Re: Steve Perry's coments Part II

Suby10 · Mon, 16 Apr 2001 20:15:09 -0700

Now for the second charge, which is much more
heinous in its implication. The fact of the matter is
that the circle of death that resulted was resolved as
fairly as it could have been, given the availability of
packets. When resolving a circle of death in ACF, the top
team has, in the last three years, always been
determined by point differential amongst the three teams.
Even if total points or bonus conversion was used,
Michigan A would have taken the top seed. Now the next
spot was tricky. There are two schools of thought, one
says that you continue with point differential.
Michigan B gets the two seed that way. Another school of
thought says that after the top team is determined, then
the second team is determined by head to head, in
which case Virginia would have gotten the 2 seed. So we
felt the fairest solution was a playin round between
Virginia and Michigan B for the finals, which Virginia
won.

Now ideally we would have had a playoff system with
more matches to get a fairer solution, but there was
one problem with that - the majority of the packets
sucked, a few teams who came didn't submit packets,
didn't tell us that they wouldn't be submitting packets,
and some teams who promised to submit packets backed
out the week before the tournament. In addition we
wrote 5 playoff rounds as editors, so to say the least
we were in a bind for questions, and limited in
playoff options by the packets available to us.

It's really ironic that Steve should complain about
the chosen playoff format, because the less than
stellar Virginia packet (just plain awful) which had to
be combined with another packet, was one of the
reasons that we were forced to go with the limited match
playoff format that was used. In fact I don't criticize
with serious intent lightly, and don't think I have
ever done so on this club's board, but I have to say
that Virginia's Nationals packet, as bad as it was,
was light years more appropriate than Steve's
Regionals packet, which is the one of the most
innappropriate packets for any tournament I have EVER seen.
Simply put if Virginia and one other team had submitted
mildly usable packets, there would have been many more
playoff options available. ACF's policy regarding circles
of death was not going to change regardless of who
finised where. The problem arose when Michigan B went
ahead one way, and Virginia went ahead another way. Our
mistake was not determining the solution this type of
situation beforehand, and I take full responsibility for
that. However, the solution used at the tournament was
eminently fair, one that Craig Barker and Mike Burger
(hardly two ACF partisans) suggested as well, and would
have been the solution we would have announced
beforehand anyway.

Finally, the notion that this was
a Michigan A parade is just a joke. To be honest I
would have been as equally happy for Michigan B or
Virginia. You can ask Andrew (who I know feels the same
way). Last year he and I both commented to each other
that Virginia was the most dangerous team at ACF
Nationals, who very well could have won as they played
Chicago and Illinois very close and both our teams were a
little lucky to get by Virginia. In fact had they won
this year, I would have fully supported them as a
worthy champion.

Also this idea that the best
players write questions for each other is again simply
ludicrous. If you can name one other person who is more
qualified to edit next year's ACF Regionals than Zeke,
please chime in Steve because I'm not aware of such a
person.

I still can't get over your use of the word
elitist. If people saw the questions you submitted for
this year's Regionals and Nationals, they would truly
understand the meaning of the word elitism as it has been
thrown around with regards to ACF. It is exactly those
types of questions that give us such a bad name and
make that much more difficult the job of an editing
corps that is usually working overtime as it
is.

Subash