Lich King was a pretty good time to be a casual/non raider. Badge gear, Tournament, and your choice of 25 of 1239039082308423 different dailies, plus multiple reps to grind if you wanted to for hat upgrades and tabards.
Have a bunch of young transitory guys here for the oil boom making decent money and there not being any expansion allowed in Williston results in this nonsense. It's slowing down now though with the collapse of oil prices.
Bust out some 1st Edition AD&D. Unearthed Arcana was totally balanced and reasonable. Paladins getting all the Cavalier abilities for free and Barbarians!
Marvel turned Guardians into an awesome movie and Fantastic 4 is not worse source material. Also the Byrne run was good, but I prefer his XMen stuff with Claremont.
It does not mean that they'd be the favorite in the game. They're just much more likely to be there. It's not a bet on 1 game. It's a bet on the entire season. Say the Colts are 40 percent to win the Championship game if they make it there, but are 80 percent to make it to the game then...
I don't think it's a question of if they'd be a favorite in the AFC championship game. I think it's just that they're more likely to get to that game in the dark due to easy division and likely 1st round bye.