Zamm Said... I take issue with the idea that because the favorites lose, a system is automatically bogus. (snip) Rules, question distributions, playoff schemes, and the like seem to be designed with the idea that certain teams must win. Zamm is correct. RR and Cross-Bracket round robins are designed for the teams which were best on RR to win. Single Elim is designed so that those teams are less likely to win. That is a fundamental design element. To borrow from sports inaccurately, the NCAA system allows a 7-21 George Mason squad to win the national title. The College Football system does not allow a 3-8 Rice squad to win the National Title (Zamm) Any packet which technically fulfills a distribution, but in anyway deviates from preconcieved notions of what a round should feel like is automatically dismissed as bad. (snip) That is incorrect. If the playoff packets deviate substantially from the RR and are not consistent with each other, then there is a problem. Clearly, Michigan should have brought an 8 person first team, using the 14-0 undefeated A for the RR, and then substituting the B team which finished 4th in its bracket yet beat Maryland A for the playoffs. The A team could then be reinserted for the suceeding playoff rounds to adjust to the markedly different content and nature of the rounds. One of the many objections to the format is this very problem. The ET Chuck first round packet was radically different in form, content, and question distribution and difficulty from the round robin. It would be interesting to see a diagram of that packet to see if it met the official PB guidelines at all. The choices made by the tournament directors, both in assigning playof structure and rounds clearly indicate an active effort to make sure that the winners of the Round Robin were not the winners of the Tournament. Why else SE? Why else use a packet that does not follow the same distribution as the RR? Why else allow a team to play a playoff match on a round written by there coach. PB officials put Case Western in a horrible position of requiring themselves to defend their legitimacy because of their win, even if the packet did not favor them over their undefeated opponent. Were the playoffs not SE, the effect would be minimized. Because it is SE, the appearance of impropriety, regardless of accuracy, is magnified.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:42 AM EST EST