club being promoted above a 3rd placed club in the league. Play-offs by their very nature are unfair to a team which has achieved the promotion place (IE 3rd) by a large margin in normal league play but then has to "put it's fate to the wind" in a KO series of games.
Sorry if I've mislead LordAndry, Supposing The Superbowl wasn't the Final game of the season but was the end of the normal season - The Superbowl Finalists, the Semi-Finalists and the Quarter Finalists then go into a KO competition (One game knock-out) to decide the overall winners and best team in the season. (Draw is seeded so Superbowl Winners would play the lowest placed Quarter Finalist, Superbowl Runners up play next highest Quarter Final placing etc...) Now imagine The Superbowl winners get through to the last game - The Final - In that Final they meet the quarter Finalist team that KO'd the Superbowl Runners UP - We now have No1 team playing the No7 team - The No 7 team wins the Final Game and is declared the Champions for the year.

That's the nearest analogy I can get to our single League (Conference) being decided by play-off games. As I said if there was a North League (conference) and a South League (conference) then a play-off between the two winners is acceptable to decide the best team of the year, as it is our teams play each other home and away and I believe the Champion team should be the one who gets the most points from wins/draws/losses over those games.

but that rarely happens here.

but then again...that's why we root for the underdog!

for example...Anaheim Mighty Ducks...seeded seventh out of eight in the Western Conference
they win the West and advance to the Stanley Cup Finals

seeding in American playoffs are decided by regular season records.

this is why we play and watch the game.
because it's fun...because upsets can happen

usually the better teams advance because they are the better teams, but every once in a while
the underdog reigns supreme!

playoff games are so fun and intense
and they bring in tons of money and exposure
gotta have 'em