Polian likes alternate playoff seeding plan

<em>Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky</em> <p>JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Bill Polian like the idea of the playoff field being seeded according to records, but said on his weekly radio show this week that while the competition committee favors it, owners don't and he doesn't expect it to happen.</p> <p>This may be rehash, but I don't remember reading about this in any detail</p> <p>He's how he recounted the discussions and vote:</p> <blockquote> <p>"The Competition Committee, of which I am a member, voted 7-1 last year to change the seeding process and to do exactly what you are advocating. That was to seed by record, so you would go 1-6 by record, then go ahead and play it out from there. The committee was open to some suggestions as to maybe getting a division-winner a home game, but nevertheless putting the seeds where they were based on records. There were some compromise issues talked about, but clearly it was the committee's preference to do it by record, because we felt that was the best way to determine who did the best job during the regular season. My understanding is that's the way basketball does it, that it's done by record. We had seven votes in the committee for that and I'm not sure we got more than seven votes on the floor. (Laughing)</p> <p>"It was roundly defeated, and I don't think we'll bring it up again anytime soon. It's an owner's position and they're not interested in the football niceties. They believe if they won the division they should get the home [playoff] game and all that goes with that, including some buzz in the offseason, some of them claim. So, that's an idea whose time has come and gone no matter what the purists may think. That's the system. The football people, I think it's fair to say, when the system was first proposed wanted to do it on a seeding basis. They were defeated then. The thought was, 'Let's see how it works.' We were frankly afraid that you'd get a situation where you might have a losing-record division-winner hosting in bad weather an 11-5 or 12-4 team. That has not happened.</p> <p>"There has been no division-winner that has been below .500. Interestingly enough, the seeding has sort of worked out de facto, anyway. The team with the better record has a preponderance of winning in the postseason. We'll see how it works out. The bottom line is the committee proposed it and no one adopted our proposal."</p> </blockquote> <p>Polian <a href="http://www.colts.com/sub.cfm?page=article7&news_id=b6669160-6650-42db-a6fe-40fd8be2f277" shape="rect" target="_blank">also talks</a> about being optimistic that Dominic Rhodes will want to return and offers an update on Mike Hart.</p>

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