> The other problem is that, with the current 3x12 format, almost any > playoff method is going to be unfair to several teams. For example, > by taking only the top two teams in each bracket--in a field with > several good teams--almost inevitably results in one or two teams > getting robbed of a chance to win the tournament, and a "lucky" team > getting clobbered in the playoffs. I respectfully disagree. Not speaking for anyone but myself (I stay as far away from logistics as I possibly can, and I don't play qb on any level anymore, so...), but why is this necessarily a bad thing? To use a sports analogy, what you're suggesting would be akin to saying that MLB should go ahead and play the 162-game schedule. But before the playoffs, a team of sabermetricians should go in, determine out who the best teams are based on Pythagorean record, decide that the AL West was unfairly stacked, and because Seattle could beat, say, Minnesota just based on the numbers, the AL Central should forfeit its playoff spot because the third-place team in the West is "better." I believe that's ridiculous. Sometimes that's just the breaks. In a case where everyone knows what's going on beforehand, everyone knows that in order to end up in the top bracket, you have to finish up top two in your bracket. Is it mathematically possible that a team who ends up #7 could beat team #5 or #6 more than 50% of the time on a standard packet distribution? Sure, I guess. But I don't really see how that results in a team being "robbed." That implies that teams have some sort of divine right to win a tournament or end up in the top bracket, and that if there's any upsets whatsoever, or if a team isn't in exactly the spot they "should" be in, it's the fault of the format or the brackets or what have you. The underlying assumption seems to be that if a format results in anything other than some predicted final result, it's "invalid." But the only way to figure this out is to somehow test every player, find out exactly what they know, and award the team with the most knowledge based on this testing the championship. Unless you're in a circumstance where the brackets are so lopsided that any impartial observer could look at them and bust a gut laughing, there's no such thing as being "robbed." It's just who wins the games, that's all.
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