Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - Printable Version
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Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - BostonCard - 01-03-2014
There are lots of ways to determine champions that don't involve playoffs. In golf, match play is the exception rather than the rule, though obviously golf is different than sports where opponents play each other. But boxing also does not have some sort of championship. Professional baseball, basketball, and hockey all use best 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 7 rather than single elimination tournaments. College baseball uses a double elimination format. Even in tennis, while a given tournament uses a single elimination format, the "best player" is not determined that way, but rather based on the cumulative results over the prior year.
I don't think that "every other sport" does it is a good reason for football to do it. For one, in football you are limited by the number of games you can play. Multi-game rounded tournaments (NBA, NHL, etc.) are better at determining the better team than a single elimination tournament, but you can't do "best three out of five" football games. Secondly, there is a much stronger conference tradition in college football than in other sports (though that is being eroded quickly). Hypothetically, a nine game round-robin among 10 teams is a pretty good way to determine the best team in a conference, and historically, being a conference champion was as much a goal as winning a national championship (and the bowl game was the reward, not just another game in achieving some larger ambition).
The best argument you have is that it will produce some awesome games that many people will want to watch, and that's a perfectly fine argument that is broadly shared; it simply doesn't sway me. But as I said, I probably fall in the realm of "vocal minority".
BC
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - JohnR34231 - 01-03-2014
(01-03-2014, 11:24 AM)stupac2 link Wrote:[quote author=JPRI link=topic=9325.msg80589#msg80589 date=1388771455]I think what you do is you just define the best team as the team that wins the playoffs. Otherwise, since everyone will have their own definition, it will be impossible to reach agreement.
Well, that's just tautological. Who's the best team? The one that won the playoffs. Why are they the best team? Because the won the playoffs. It's begging the question, and I think you can also take a cursory examination and show that any reasonable (and non-tautological) definition of "best team" makes it clear that the best team won't always win. Football is a probabilistic game, and the better team doesn't always win.
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OK, what definition of "best team" would you come up with that you think most people would accept and is possible to determine.
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - JohnR34231 - 01-03-2014
(01-03-2014, 11:24 AM)stupac2 link Wrote:[quote author=JPRI link=topic=9325.msg80589#msg80589 date=1388771455]I think what you do is you just define the best team as the team that wins the playoffs. Otherwise, since everyone will have their own definition, it will be impossible to reach agreement.
Well, that's just tautological. Who's the best team? The one that won the playoffs. Why are they the best team? Because the won the playoffs. It's begging the question, and I think you can also take a cursory examination and show that any reasonable (and non-tautological) definition of "best team" makes it clear that the best team won't always win. Football is a probabilistic game, and the better team doesn't always win.
[/quote]
OK, what definition of "best team" would you come up with that you think most people would accept and is possible to determine.
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - stupac2 - 01-04-2014
(01-03-2014, 11:22 PM)JPRI link Wrote:OK, what definition of "best team" would you come up with that you think most people would accept and is possible to determine.
None, I think the idea of trying to determine the best team is somewhere between "pointless" and "foolish distraction". You set up a system where every team knows what they have to do in order to get into the tournament (IE win conference), and then the winner of the tournament is your winner. Will the best team always win? Not in the sense of "the team who would win the most times if we ran the tournament 100 times" (which is the most sensible definition of "best" that I can come up with), but I don't care and I don't see why anyone else would care. It doesn't delegitimize tennis or pro football or non-Div 1A college football or baseball or hockey or basketball or water polo or soccer or any other sport that uses a tournament that the "best team" doesn't always win, and the only sport where people seem to care is Div-1A college football (it really is amazing to me that the FCS can somehow manage to run a 24-team playoff with the state of the FBS). I think it's just status quo bias and in 20 years no one will care any more about who the "best team" is.
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - stupac2 - 01-04-2014
(01-03-2014, 11:22 PM)JPRI link Wrote:OK, what definition of "best team" would you come up with that you think most people would accept and is possible to determine.
None, I think the idea of trying to determine the best team is somewhere between "pointless" and "foolish distraction". You set up a system where every team knows what they have to do in order to get into the tournament (IE win conference), and then the winner of the tournament is your winner. Will the best team always win? Not in the sense of "the team who would win the most times if we ran the tournament 100 times" (which is the most sensible definition of "best" that I can come up with), but I don't care and I don't see why anyone else would care. It doesn't delegitimize tennis or pro football or non-Div 1A college football or baseball or hockey or basketball or water polo or soccer or any other sport that uses a tournament that the "best team" doesn't always win, and the only sport where people seem to care is Div-1A college football (it really is amazing to me that the FCS can somehow manage to run a 24-team playoff with the state of the FBS). I think it's just status quo bias and in 20 years no one will care any more about who the "best team" is.
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - martyup - 01-04-2014
Can you imagine how badly tOSU would have been beaten in the NCG had they beat MSU in their CCG? It would have looked like ND vs. Alabama last year, or worse.
Re: Well, at the very least THAT didn't happen us - martyup - 01-04-2014
Can you imagine how badly tOSU would have been beaten in the NCG had they beat MSU in their CCG? It would have looked like ND vs. Alabama last year, or worse.