It's time to talk about the "P" word. That's right: Playoffs, the common format in North American sports, where teams play a whole regular season for most of the year that seemingly becomes irrelevant when the top teams -- or, in the case of Major League Soccer, the NHL and the NBA, more than half the teams -- advance to a whole other knockout tournament that determines the seasonal champion.
It's also a format that's been anathema to the vast majority of European leagues who, for the most part, have been more than happy to crown their champions the way they've crowned them for the past century or so.