Suzy, Actually, I don't think it's that difficult to determine a national champion, provided there is enough data available. Sure it is tough because winning a tournament in Ohio has different meaning than one in Arkansas because of the different formats used. Even in the same state, winning Copley's tournament compared to GLRAC at CWRU... heck, winning Buzzerpalooza vs. GLRAC, which CWRU holds 7 weeks apart are completely different beasts. That being said, what I look for is consistency, difficulty of field, difficulty of format, and representation from other states or regions. I take a huge tournament like Vanderbilt's ABC tourneys and Yale's BHSAT field more strongly than results from a Beta/Turnabout tournament in Illinois. I look for patterns in how teams finished, who they beat, and how they performed on certain questions. Then I pick a list of teams that I think are the greyhounds in the nationals field which I have submitted to Matt Weiner for his poll. Are there inherent biases? No doubt. I know the teams that I see better than those I don't. I know the tournaments that care to publicize their results over those I don't know about (such as the Cajun Classic at USL). And I obviously favor teams that will travel over those that don't. On the last point, I do reward them because they will make the financial effort to play against teams they don't see. They want to play national-caliber teams before the stakes are that high at a national so they can improve. It's no different than some college basketball schedules in which Michigan State plays UNC in December; the difficulty of schedule and opponent will play a factor in my selections. Yes, Panasonic gets kudos because they attempt to contact every state to send a team. That's because they have government folks contacting other government folks to set this tournament up. As is the motto at High School Celebrity Shoot, "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST