Wild card (sports)


A wild card is an invitation to a tournament or a playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not qualify via an automatic bid. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference.

International sports

In international sports, the term is perhaps best known in reference to two sporting traditions: team wildcards distributed among countries at the Olympic Games and individual wildcards given to some tennis players at every professional tournament. Tennis players may even ask for a wildcard and get one if they want to enter a tournament on short notice.
For Summer Olympic Games, some National Olympic Committees, whose nations are underrepresented after qualifications, may be granted wild card quotas, which are termed Universality Places, in some eligible sports. In Olympic and World Championship competitions in track and field and swimming, however, nations are automatically allowed to enter two competitors, so these instances are technically not wildcards. In some other Olympic sports, such as judo, archery, and badminton, wildcards are in use, and they are granted by the respective sport federations.
On rare occasions, a competitor who had gained entry by wildcard succeeds in winning a medal or the championship. For example, Kye Sun-Hui won gold in judo at the 1996 Summer Olympics, Ding Junhui won the 2005 China Open snooker championship, Goran Ivanišević won the 2001 Wimbledon Championships, Kim Clijsters won the 2009 US Open, and Lin Dan won the 2013 BWF World Championships.

North America

In North American professional sports leagues, "wild card" refers to a team that qualifies for the championship playoffs without winning their specific conference or division outright. The number of wild card teams varies. In most cases, the rules of the league call for the wild card team to survive an extra round or to play the majority of their postseason games away from home. Although the exact rules among the leagues differ, they all generally agree that the wild card team are the ones with the best records among the teams that did not win their divisions; these teams usually finish as the runner-up to their division winners.
The term "wild card" does not apply to postseason formats where a set number of teams per division qualify. Former examples include: the American Football League's 1969 playoffs, the National Basketball Association's 1967-through-1970 playoffs and 1971–1972 playoffs, and the National Hockey League's 1968–1974 and 1982–1993 playoffs are not true wild card formats. When a wild card playoff format is used, the number of teams in a division that qualify is not fixed; a set number of teams from each division automatically qualify, but additional team also qualify, based either on league record or conference record.

Major League Baseball

In Major League Baseball, the wild card teams are the three teams in each of the two leagues that have qualified for the postseason despite failing to win their division. Those teams in each league possess the three best winning percentages in their league after the three division winners.
The wild card was instituted in MLB in 1994, but implemented for the first time in 1995, after both leagues reorganized into three divisions, with one wild card team per league advancing to the Division Series along with the three division winners. In 2012, the system was modified to add a second wild card team per league and pit each league's wild card teams against each other in a play-in game – the MLB Wild Card Game – the winner of which would then advance to the Division Series and play the division winner with the best record. The two teams with the best records outside of the division champions advanced to the wild card game. The system was changed again in to add a third wild card team from each league, along with replacing the play-in game with two three-game series in each league. The division winner with the worst record in each league would now play in the wild card round, while the other two division winners would continue to have a bye.

Wild card World Series champions

In the National Football League, since, each of the two conferences sends three wild card teams along with four division champions to its postseason. The first round of the playoffs is called the "wild card round". In this round, each conference's division champion with the best regular-season record is awarded a first-round bye and granted automatic berth in the "Divisional Round". The four division champions are seeded from #1 through #4, while the three wild card teams are seeded #5 to #7; within these separations, seeding is by regular-season record. In the "wild card Round", the #7 team plays the #2 team, #6 plays #3, and #5 plays #4. In the "Divisional Round", the lowest-remaining seed plays the #1 seeded team, while the other two wild card winners face-off against each other, with the higher seed hosting. The higher-seeded teams have home-field advantage in both rounds and the "Conference Championships".

Background

The NFL was the first sports league to use the wild card format. The decision to implement a wild card coincided with the completion of the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Prior to the merger, the right to compete in the postseason for the NFL title was restricted to division/conference champions. Until 1967, a tiebreaker game was played to resolve a deadlock for first place in either of the two conferences. When the league expanded to 16 teams that year, it realigned into four divisions and expanded the playoffs to two rounds. Tiebreaker games were eliminated in favor of the use of performance-based criteria to determine division champions.
The rival American Football League, which reached a final size of ten teams in two divisions, continued to restrict its postseason to division winners until the 1969 season, the AFL's last as a separate league. The change came largely in response to criticism from NFL loyalists following the New York Jets' upset win in Super Bowl III, who argued that the Jets had an "unfair" advantage since, having won the Eastern Division outright, they were the only pro team with a bye in the divisional round. The AFL later agreed to expand their playoffs to include division runners-up and implemented tiebreakers, thus in 1969 the runners-up played the winners of the opposite divisions for the right to contest the AFL Championship Game. The Chiefs, despite being AFL West runners-up, nevertheless won the last Super Bowl prior to the merger.
In 1970, the merged league realigned into two conferences of thirteen teams each, with three "old-line" NFL teams joining the AFL teams in the American Football Conference, and the remaining NFL teams forming the National Football Conference. The decision to make the conferences equal in size meant they could not feasibly align into anything except three divisions of four or five teams in each conference. This led to a debate as to how the postseason of the merged league should be structured. Both the NFL and AFL playoff formats of 1969 had attracted fierce critics. The NFL format was criticized for its ability to cause a team tied for first overall in the league to miss the playoffs. The AFL's 1969 playoffs were criticized by NFL purists for breaking with longstanding tradition, also, due to the fact that they allowed runners-up to qualify no matter how much disparity existed between the divisions, the AFL playoff structure could allow a mediocre team to qualify – this did occur when the Houston Oilers, a.500 team, finished second in the Eastern Division – the Oilers were throttled in the playoffs 56–7 by the Western champion Oakland Raiders.
Despite Kansas City's upset wins over the Raiders and Minnesota Vikings, some purists argued for the tradition of having only division champions contest the playoffs to continue. Had they prevailed, the post-merger NFL playoffs would have consisted of six teams and might have eventually evolved to closely resemble the playoffs of the modern Canadian Football League, with the regular season champion of each conference earning the right to host the championship game against the winner of a game between the champions of the other two divisions. However, the old-line NFL owners, who still expected their teams to dominate the merged league for at least the first half of the 1970s, thought a repeat of the 1967 Colts-Rams fiasco would be very likely under the new alignment combined with a six team format. Furthermore, the modern principle that home field advantage and byes should be awarded to the teams with the best records had still not yet been firmly established – tradition at the time dictated that home field advantage rotate between divisions and/or conferences regardless of record. In any event, most owners in both conferences wanted to keep the even four-team playoff field in each conference. This was established by having the three division champions in each conference joined by the best second-place finisher in the conference.

History

As with much of the NFL's nomenclature, the "wild card" was not initially referred to as such and was instead referred as the "Best Second-Place Team". The media, however, began referring to the qualifying teams as "wild cards". Eventually, the NFL officially adopted the term.
For the 1969 AFL playoffs, a "crossover" format was used such that the division winners played the runners up in the opposite division. This was done in part because division rivals had already played each other twice in the regular season and also in part because the AFL did not want the playoff games to be confused as "division championship games" – by keeping division rivals separate in the opening playoff round, the league left fans in no doubt that the regular season division winners were the only true division champions, even if a runner-up eventually won the league title. The NFL kept this principle in place by stipulating that a wild card team could never face its own division champion in the divisional round.
Following the implementation of the AFL–NFL merger prior to the 1970 season, from 1970 to 1974 the NFL used a rotation to determine which teams hosted playoff games, and which teams played which other teams.
From 1975 to 1977, the divisional playoffs featured the #1 seed hosting the "wild card" team, and the #2 seed hosting the #3 seed unless the #1 seed and wild card team were divisional rivals; in that case, the #1 seed hosted the #3 seed and the #2 seed hosted the wild card team. The "wild card" team in each conference was the team with the best record in its conference excluding the #1–3 seeds.
The number of wild card qualifiers was expanded to two per conference in 1978 – the divisional winners were granted a bye week while the wild card teams, seeded #4 and #5, played each other in a "wild card game" with the #4 seed having home field advantage. Since there were two wild card games, one per conference, the phrase "wild card round" came into use. During this time, the #1 seed hosted the winner of the #4 vs #5 wild card game, while the #2 seed played the #3 seed. However, the rule that teams from the same division could not play each other in the divisional round continued, so if the #1 seed and the winner of the #4 vs #5 wild card game were in the same division, then the #1 seed played the #3 seed, while the #2 seed played the #4 vs #5 winner.
To address the oddity of one wild card team per conference hosting a playoff game while one division winner per conference did not automatically have the right to host a playoff game, the playoffs were expanded again to three wild cards per conference in 1990 with the lowest-ranked divisional winner losing its bye but gaining the right to host a playoff game. Following the addition of the Houston Texans in 2002, the league added a fourth division to each conference. The league decided not to change the number of playoff teams, and thus the number of wild card qualifiers was reduced to two per conference. In 2020, the playoffs returned to three wild cards per conference, or 14 teams total. The term "Wild Card Round" continues to be used for the opening round of the playoffs, even though this round has involved both division winners and wild card teams since 1990.
As of the 2021–22 playoffs, there has never been a meeting of two wild card teams in the Super Bowl; the closest that came to happening was in the 2010–11 playoffs, when the Green Bay Packers and New York Jets went on Cinderella runs after finishing as the second wild card team in each of their conferences ; the Packers won the NFC Championship Game and went on to win the Super Bowl, while the Jets' Cinderella story ended with a one-score loss to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game.
From 2002 to 2019, the only way a wild card team could host a playoff game within their respective conference would be for both wild card teams to reach the Conference Championship Game by each winning two road playoff games:
  • The No. 5 seeded wild card wins @ the No. 4 seeded division winner in the wild card Round and wins @ the No. 2 seeded division winner in the divisional round
  • The No. 6 seeded wild card wins @ the No. 3 seeded division winner in the wild card Round and wins @ the No. 1 seeded division winner in the divisional round
The No. 5 seeded wild card would host the No. 6 seeded wild card in the Championship Game.
Since 2020, it has been possible for a wild card team to host a Divisional Round playoff game. This requires that all three wild card teams win their wild card games on the road since teams are re-seeded. The matchups in the divisional round would be:
  • The No. 7 seeded wild card @ the No. 1 seeded division winner
  • The No. 6 seeded wild card @ the No. 5 seeded wild card