Playoff Format

The NHL Board of Governors approved realignment and a change to the Stanley Cup playoff format, as expected, with the changes to take effect for the 2013-14 season. The Eastern Conference will have two eight-team divisions, and the West will have two seven-team divisions. For the moment, those divisions have the poetic names of A, B, C and D, but those will be changed later, the league announced on Thursday. The NHL Players' Assn., which rejected a previous realignment proposal, has consented to playing under the new alignment and playoff system at least through the 2015-16 season, when the alignment and format will be reviewed.

The last vestiges of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, conceived years ago on a cocktail napkin, will be phased out this week at a swank Pasadena hotel. College football power brokers are meeting in Southern California to tie up loose BCS ends as they pin down the particulars for a new four-team playoff beginning in the 2014 season. "We've done a lot of the heavy lifting," BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said. On this week's agenda for the BCS commissioners: • Picking a name for the new system.

A proposal that would have scrapped the City Section basketball playoff format in favor of one similar to the City's postseason football structure has been set aside, Commissioner Barbara Fiege said this week. "It never went through," Fiege said. "And it's much too late to even consider at this stage of the year." The section instead will maintain the format in which teams qualify for postseason play in 4-A and 3-A divisions based strictly seedings within their own division.

The NHL Board of Governors approved realignment and a change to the Stanley Cup playoff format, as expected, with the changes to take effect for the 2013-14 season. The Eastern Conference will have two eight-team divisions, and the West will have two seven-team divisions. For the moment, those divisions have the poetic names of A, B, C and D, but those will be changed later, the league announced on Thursday. The NHL Players' Assn., which rejected a previous realignment proposal, has consented to playing under the new alignment and playoff system at least through the 2015-16 season, when the alignment and format will be reviewed.

The CIF Southern Section needs to change its current football playoff format because too many teams qualify. Under the current system, 16 teams in each division, I through IX, make the playoffs. The top three teams in every league gain berths, except in Division VII, in which only the top two teams are guaranteed berths. At-large teams are then used to fill out the rest of the divisional brackets.

A proposal to restructure the Southern Section football playoff format is being drafted by Marmonte League coaches and will be presented to the Southern Section office, league coaches said. Under the proposal, which was approved at a league meeting last week, only the first- and second-place teams from each of the five leagues in the conference would be guaranteed playoff berths.

The City Section on Monday officially adopted a new football playoff format for next fall that establishes two more evenly balanced divisions and places conference teams in leagues based on last season's conference records. The City adopted the new format after rejecting a last-minute proposal presented by Kennedy High School Coach Bob Francola that would have grouped teams in 4-A and 3-A division brackets at the end of the 1991 regular season.

The Western State Conference has a chance to succeed where the National Hockey League has failed. The WSC can assure that its regular season means something. When baseball coaches from the WSC's 11 schools convene in Ventura on Monday, they will consider restructuring the conference's playoff format. Here's hoping they do exactly that. As it is, teams that have played well during the regular season still face a single-elimination postseason tournament that could scuttle an entire season.

Southern Section baseball coaches breathed a sigh of relief when the regional playoff format used last season was scrapped in favor of a more typical seeding process. That should help eliminate early round matchups between strong teams concentrated in one area and produce finals that feature the two best teams in each of six divisions. In the City Section, the top 16 teams at the end of the regular season will be selected for the City championship playoffs.

With Southern Section teams in position to win as many as eight state basketball championships this weekend, Dean Crowley has no qualms proclaiming his section's radically altered playoff structure a major success. Crowley is the section administrator in charge of basketball and one of the chief architects of the playoff structure that this season grouped schools by enrollment to conform with the system used in the state tournament.

Those of you thinking the new four-team playoff coming in 2014 will simplify college football's maddening postseason process should think again and then read this Sports Illustrated story  posted Thursday. Writers Pete Thamel and Stewart Mandel convened a panel of 11 college football athletic directors to conduct a mock selection of the 2014 playoff using this year as a model. As you may know, a to-be-determined selection committee will pick the four playoff teams starting in 2014.

The second-to-last season in the Bowl Championship Series is headed for another possible controversy with three undefeated teams vying for two national title spots. The good news is that BCS commissioners meeting in Denver on Monday have sorted out several details for the four-team playoff that will replace the BCS in 2014. The commissioners have agreed with the Presidential Oversight Committee on a new system that will have six major bowls, not seven as recently suggested, with guaranteed access provided to the so-called Group of 5 conferences.

MILWAUKEE - The Fall Classic can wait. For baseball, this is the classic fall. In a good way. The regular season delivered meaning down to the final day, sparked by teams' jockeying to avoid the new one-game wild-card playoff and crowned by the first triple crown winner in 45 years. The division series featured three walk-offs within 24 hours and - for the first time - all four series extended to the full five games. Commissioner Bud Selig stayed awake past midnight here Wednesday, watching Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for Alex Rodriguez and stun the Baltimore Orioles, then watching the Oakland Athletics jolt Jose Valverde and force a decisive fifth game with the Detroit Tigers.

Call it good planning or good luck, but the addition of a second wild-card team this season saved September in the National League. Under the old rules, this September would be one big yawn. The Washington Nationals, Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves would be coasting right about now, resting the regulars and juggling the rotations in preparation for the playoffs. Behold the cage match for the second wild-card spot, with six teams entering play Saturday within 41/2 games of that golden ticket — among them the Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies, both left for dead months ago. That, in turn, makes the reward for finishing with the best record in the NL far more significant than home-field advantage through the postseason.

1. SAN ANTONIO (50-16) def. Utah, 4-0, in 1st round def. Clippers, 4-0, in 2nd round 2. OKLAHOMA CITY (47-19) def. Dallas, 4-0, in 1st round def. Lakers, 4-1, in 2nd round Season series: San Antonio, 2-1. Key stat: This is only the second time since the NBA switched to its current playoff format that two teams have entered a conference finals with one postseason loss between them. In 1989, the undefeated Lakers and once-beaten Phoenix Suns shared the same distinction in the Western Conference finals; the Lakers swept the Suns before losing to Detroit in the Finals.

VANCOUVER, Canada - Dustin Brown had long imagined what it would feel like to be on the winning side of the traditional playoff handshake ceremony in which foes who bash each other for weeks exchange congratulations instead of elbows to the chops. The Kings' captain and emotional leader experienced that exhilaration Sunday for the first time after eight NHL seasons, a wait that sometimes seemed interminable. His patience was rewarded when Jarret Stoll's missile of a wrist shot eluded Vancouver goaltender Cory Schneider 4 minutes and 27 seconds into overtime to give the eighth-seeded Kings a 2-1 victory over the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena, completing a five-game upset of the league's top-ranked team.

Fans who came here to see the Angels-Padres game on Wednesday were most upset when the Padres boycotted batting practice. But, really, it wasn't the players' fault because they had been cornered by Don Fehr, executive director of the Players Assn. Fehr updated the team on negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, negotiations that have gone slower than a little league fastball.

Hostility between the NHL and the NHL Players' Assn. erupted Friday, eight months before their labor agreement expires but apparently not too soon for each side to claim moral high ground and court public sympathy. The first salvo was fired by the NHL, which announced it will not implement the realignment and revised playoff format its Board of Governors had approved for the 2012-13 season. Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement that the union "unreasonably refused" to approve the plan and the league will now "evaluate all of our available legal options.