With Apologies to Herr Doctor, It is in fact, quite easy to create a packet upon which the top team in each bracket will lose. Just as an excercise, conjure one up yourself. it can be easily done, even if we have no expectations and foreknowledge. In rea tournaments we have some knowledge of teams playing, expectations as to their placement and data on their performance. 1 Penn indicated that it expected Chicago, Michigan, Maryland and Illinois to be the top teams by placing them in separate brackets. 2. Penn could get a sense of what these teams considered a "good" packet by analyzing the packets that each of these teams submitted, and had two months to do so. 3. Altering format and content need not create a rondomized occurrence. - Rob, have you ever seen a football game played in the rain, musd or snow? If the best teams pass better than lower teams, but both run the same, then the better passing team suffers a considerably larger disadvantage in bad weather. The weather effect, explained why teams from Florida have traditionally suffered when playing in up north in December. During bowl games, northern teams traditionally suffered because they played a style adapted to bad weather, and could not adjust to the styles of the sun belt teams. Effectively then, in the PB RR, teams play all games in Winter Weather (one style of packets) but face Sun Belt packets in the playoffs. Those teams most likely to dominate the RR (Teams optimized for Winter Weather) are at the greatest disadvantage on the Sunny packets. They are also likely to face the 4 seed, which will probably be the Best Sunny team in the 1-2-3-4 seed draw. This is a problem because only the PB staff knows what the playoff weather will be. Winter Teams could prepare for their bowl games by incorporating sunny strategies if they knew the weather pattern would change. Aside from taking both a Winter and Sunny weather teams, or devoting an entire life to PB, the Winter Teams can do no preparing for PB playoffs that does not decrease their chances of success in a RR. The PB structure thus reduces incentive for team to excel, and depend more upon crapshoots. Reducing incentives for performance will result in reduction of performance itself. More concretely: Suppose I see that Teams 1-4 prefer less academic and shorter questions, and write about current international events. i simply write long academic questions, increase question length, and focus on domestic business in my CE. Suddenly, these teams are at a disadvantage regardless of their opponents.
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