There Has Never Been a Division Like This in American Sports

The NFL regular season is back.

As a Jets fan I have cautious optimism about this season - Aaron Rodgers has to play more snaps than last year, right?! - and as a sports writer, I will be generating sports content for social media personality @mattybetss for the duration of the season. Give him a follow!

Anyway, I’m excited about the new storylines and the ever evolving landscape of the league

Some of changes feel extremely foreign and may take time to adjust. The Hoodie GOAT (Bill Belichick) and the Gum Chomping Truther (Pete Carroll) are gone. New look kickoffs are here. The Lions have Super Bowl aspirations. And my Jets are division favorites for the first time in 25 years!

Compare these novelties with what’s to be expected. The Chiefs should likely reach their 7th straight AFC Championship game…if not further. Jordan Love will be the next coming of Aaron Rodgers who was the next coming on Brett Favre. Every Monday morning, I will turn on ESPN to Stephen A cackling at the Cowboys misfortunes and having FanDuel, ESPN Bet and every other sports betting company on the planet inundating me with the hypocritical dyad of $50 promo codes followed by 1-800-GAMBLER.

In addition to these predictable traditions, there’s another specific one that keeps near and dear to my heart. Under the “more things change, more they stay the same” category, there’s a trend that has continued for over half my life that I’m excited to monitor.

The last two weeks I wrote articles about my connection with MLB outfielder Kevin Mench’s bizarre seven game home run streak.

So with the NFL season upon us, I want to share another head-scratching streak, this one related to football.

Perhaps it’s the math nerd in me who loves the minuscule probability or the storyteller behind the demise leading up to this streak’s origin, but there’s no streak more delightful to me than what is currently happening in the NFC East.

For the past 19 seasons, the NFC East has yet to produce a consecutive division winner. 

This streak of parity for a sports division is unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed. Not just in football, but in professional American sports.

Since the turn of the century, the NFC East has gone from the NFL’s best division to the worst. 

By worst, I don’t necessarily mean constantly producing inconsequential teams. After all, since 2000, the NFC East has won more Super Bowls than the NFC West and AFC South.

My connotation of worst has to do with each teams’ inconsistencies and unpredictabilities, which has led to a collective drop off in prestige.

The NFC East owns the most Super Bowls of any division in history, a testament to their dominant dynasties of the 80s and 90s. 

Joe Gibbs led the Redskins to a run of three Super Bowls. Intermittently, the Giants sprinkled in two Super Bowls under the helm of Bill Parcells. When Gibbs and Parcells departed, the Cowboys took the reins with three Super Bowls in four seasons. The “90s Cowboys” became more than just a dynasty - they became part of NFL lexicon.  

These teams were led with ownership committed to winning and creating a team-first culture. In a league where it’s hard for a team to win multiple titles with a quarterback change, the Giants won with two different QBs and the Redskins won with three. While the Cowboys had stability with Troy Aikman, they won titles with two different coaches. The next-man up approach for success was a foundation for these NFC East teams and one that every other team in the league aspired to emulate.

In fourteen seasons from 1982-1995, these teams won eight Super Bowls, turning the NFC East into the NFL’s elite division.

With this staunch competition among the NFC East teams, one could make the case that any combination of two NFC East teams (with the exception of the superfluous St Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals) was the league’s best rivalry. 

Fans of New York, Washington, Dallas, and Philadelphia HATED each other, with each regular season win against the other playing a significant role towards the division crown and, in proxy, another Super Bowl.

There became no greater source of fan vitriol than the feeling of another team being an obstacle in between you and happiness. This is why even if your beloved Giants failed to make the postseason, you’d pop champagne if Dallas or Washington were eliminated as well.

The geographical proximity of the three Northeast teams made it commonplace for fans to commute to road games, creating a more hands-on and occasionally violent hatred.

When the disdain wasn’t physical, it was cultural. While the three Northeast teams had their differences, they all agreed that Dallas’ culture was revolting. The Northeast did things more traditionally and humbly, while Texas did things larger and louder. The Northeast had grace, Texas had gaud. 

The Redskins had grown men wearing pig snouts; The Cowboys had hot cheerleaders.

While these rivalries transcended football bragging rights and into defending cultural pride, the three most successful NFC East teams eventually handed the baton to the upstart Philadelphia Eagles. 

In the early 2000s, the Eagles were coming out of the shadows of their NFC East Big Brothers and tried to forge their own dominant stretch. Led by a feisty, beefy young coach named Andy Reid, Philadelphia maximized their potential with an overachieving quarterback Donovan McNabb and a vaunted defense.

The Eagles won the division from 2001-2004. While they didn’t win a Super Bowl, those four straight division titles led to four straight NFC Championship games, solidifying them as the NFC’s cream of the crop.

In 2005, Terrell Owens' tantrum-filled antics was a large domino in the Eagles' slide from first to last, and since that year until now, there has yet to be another consecutive division winner.

Last year the NFC East reached 18 straight seasons without a consecutive division winner, which tied with the “Big Four” record set by the NHL’s Northeast Division. From 1994-2011, the Northeast’s lack of a back-to-back champion was bizarre, but it didn’t seem completely unreasonable.  

In 1994, the Vancouver Canucks had just won consecutive Smythe Division titles when the NHL realigned their divisions to unite teams based on location. In this first iteration, the Canucks moved to the Northwest Division and their former divisional opponents would stay in the new Northeast Division. 

The Northeast featured seven teams - Boston, Buffalo, Hartford, Montreal, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, and Quebec. 

After two years, the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado and the Northeast was down to six teams. Although the Hartford Whalers moved to Carolina the following year, the franchise stayed in the Northeast Division for one season, until 1998 when the Northeast Division did another configuration, whittling the division down to five teams.

With all this chaos, finding a division winner in the Northeast was like playing roulette. New year, new teams, new champion. Finally in 2011, the Bruins won a second straight division crown. 

While this 18 year streak had become the new North American record of its kind, it wasn’t as shocking relative to the NFC East.

First, NHL divisions were - and to some extent, have always been -  a shitshow, similar what’s happening with NCAA conferences today. When your division opponents move to a different city or are welcomed as expansion teams, more shakeup in the standings will occur.

Second, the NHL teams don’t have the same motivation to win the division. In 1994, 16 of 26 NHL teams (61%) made the postseason and 4 of those 16 (25%) won the division. Think about the NFL now where 14 out of 32 teams (44%) make the postseason and 8 of those 14 (57%) win the division. Unlike the NHL, the NFL postseason format incentives their teams to win the division as not just the most straight forward path to the postseason, but it also comes with perks like home games and postseason byes. 

Third, statistically speaking, divisions with more teams - as the Northeast ranged from 5-7 - would have more variety in who comes out on top. 

Now that we have these baselines between the two longest streaks of these kinds, how is it that the NFC East with familiar foes, greater incentive to win the division, and only four teams produced an outcome that was so unlikely?

The Northeast Division’s outcome of 18 seasons without a consecutive champion was 2.3% and the NFC East’s outcome of the same feat is .4%.

Yes, that’s less than half of one percent. 

Perhaps this streak has a mind of its own. 

On December 3rd, 2023, the defending NFC East (and Conference) Champions Eagles were yet again in first place. The 10-1 squad held a two game lead over the Cowboys with the tiebreaker in hand.

As someone monitoring this two decade run of NFC East parity, I was all but ready to crown the Eagles and concede the end of an era. For the first time since 2004, the NFC East would have a consecutive division winner. Its dubious record would be remain tied with the NHL’s now defunct Northeast division. 

Yet over the next six weeks, the Eagles inexplicably collapsed. The wheels came off of their defense, coaches were removed from play calling, tensions in the locker room escalated - all to the tune of a 1-5 regular season finish which catapulted the Cowboys to the division title.

It took a monumentally unraveling for the NFC East to sit alone at the sports pantheon of chaos and disorder.

For nearly a generation, the NFC East has forgotten what it was once like to provide us NFL fans with dynasties, championship runs, or at the bare minimum consistent quality football.

Four teams looking like a quartet of Tasmanian devils colliding into each other only to eventually stop in its tracks looking dazed and confused. These teams have experienced dysfunctional power-dynamics (Chip Kelly), injury what-ifs (RGIII), and ownership scandals (Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder).

History is written by the winners, and if this division has contributed anything recent for the annals of history, let it be Eli Manning - the most confounding champion ever.

With Season 20 of this streak upon us, I’m excited to see how this Platinum Anniversary plays out. Could the Giants revert to their playoff form two years ago? Could Jayden Daniels be this year’s CJ Stroud?

Like much of the last decade, the division should be decided between Dallas and Philadelphia. They are clearly the two most talented teams, yet as I mentioned earlier the NFC East has a mind of its own.

The Eagles are division favorites, ranging from -150 to -125, and I expect them to learn from their collapse. I can also see Dak Prescott, who had an MVP caliber season last year, take a step back.

In conjunction, these have me wagering that the Eagles will win the division.

But in all honesty, this prediction isn’t based on logic. There’s nothing logical about the NFC East.