I'd like to address on behalf of Harvard's team some of the conclusions that Matt from Vandy has regrettably come to. First, the situation as I understood from Roger and Saurabh was that there was no `official' ACF tiebreak procedure and they were still in the process of finalizing their decision about how it would be done, given that either method under consideration, head-to-head or total points, would leave some teams dissatisfied and that, at this point, nothing had been officially announced. We thus had reason to at least think that an alternative like a playoff could be contemplated as the fairest solution to everyone involved. In our case, we would of course have preferred total points just as Matt and his teammates would have liked head to head as a solution and despite Matt's claims to the contrary, just as good a case could have been made for the previous method. However, I asked Roger and he very fairly agreed that if Vandy and Harvard could come to an agreement about a play-in game then he and Saurabh would agree to it since they would not then have to enforce an arbitrary choice between those tiebreaking options (though time constraints did end up forcing them to later in any case). I then presented my reasoning to Matt and his teammates making it clear that it would be their choice to go to a playoff since they could easily leave it to the tournament directors to decide, giving them as only my opinion that it was less risky to both sides to play this out. I offered to leave to let them talk it over whereupon his teammates made it clear that this was not necessary and agreed with only a couple minutes discussion. While I am sorry that he apparently felt pressured, at no point was he lied to and he freely made the choice not to let the decision rest with Roger and Saurabh. Harvard did not make the decision for him and his teammates, they did so themselves and no amount of revisionist storytelling will alter that fact. To regret their choice now that they know how Roger and Saurabh would have decided or think they ought to have decided with hindsight is not the behavior of fair-minded people. In any case, Matt, to accuse others of "lying" and/or tricking you when not told what you wanted to hear smacks of an immature mindset unable to accept the consequences of your own decisions if they turn out badly for you. In conclusion, I can only apologize to the tournament's directors for the problems this exchange has caused and thank them for the opportunity to play a tournament, which despite the difficulties that have been too extensively discussed on this list, was still a very well written and edited tournament that for the most part accurately separated teams based on their abilities. Sincerely, Vik
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST