In my argument, when I referred to "sour grapes", I was not intending to insult anyone; nor was I being immature. I was simply asking the question why Matt would spend so much time creating his elaborate argument (which actually had more good points than I gave him credit for, though I still don't like it) when, IIRC, he did not even play CBI this year, just like the majority of the better programs in the nation (six of my top 10). If a tournament is run as a full round robin, then the tournament by nature constitutes a fair format. However, what displeases me (and I'm sure a lot of others) is the possibility of playing the de facto championship game early in the tournament. This is what I should have stated earlier. Exhibit A: How was Arkansas to know that the Round 5 game vs. Iowa at Rollapalooza was essentially for the championship? Especially when the both teams finished with one loss? The teams in a round robin must basically treat every game like it is the championship game, which creates a lot of scoreboard watching, which is essentially wasted because there's no way of knowing which game is the game to watch, the pivot game, *the game that decides the championship*. I don't think this is cool. A championship victory is far more gratifying when the winning team knows ahead of time that "this game is for the championship," and I think that the 2nd-place team feels better as well, knowing that they lost the *championship* game instead of a random game that could have been in any round. Exhibit B: Missouri and Arkansas both had one loss total at Route 66, but Missouri had won the championship game and thus the tournament; however, Arkansas knew going in that it was the championship game, so they were cool with it. I am not sure the same could be said about Exhibit A. Though my exhibits may have been biased, in short, the existence of playoffs does have logical psychological ramifications on the perceived validity of the outcome of a tournament. Unbiased hypothetical exhibit: if Random Psi beats Random Xi in Round 1 of ACF Nationals and both teams sweep the rest of the field, would Random Xi feel that their second-place finish was justified simply because they lost Round 1? In an ideal round robin, Random Psi would play Random Xi in the final round, and both teams would know that "this game is for the championship", but this rarely happens. --Josh, P. t. altaica
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