I wasn’t trying to justify the use of play-offs in RL and actually prefer the first past the post system. What I was trying to show was that there are sports where play-offs are a fundamental part of the system which can possibly lead to a team that has failed to win its own division becoming “World Champions”. People nevertheless respect the outcome so my referencing US systems was no more than an attempt to demonstrate that there are sports which retain integrity and are taken seriously despite the use of play-offs to decide the champions.