03/29 — The NFL's competition committee is set to present playoff reseeding at next week's league meetings in Florida, and on the face of it, it seems like a good idea: Give the wild-card team the home field in a wild-card matchup if it has the better record than its division-winning opponent.

Seems like. But let's not fix something that's slightly broken and make it more broken.

The most pressing reason to consider reseeding is to improve the Week 17 matchups, to prevent teams from "going through the motions" and benching starters when they can do nothing to change their playoff status.

Such was the case with Tampa Bay in January. The 9-6 Buccaneers couldn't move past Seattle into the NFC's third seed and couldn't lose the NFC South title. They were the four-seed, so they rested several starters and coasted through a 31-23 home loss to 6-9 Carolina and into a home playoff game with the 10-6 Giants.

Pittsburgh could have improved its seeding from fourth to third with a win over Baltimore and a San Diego loss in Week 17. Still, the Steelers knew they had the AFC North and a home game sewn up, lost at Baltimore, 27-21, and settled for 10-6 and a Heinz Field date with 11-5 Jacksonville.

(Seattle also fell into this category. The Seahawks were the NFC West champs but were locked into the three-seed before losing to the 4-11 Falcons, 44-41. However, they presumably would not have been affected by reseeding.)

First point: This has been a "problem" only since 2002, when the NFL realigned to eight four-team divisions. From 1978-2001, when the league had three division champs and two or (since 1990) three wild cards per conference, there were no first-round matchups in which a wild-card team had a better record than its division-winning host opponent. None.

Since 2002, there have been five such matchups:

Notice something? In all these games, the wild-card team either won or else lost big. No evidence here that if a wild-card team with a better record had a home game, the outcome would have been different.

I bring this up specifically because of what reseeding would have done to the Jets in 2002. The Green & White certainly weren't going through the motions at the end of that season. They needed every win they could get — plus a fantastic finish in the New England-Miami game — to set up their Week 17 home game with Green Bay, which they then needed to win to reach the playoffs.

Behind Chad Pennington and Wayne Chrebet, they crushed the Packers, 42-17. Then, as the 9-7 wild-card hosts, they muzzled Peyton Manning's 10-6 Colts, 41-0, in a glorious day at the Meadowlands.

And that glorious day would have been lost by reseeding. Probably the Jets would've won at the RCA Dome, but not by as much, then lost the following week at Oakland, just as they did. But the unintended consequence of reseeding would have been to take a home playoff game away from the Jets, who played hard every game down the stretch.

One more thread on reseeding: If the Giants had upset the Patriots in Week 17, they would've finished 11-5. Is the NFL prepared to seed an 11-5 wild card third ahead of two division titlists, as could've happened in the NFC if the rule were in effect this past season? Then Big Blue would've wound up hosting sixth-seeded Washington. Is that too much benefit for a WC?

This year's Giants go against all the reasons for reseeding. They went all out when they "didn't have to" in trying to unseat the undefeated Patriots to end the regular season, then won three road games and the Super Bowl rematch with the Pats. Just as this year's Bucs and Seahawks are arguments for reseeding, the Giants — and the '02 Jets — are arguments against it.

Yes, reseeding would likely eliminate an 8-8 division winner from getting a home playoff game, but that just doesn't happen all that much. The only team since the 1970 merger to win its division at 8-8 was the 1985 Browns.

I'm not saying reseeding is a bad idea, just that it shouldn't be a slam-dunk. It's like installing a rug — tug on one area to get it neatly into a corner and a bulge may pop up somewhere else. Just as the league has correctly (IMO) resisted changing its overtime format to the flawed "extra innings" football-lite structure that colleges and high schools use these days, perhaps this is another case where the status should remain quo.

Your thoughts on this subject or any other one that's expected to be brought up at the league meetings are, as always, welcome.