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A little offbeat topic for the offseason. Outside of the obvious, ie that winning a division gives you a guaranteed home game in the playoffs and is the easier ticket to the Super Bowl vs. a wild card entry, what does it mean to you to win a divisional title? What amount of pride and satisfaction do you derive from winning the NFC West?

Except as it relates to our quest of winning a Lombardi, winning the NFC West means about as much to me as placing 2nd in a two horse race. It's a 4 team division in a 32 team league, so mathematically all it means is that we were better than a little over 10% of the league. I often wonder what people from places like Pittsburgh and Green Bay think when they walk into our house and see that we have hanging from the roof, among other banners, a 2010 NFC West Champs banner, celebrating the achievements of a 7-9 team that lost in the divisional round of the playoffs. It's like the Certificate of Participation they used to give to junior high school players that didn't play often enough to earn a letter, or like winning a booby prize at an office party.

When does the season start?

Start the scale with # of wins

making the playoffs = # of wins + 500

Division title = # wins + 1,000

Advancing in the playoffs = # wins + 1,500 + Div title if applicable

Conference championship = 10,000 + all previous applicable

Super Bowl Champs = 1 Million (capped, it doesn't matter how you got there)

GOAT discussion worthy SB title = 1.5 million.

I don't understand the numbers Bob, it kind of makes my brain hurt trying to "cypher" the numbers.

What I do get is that Division Titles ARE important. The main thing is that a DV guarantees at least 1 home play off game and the best thing that can happen is that a team can nail down one of the top two play off seeds. That would guarantee a team only having to win two play off games to reach the Super Bowl!

One cool thing that can happen is that in a season that seems to be all but lost can be saved when the rest of the teams in your division also stink at least ONE team will make the play offs by reason of winning their division. People put our team down when we made the play offs with a losing record but we were the ones who laughed last when our Seahawks showed what was about to come when on the back of the original "Beast Quake" we knocked the defending Super Bowl Champs out of the play offs!!! See, we were NOT as "bad" as our record, it was that our division was one of the toughest in the whole conference if not the whole league. That game was a preview of the team we would become in a few years. Oh, and wasn't it great to watch Matt Hasselbeck win one more play off game as a Seahawk???

Yeah, division wins are VERY significant and don't let anybody else tell you any different!

Outside of the obvious, ie that winning a division gives you a guaranteed home game in the playoffs and is the easier ticket to the Super Bowl vs. a wild card entry, what does it mean to you to win a divisional title? What amount of pride and satisfaction do you derive from winning the NFC West?

Winning championships is what you play for and winning the division is the first step. It creates a history of success that teams who follow can look towards when they are being rebuilt.
It's all part of a legacy of success a franchise wants to build. In a league with so much parity, winning any division isn't a cakewalk.
It has to be earned and consecutive titles or lots of them over an extended period of time is a testament to the organization of people who's hard work and dedication paid off.

NorthHawk wrote:Winning championships is what you play for and winning the division is the first step.

Understood and agreed, which is why I qualified my statement as "except as it applies to winning a Lombardi".

My question in the OP was about a divisional title stand alone, apart from anything else subsequent to it.

Seahawks4Ever wrote:I don't understand the numbers Bob, it kind of makes my brain hurt trying to "cypher" the numbers.

If you want to visualize it make a graph and insert those numbers, then you can easily see the value I attach to each point on the graph.

RiverDog wrote:Winning championships is what you play for and winning the division is the first step.

Understood and agreed, which is why I qualified my statement as "except as it applies to winning a Lombardi".

My question in the OP was about a divisional title stand alone, apart from anything else subsequent to it.

Which is why I went on to say:
It's all part of a legacy of success a franchise wants to build. In a league with so much parity, winning any division isn't a cakewalk.
It has to be earned and consecutive titles or lots of them over an extended period of time is a testament to the organization of people who's hard work and dedication paid off.

NorthHawk wrote:Which is why I went on to say:
It's all part of a legacy of success a franchise wants to build. In a league with so much parity, winning any division isn't a cakewalk.
It has to be earned and consecutive titles or lots of them over an extended period of time is a testament to the organization of people who's hard work and dedication paid off.

Andy Reid has won 7 divisional titles, more than any active head coach next to Belichek, and no one's taking any notice of that achievement whatsoever. It's the answer to a trivia question. Without subsequent championships, divisional titles are inconsequential, either in terms of HOF resumes or in the perceived success of a franchise. Divisional championships w/o subsequent conference and SB championships are the NFL's definition of mediocrity.

Yah, it would leave a legacy of 'almost got there', but teams that win SuperBowls usually win Divisions before they have their championship run.
There are some that come out of nowhere to win it all then disappear in one year and there are wildcard teams that win, but teams that go to the top regularly, win their division consistently.
I think it sets a tone of success that teams can build on and fans can be proud of.

A division win means a first round bye in the playoffs.

politicalfootball wrote:A division win means a first round bye in the playoffs.

No, but it does mean a home game...

mykc14 wrote:
No, but it does mean a home game...

Which is a really big deal if you're an owner. $$$

RiverDog wrote:Except as it relates to our quest of winning a Lombardi, winning the NFC West means about as much to me as placing 2nd in a two horse race.

This is where I stand. It means a home playoff game, and nothing more.

RiverDog wrote:I often wonder what people from places like Pittsburgh and Green Bay think when they walk into our house and see that we have hanging from the roof, among other banners, a 2010 NFC West Champs banner, celebrating the achievements of a 7-9 team that lost in the divisional round of the playoffs.

Yeah, it's a bit embarrassing. I'm a college professor, and I get the same feeling about this as I do when hearing prospective students brag about their 4th place finish in the 1A state backwards bear walk. A divisional banner is bragging about being better than literally three other teams. It's not exactly banner-worthy.

Could be worse.
Buffalo and Minnesota have 4 Conference Championship banners each but no Super Bowl Banner.

I am not one bit embarrassed by that 2010 Banner! We were beat up most of the year but we did what we had to do to win the division, then in the face of all the 'teams with losing records shouldn't be in the playoffs" shouting going on we proved our worth as a playoff team by knocking the defending Super Bowl Champs out of the playoffs to advance!

If you advance in the playoffs, particularly if you did so by knocking off the defending champs you belonged in the playoffs!

I hope that banner hangs forever!

Plus we should have beaten the Patriots in the SB. All we had to do was hand it off to Lynch. Then we would have another banner.

c_hawkbob wrote:I am not one bit embarrassed by that 2010 Banner! We were beat up most of the year but we did what we had to do to win the division, then in the face of all the 'teams with losing records shouldn't be in the playoffs" shouting going on we proved our worth as a playoff team by knocking the defending Super Bowl Champs out of the playoffs to advance!

If you advance in the playoffs, particularly if you did so by knocking off the defending champs you belonged in the playoffs!

I hope that banner hangs forever!

I remember that playoff game for the Beast Quake run more than I do beating a defending SB champ in our own house. Heck, last season the defending SB champ didn't even make the playoffs. I doubt that they'll have a reunion day to celebrate the achievements of the 2010 season.

I'm not saying I would have rather not have won the division or that we didn't deserve to be in the playoffs, but the fact is that history will remember the 2010 season as an answer to a trivia question (Name the only NFL team to win their division with a losing record) until someone else backs into the playoffs at 7-9 or worse. It's not an embarrassment, but it's nothing to be bragging about, either, which is essentially what hanging the banner in the rafters is doing. I'd rather see that banner in a glass case behind the checkout counter in the stadium pro shop.