Does single elimination suck?

• From: ESchluessel
• Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 03:08:01 -0800
• Message-ID: <000S8LO8H.001L4OVOO.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

I think it does. I grant you some of this may be
bitterness from our heartbreaker 15-point loss in Rd. 1 of
PB playoffs. But here's why:

1. Incidence of
upsets

I think in this instance the Penn Bowl results
speak for themselves -- two undefeated teams, the two I
had picked for going into the finals, being
eliminated on what was (no offense meant to the author; some
to the editor) a fairly icky packet. The effect of
silly random events such as that should be minimized,
particularly in a tournament the scale of Penn Bowl;
single-elim instead maximizes these chances. What if, for
example, instead of using Tom Chuck's packet (which was
relatively unfriendly to us) they had used Rick Terpstra's
packet (very, very friendly to us) for that
final?

2. Lack of exposure

One of the major appeals
of a big tournament like Penn Bowl is the
opportunity to encounter teams that one usually doesn't; such
diversity of comparison is critical in determining the
relative strengths of teams on a nationwide level, without
strong geographic bias. How often, in the course of a
year, would UIUC and Princeton, or Yale and Duke, or
any of a dozen combinations, usually meet were it not
for large national-scale tournaments? Instead,
however, with the top 4 being taken from each of four
brackets, followed by single-elim, a team will meet at most
seven -- if they make it to the championships -- of the
top teams at the tournament, and as few as
four.

3. Boredom

Short reason -- say you want to
watch the championship round, or the awards ceremony,
but you lose your first or second game of
single-elim. Single-elim provides an excess of staff almost
immediately. So you're standing around watching your brand-new
Rivals play and being essentially useless. Which
sucks.

Edmund