Playoffs
The playoffs, postseason, climax, or finals series of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
In team sports in the U.S. and Canada, the vast distances and consequent burdens on cross-country travel have led to regional divisions of teams. Generally, during the regular season, teams play more games in their division than outside it, but the league's best teams might not play against each other in the regular season. Therefore, in the postseason a playoff series is organized. Any group-winning team is eligible to participate, and as playoffs became more popular they were expanded to include second- or even lower-placed teams – the term "wild card" refers to these teams.
In association football, playoffs are often used in the qualification for international tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup. They offer a second chance to the teams failing to qualify directly, and may be regional or intercontinental. In England and Scotland, playoffs are used to decide promotion for lower-finishing teams, rather than to decide a champion in the way they are used in North America. In the EFL Championship, teams finishing 3rd to 6th after the regular season compete to decide the third promotion spot to the Premier League.
The term "post-season" is also used in individual sports such as the sport of athletics or swimming to describe the period of championship meetings or their qualifiers after the regular season has concluded.
American football
National Football League
Evidence of playoffs in professional football dates to at least 1919, when the "New York Pro Championship" was held in Western New York. The Buffalo and Rochester metropolitan areas each played a final, the winners of which would advance to the "New York Pro Championship" on Thanksgiving weekend. The top New York teams were eventually absorbed into the National Football League upon its founding in 1920, but the league did not adopt the New York league's playoff format, opting for a championship based on regular-season record for its first twelve seasons; as a result, four of the first six "championships" were disputed. Technically, a vote of league owners was all that was required to win a title, but the owners had a gentlemen's agreement to pledge votes based on a score. When two teams tied at the top of the standings in 1932, an impromptu playoff game was scheduled to settle the tie.The NFL divided its teams into divisions in 1933 and began holding a single playoff final between division winners. In 1950 the NFL absorbed three teams from the rival All-America Football Conference, and the former "divisions" were now called "conferences", echoing the college use of that term. In 1967, the NFL expanded and created four divisions under the two conferences, which led to the institution of a larger playoff tournament. After the 1970 AFL–NFL merger brought the American Football League into the NFL, the NFL began to use three divisions and a single wild-card team in each conference for its playoffs, in order to produce eight contenders out of six divisions; this was later expanded in 1978 and 1990 so that more wild-card teams could participate.
In 2002 the NFL added its 32nd team, the Houston Texans, and significantly reshuffled its divisional alignment. The league went from 6 division winners and 6 wild-card spots to 8 division winners and only 4 wild-card qualifiers; by, the number of wild-card qualifiers returned to six. The winners of each division automatically earn a playoff spot and a home game in their first rounds, the three top non-division winners from each conference also make the playoffs as wild-card teams. The division winner with the best record in the regular season gets a first-round bye, and each of the other division winners plays one of the three wild-card teams. In the divisional round, the lowest-seeded winner of a wild-card game then plays the lone bye team; the two wild-card winners also advance to play each other. The winners of these two games go to the conference championships, and the winners of those conference finals then face each other in the Super Bowl.
College football
Division I NCAA Football FBS
The College Football Playoff National Championship is a post-season college football bowl game, used to determine a national champion of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, which began play in the 2014 college football season. The game serves as the final of the College Football Playoff, a bracket tournament between the top four teams in the country as determined by a selection committee, which was established as a successor to the Bowl Championship Series and its similar BCS National Championship Game. Unlike the BCS championship, the participating teams in the College Football Playoff National Championship are determined by two semi-final bowls—hosted by two of the consortium's six member bowls yearly—and the top two teams as determined by the selection committee do not automatically advance to the game in lieu of other bowls.The game is played at a neutral site, determined through bids by prospective host cities. When announcing it was soliciting bids for the 2016 and 2017 title games, playoff organizers said that the bids must propose host stadiums with a capacity of at least 65,000 spectators, and cities cannot host both a semi-final game and the title game in the same year.
The winner of the game is awarded a new championship trophy instead of the "Crystal Football", which has been given by the American Football Coaches Association since 1986; officials wanted a new trophy that was unconnected with the previous BCS championship system. The new College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy is sponsored by Dr Pepper, which paid an estimated $35 million for the sponsorship rights through 2020. The 26.5-inch high, 35-pound trophy was unveiled on July 14, 2014.
Division I NCAA Football FCS
The NCAA Division I Football Championship is an American college football tournament played each year to determine the champion of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision. Prior to 2006, the game was known as the NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship. The FCS is the highest division in college football to hold a playoff tournament sanctioned by the NCAA to determine its champion. The twelve-team playoff system used by the Bowl Subdivision is not sanctioned by the NCAA.Division II NCAA Football
The NCAA Division II Football Championship is an American college football tournament played annually to determine a champion at the NCAA Division II level. It was first held in 1973. Prior to 1973, four regional bowl games were played in order to provide postseason action for what was then called the "NCAA College Division" and a poll determined the final champion.The National Championship final was held at Sacramento, California from 1973 to 1975. It was in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1976 and 1977. The game was played in Longview, Texas in 1978. For 1979 and 1980, Albuquerque, New Mexico hosted the game. McAllen, Texas hosted the finals from 1981 to 1985. From 1986 to 2013, the Division II final was played at Braly Municipal Stadium near the campus of the University of North Alabama in Florence, Alabama. Between 2014 and 2017, it was played at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas. Since 1994, the games have been broadcast on ESPN.
Division III NCAA Football
The NCAA Division III Football Championship began in 1973. Before 1973, most of the schools now in Division III competed either in the NCAA College Division or the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. NCAA Divisions II and III were created by splitting the College Division in two, with schools that wished to continue awarding athletic scholarships placed in Division II and those that did not want to award them placed in Division III.The Division III playoffs begin with 32 teams selected to participate in them. The Division III final, known as the Stagg Bowl, has been played annually in Salem, Virginia at Salem Football Stadium since 1993. It was previously played in Phenix City, Alabama at Garrett-Harrison Stadium, at the College Football Hall of Fame, when the Hall was located in Kings Island, Ohio at Galbreath Field, and Bradenton, Florida at Hawkins Stadium.
Association football
As a rule, international association football has only had championship playoffs when a league is divided into several equal divisions, conferences or groups or when the season is split into two periods. In leagues with a single table done only once a year, as in most of Europe, playoff systems are not used to determine champions, although in some countries such systems are used to determine teams to be promoted to higher leagues or qualifiers for European club competitions, usually between teams that didn't perform well enough to earn an automatic spot.A test match is a match played at the end of a season between a team that has done badly in a higher league and one that has done well in a lower league of the same football league system. The format of a test match series varies; for instance it can be a head-to-head between one of the worse finishers of the higher league and one of the better finishers of the lower league, or it can be a mini league where all participants play each other or teams only play those from the other league. The winner of the test match series play in the higher league the following season, and the loser in the lower league.