In the logical, everything-in-its-place home of the National Football League, where it sometimes seems the master programmers at 280 Park Ave. in New York leave little to chance, the Seattle Seahawks have shown us otherwise.

Stuff happens, even in the NFL.

The Seahawks’ merry stumble into not only the playoffs but a first-round home game with a 7-9 record was a reminder of that as bracing as the January winds that whip through the Crow’s Nest in the West end zone of Qwest Field.

The NCAA has deigned to allow 6-6 teams into bowls and, for a time this season, was sweating being put in position to accept teams with 5-7 records. But that is college football, where between them, the NCAA and Bowl Championship Series make all manner of absurdities possible.

How to explain, for example, Connecticut being a BCS automatic qualifier and Boise State being shipped to the Las Vegas Bowl?

Then, there is the NFL, where parity is touted but neatness and conformity are demanded. Never before in a nonstrike-abbreviated season has an NFL team with a losing record accomplished what the Seahawks, with a 2-5 wobble down the stretch, pulled off. Though the rest of the sadly underachieving NFC West must be considered accomplices in the whole head-shaking undertaking.

Somewhere George Halas and Pete Rozelle are twisting in their plots.

In a league where wearing the wrong logo hat on the sidelines can get you a fine and failing to refer to exhibition games as "preseason" contests can get you a grouchy admonishment, the Seahawks have given us one for the ages. And with a backup quarterback yet.

Already people are scrambling to find comparisons across the larger sports spectrum. The 1981 Kansas City Royals in a strike-shortened season, for example.

Not that you want to turn over the playoffs to the likes of this year’s Buffalo, Cincinnati and Carolina on a regular basis, you understand. But anything that shakes things up and sets the ownership to chattering can’t be all bad on a once-in-a-blue moon basis. And be assured the question of losing teams appearing in the playoffs, if not at least reseeding the playoffs based upon records, will be put before the powers that be at an upcoming meeting.

The New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 10-win teams who have had to call it a season, have taken it philosophically for the most part. But heaven help the folks around headquarters if the Seahawks, blessed with a gift home game, somehow knock off the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints and get much deeper into these playoffs. Can an 18-game regular-season schedule be minutes behind?

In the meantime, the Seahawks have given us a curiosity to talk and wonder about, a little added spice to the postseason menu.

Unless, of course, you are a USC fan. Then you have to wonder not only about Cam Newton playing on in a national championship game but about the irony of the 8-5 Trojans on bowl restriction for crimes committed during Pete Carroll’s tenure while their former coach is a playoff-bound division champion with a losing record.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.