In none of the other three "major sports," which team is designated as the "home team" in the championship series or game is totally uncontroversial.
The sole exception is the NFL — and because 2024 is an even-numbered year, it is the turn of the NFC champion to choose the uniforms they will wear in the Super Bowl.
But what if the AFC champion had a better record, as was the case this season? Is it really fair to give the NFC champion their choice?
No one expects the NFL to have Super Bowl LIX played in Kansas City, as fairness would actually dictate. But the next best thing is to give the better team their choice of uniforms to wear.
(However, if one conference champion won their division while the other did not, the division winner should get its choice of uniform colors regardless of regular-season records.)
Yet that is not the reason that the "controversy" has come up — which is that the Eagles want to wear their "alternative;" i.e. Kelly green, jerseys, which is forbidden in the postseason under NFL rules.
And if the Eagles organization has come to love Kelly green so much once again, perhaps they should switch back to it from midnight green as their "dark" jersey option. (They have been using midnight green for this purpose since 1996.)
Obviously, it is too late to do anything about this in time for this season's Super Bowl; but this issue, such as it is, should be at or near the top of the agenda at this spring's owners meetings that will begin in Palm Beach on March 30 — right up there with the 18-game schedule, which NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is harping on once again.
In addition, if the two Super Bowl teams both won their division (or neither team did) and had the same regular-season record, the league has had tiebreakers that could deal with that scenario since 2019 (although this tiebreaker is currently used to determine draft order between two teams in different conferences and played the same strength of schedule).
Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League all award outright home-field advantage in the World Series, the NBA Finals, and the Stanley Cup finals, respectively, to the team that finished with the better regular-season record.
Therefore, there is no reason why the same privilege should not be awarded to the team with the better record in the Super Bowl.
Hearing on sports talk radio that giving the better team their choice of uniform colors in the Super Bowl would be sure better than having to listen to the constant kvetching by non-Chiefs fans that the referees are on Kansas City's side when, in the last two regular seasons combined, the Chiefs were penalized 190 times for 1,674 yards, while their opponents were flagged 180 times for 1,453 yards.
And not for nothing, but maybe if there wasn't this stupid week off between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl (seven times in Super Bowl history there has not been such a week, the last time before Super Bowl XXXVII), there wouldn't be enough time for these self-processed pundits to make such stupid pontifications.
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