Is the 1 seed a better team?

SI.com's Don Banks wrote this piece pointing out that earning the top seed in a conference is no guarantee of a Super Bowl birth. He's right, although he fails to state that the top seed still has a heck of a better chance to make the Super Bowl than any other team. But have 1 seeds actually played to a level that says they're better than other playoff teams? Is the regular season champ really the best team?

1 seeds have a first-round bye, and second-round games significantly favor the teams with a bye week, but there is no bye-week effect on third-round games. For the 1 seed, third-round games are always at home, but does the 1 seeds' winning percentage exceed that which we would predict from home field advantage alone?

Since the playoffs first admitted 12 teams in 1990, 1 seeds have won 62% of their third-round games (16 of 26). During the 2002-2005 regular seasons, home teams won 59% of their games. Based on this alone -- and this is the level of complexity I would like to see in a weekly lead item for a major sports website -- I would suggest that, on average, 1 seeds have played third-round playoff games as though they were slightly better than their opponents.

Look how simple that was! I didn't even have to take a jab at Peyton Manning's laser-rocket arm.

Other stuff:

• Big Ten Wonk Word Of The Day: risible -- it's pronounced RIZZ, but it means capable of getting a RISE out of people through humor. I get the feeling that risible refers to actual humor, as opposed to laughable's derisive connotation. My attempt: "Futurama occasionally and unexpectedly paperclips a moment of poignancy to the denouement of a thoroughly risible episode."
• I was going to compile with a "Were you really paying attention?" quiz on 2006 sports trivia, but all I could come up with was this: "What was the St. Louis Cardinals' regular season record?"
• Mike Tanier's last Too Deep Zone article was so awesome that I now want to see a distribution graph for each running back. Eventually we'd get to the point where we'd say, "Ahman Green? Yeah, he's a :: whoosh :: runner." [Making the appropriate hand motion.]