The Daily Forecast

Colin Cowherd: Playoff wins = Bowl wins

I’m not sure why, but every once in a while I turn on “The Herd” on ESPN Radio. And every time I do, host Colin Cowherd comes through with something amazing.

Apparently, Colin dreams up ideas at night, and then comes on the air and talks about them without rationally looking over them first.

Today’s example, essentially saying that playoff wins didn’t matter in the NFL.

Now, I’m no NFL expert, but I thought the whole point of the league was to win in the playoffs. Sure, winning regular season games is fun, and it’s part of the process, but in a league where the champion is crowned following a 12-team postseason, being the best team in the playoffs is all that matters.

Here’s the problem with Cowherd, he’s not a complete idiot, and he’s far from a genius. He’s in between, meaning he often tries to push his half-baked ideas.

In this instance, he was trying to say that things aren’t always as good as they look, and that teams’ problems can often be masked by big wins. This is true, but the problem is that if those big wins come in the playoffs, the problems don’t matter. The Cardinals probably don’t have to be worrying about the fact their quarterback is older than the Crypt Keeper while he’s leading them to the NFC Championship Game, which they are hosting. At least not right now, that’s what the offseason is for. They’ll worry about it then, perhaps while polishing a Super Bowl trophy.

Sure, Norv Turner sucks as a coach, but the argument that the Chargers are getting worse is tough to make. I understand they went from 14 wins to 11 wins to 8 wins. But they also went from no playoff wins to two playoff wins, to one playoff win in that same time period. And the 8-win season came with Shawne Merriman watching, not to mention all the playoff games LaDainian Tomlinson has been watching.

So yea, you can make the argument the Chargers underachieve in the regular season. That’s fine. But it’s hard to say they’re regressing when they have been winning games when it matters.

You may be asking, what as the bow Cowherd put on this argument? Well, this folks, is where it got really asinine. He compared winning in the playoffs to winning a bowl game. I’ll repeat that, winning a playoff game to winning a bowl game.

I agree, that for a vast majority of teams, the bowl win probably didn’t mean that much, and it probably has nothing to do with how well you’ll do next year. But in college football, only one game matters in the postseason, and that’s the BCS title game. In the NFL, every playoff game matters, because if you win, you still have a chance to win the championship that year.

It’s not a matter of, ‘our team looks awesome coming back next year because we won our wild card playoff game.’ No, it’s, ‘what can we do to win our divisional playoff game next week?’

Maybe that’s why people listen to Cowherd, because he’s way to easy to win an argument with while driving to work, and people just want to feel good about themselves.