M-Borg vs. THE Flavortown U Thread, Orig. by Buckeye Paul, absconded w/by talent.

[iam416]

No doubt, hanni. But it gets hard to manage a double elimination. Typically, you play multiple games per day (which wouldn't happen).

With an 8-team regional (btw, I'm assuming FF+CG is single), it's 4 games first day, 4 games second day, 3 games third day -- then you reach your choke point. Now you have 3 teams left in the loser's bracket. AvsB, Winner vs C then Winner vs Winner's Bracket Winner + possible rematch. Without playing games on the same day, that's 3, maybe 4, more days of games. That's a tough nut.

Maybe do Preliminary Round on Tuesday/Wednesday. Do first part of dobule elimination (3 days) Fri-Sunday. Then do the last part of the double elimination the next weekend Thurs-Saturday (maybe Sunday).

I agree on the brackets point, but that variable game if the Loser's Bracket winner beats the Winner's bracket winner is a tough one. I mean, I think the CWS re-did their format to accomodate CBS (at first), then ESPN to eliminate double elimination from the championship game (though retaining it throughout otherwise).

[Hannibal]

I'm not sure how the mechanics work.

Eh. It's got 0% chance of ever happening. We'll probably see 96 teams (at least) in our lifetime instead.

[iam416]

Agreed that the way the Big Ten used to do it was the right way. Everybody ignores the conference tournament result anyways. I guess it's good to allow a bubble team to try and pull an upset and get into the field of 68, but that's no reason to play a tournament.

Yeah, depends on the tournament. People in the ACC and Big East definitely take those tournaments seriously. The B10 tourney is of recent vintage. It's nice to win (it is!), but it's nothing that is treasured. And that's coming from a fan of Matta, who has somehow figured out that tournament. Maybe he only has 3 good tourney rounds in him then he burns out? Heh.

[hack]

Might be just that it takes time.

I don't like that double-elimination talk up there. Too soccerish. I like that sport but I hate the structure. In some of those euroleagues there's no championship. It's won on points in the regular season. Can be terribly anticlimactic. And there isn't the argument that a lack of a playoff makes the regular season more meaningful. They play three times a week for 6 months.

[iam416]

Soccer's method for determining a champion is absolutely the best. You play everyone, home and away, and the winner is the one who does the best. It can be anti-climatic, sure. It also so happens that last season's EPL finish was arguably (and IMO), the most exciting finish to a sports season ever.

The other thing Euro leagues do to keep interest is have cup competitions. Much like conference tourneys, some mean more than others. The FA Cup is a massive competition and that FA Cup championship garners huge worldwide viewership. And that's a single-elimination tournament involving every soccer side in England that wants to enter. Bigger clubs don't start playing until later (in effect, receiving 5 or 6 rounds of byes), but anyone, in theory, has a chance. As it currently stands, the final is guarnateed to feature a David-Goliath matchup.

Other Euro competitions use knockout tournaments, but do the home+home.

[hack]

The cups are interesting but the biggest rivalries are within the leagues. When you start looking at goals for and against and institute a points system and all that you obscure the value of winning and losing a single game, and ultimately one game is the base unit of measurement here and therefore the most important one. I'm so glad we don't have concepts like playing for the tie here. The few North American sports that did make room for that have closed the door on it in the last few decades and IMO that was a great decision. Ties suck. So does playing a game with any goal in mind other than winning that one game.

I think it's terrible.

[Hannibal]

College football still requires you to do more than win the game in a lot of cases, but that's pretty much unavoidable, since you have 120 teams and only 12 games.

[hack]

True. To an extent in CFB there are admittedly a small degree of style points available, which is why Michigan wasn't the outright champion in 1997. Which underscores the legitimacy issue there. CFB can get away with it because as Americans we all love football and the alumni are a loyalty factor that serve as a disincentive to tackling the task of fixing the broken parts.

[iam416]

When you start looking at goals for and against and institute a points system and all that you obscure the value of winning and losing a single game, and ultimately one game is the base unit of measurement here and therefore the most important one.

I don't understand this point. It seems to me that soccer is the only sport that equally values every game and plays an absolutely fair round robin. No one game counts more than others. There are, of course, massive fixtures that draw far more interest. And, I suppose, if you're playing your main rival it's a "6 point" match, but every game still matters. Goal differential, domestically, is rarely the tiebreaker, but even so, it encourages playing for the full 90.

For cups, I LOVE the replay. They used to replay and replay and replay until a winner, but now it's limited to one and there is no replay for the semis and finals (at least for the FAC). The Arsenal-ManU 1999 FA Cup semifinal replay is as good as soccer gets, IMO. But I digress.

In terms of fairness, there can be no better system than playing the exact same schedule as every other team -- a lengthy schedule at that -- 38 games for most leagues -- and determining a winner based on your performance over those 38 games. ManU, e.g., is the best team in England this year. Put the top 4 EPL teams in some sort of playoff, and who knows if they win (they were just dumped in the FAC by Chelski).

[Hannibal]

CFB has no choice, really. Style points are just inevitable in a sport where it's impossible to play a representative sample of the country's teams. Pro leagues never have to worry about this, because there are only 30 teams, centralized scheduling, and lots of games.

[iam416]

CFB has a choice. It's easy enough to create a tournament for conference champs. I guess, in theory, there could still be a style point issue ala B12 clusterfuck a couple years ago. But I don't see any inherent barricade to each conference figuring out a fair way to choose its champion/tournament representative, then having a playoff.

[hack]

Hanni I agree with that point. I don't like it, but I understand why it is that way and don't have an easy answer to fix it.

Re soccer, I appreciate as well the absolute fairness of a round robin in which the exact same schedule applies to all, at least in terms of the teams you play if not the order. But still, you're so often playing for the tie or needing to win by at least this many goals in either league play or the cups. It's a distortion of what's really and truly important. I know that not every sport has conditions that lend itself to the following but ultimately there's no better way than a meaty regular season followed by best-of-7s. No system is perfect, but that IMO is as close as you get.

[hack]

CFB has a choice. It's easy enough to create a tournament for conference champs. I guess, in theory, there could still be a style point issue ala B12 clusterfuck a couple years ago. But I don't see any inherent barricade to each conference figuring out a fair way to choose its champion/tournament representative, then having a playoff.

The conferences are too big. Instead of these megaconferences, if you had eight conferences of ten, and a nine-game schedule, then you're getting toward a pretty airtight system, I would guess. The weakness is that it's similar to what you are describing in soccer, with a fair round robin and then moving on to a single-elimination situation. Need to tweak the tiebreaker system to make sure style points are as irrelevant as possible, IMO, cause there will be plenty of ties.

[Hannibal]

CFB has a choice. It's easy enough to create a tournament for conference champs. I guess, in theory, there could still be a style point issue ala B12 clusterfuck a couple years ago. But I don't see any inherent barricade to each conference figuring out a fair way to choose its champion/tournament representative, then having a playoff.

There are still some problems. If you have a a four-team tournament, you limit the tournament to teams only in one of those major conferences. I personally don't care, but that would be a big problem for a lot of people. The BCS is already dealing with anti-trust issues, and they don't have exclusion of the mid-majors hard coded like a conference champ tournament might do. IMHO any tournament that doesn't have at least one autobid for the mid-majors is a non-starter because of the anti-trust issues and political pressure. You also screw over teams that play in a tough conference, and a team that plays in an easy conference has an easy road to that auto-bid. Like it or not, the SEC is dominant now. The SEC runner-up will be better than other conference winners in a lot of years. Once you expand the tourney to teams other than auto-bids, you are back to style points and perceptions again.

[iam416]

But still, you're so often playing for the tie or needing to win by at least this many goals

This mostly occurs in smaller tournaments. The World Cup, e.g., or even the UCL.

The only problem with the euro method is the potential for an anti-climatic finish, as you noted. ManU has won the EPL with weeks left. Teams are still playing for various Euro spots and to avoid relegation, but the champion has been determined. And I'm fine with that. They've earned it. IMO, it is less fair to force them to play a best of 3 or 5 or 7 against Man City or Chelsea. It would be great, as a fan, though.

There's something -- a lot, actually, -- to be said for putting together result after result for 38 rounds.

The absolute contrast is Patrick/Smythe/Norris/Adams NHL. Meaty regular season then 4 teams out 5/6 make the playoffs for a best of 5 then best of 7. Silliness.