<<OU went undefeated in the round robin in Region 11 about six years ago, but lost two in the playoffs and was eliminated. If we had really been as good as our record seemed to indicate, we should have won out in the playoffs, too.>> Why are the playoff matches any more valid than the preliminary matches? It seems to me that, when looking at order of matches played versus win-loss record and trying to pick the better indicator of team quality, the choice is a no-brainer. <<It seems like you'd punish teams in March Madness for upsetting higher ranked teams.>> No, because the purpose of the NCAA tournament is to make money, not rank the teams. Playing 63-factorial games might hurt the marginal utility for the NCAA when the tournament extends into July, so, like all other spectator sports, they go with the most exciting format, not the most fair. On top of that, the NCAA doesn't play a full round robin for the regular season, so the rest of my argument doesn't apply. It's the same reason I don't find Penn Bowl's single elim playoffs to be unfair for determining a champion: because Berkeley and Michigan didn't play the same prelim and bracket schedule, one cannot say whether Berkeley's 15-0 record is better than Michigan's 14-1 (I think those were the records), and the final they played is given full weight for determining the relative abilities of the teams. --M.W.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST