In the United States, with popular professional sports like hockey, baseball and basketball, when it comes time for the playoffs to take place, instead of taking the traditional single-elimination approach, these specific sports leagues prefer using something else. Which is something that I believe to be a more exhilarating, fun, and intelligent method for mapping out this crucial portion of each season. The playoff series, where, in the NHL, MLB, and NBA, is a best of seven round where a team must win four games to advance.

Because of the numerous games that must be played as a result of this, games typically occur very frequently, from about every other day to even two days in a row. With those series that are decided early providing extra rest for the victorious teams.

This large number of games mirrors what it is like in the regular season for these leagues, where there are lots and lots of games played.

These series in the playoffs are not just for there to be more games and more revenue to be earned by teams and companies. Although these might be some luxuries experienced, there are so many other benefits.

Some of these benefits include how teams have a much larger chance of winning. Since they have a large buffer in case they make a mistake and therefore can go into each game feeling more confident. Which in turn can produce better playmaking and better games to watch for excited fans.
Second, this makes these games a lot more exhilarating for fans. If a series progresses very evenly between the two teams, then at the peak, usually what would be the seventh game, there would be a very crazy and thrilling game to watch. It would get very close and make things very suspenseful and entertaining.

Finally, this is also a smart idea. as the fact that a team has to win four games to advance to the next round, and therefore that makes it so that it is indeed the better team and the more deserving one who moves on, instead of the one who might have just gotten lucky on a given day and won when they really shouldn’t have.

However, when you look at the other big sports in the world, they don’t really use the same series technique.

For soccer, some tournaments do indeed have a two-game series, but the winner is based on the number of goals scored in total. Not the number of wins.

For the NFL, there is no such thing as a series type of playoff. Instead, in each round, each participating team only plays once. Yet, there is a much smaller number of games in the regular season.

Maybe perhaps, the NFL should adopt the playoff series to make the whole thing more exciting and fair.

Clearly, the series method is the best way to go when it comes to the knockout stages of sports seasons. It simply boosts the whole experience, which is everything that sports are about.