Mark writes:
>
> 3.  Why do people place some of the blame for their team losing on the
> single elimination format?  Sure, with the best-of-three format the better
> team should have a slightly higher chance of advancing.  Next year your
> team might be the lower ranked team and then the single elimination will
> be advantageous for your team.  If you want the better team to always win may
> be you should advocate the playoffs be abolished.  A balanced round-robin
> schedule is the way to go.  See Maine.  Also see #2.
 
As I have mentioned, last year, my team (Cornell) would have benefitted from
the single-elimination format, but I am still against it.  Michigan was clearly
the better team in that series last year and they deserved to advance.  In the
first game, Cornell caught a break late in the contest and managed to tie, and
then they won in overtime.  It was more a matter of a couple lucky bounces than
it was a matter of talent.
 
Obviously, there is a slippery-slope argument here.  If best of three is better
than single elimination, then best of five is better than best of three.  If
best of five is better than best of three, then best of seven is better than
best of five and so on.  At some point, we have to tell the teams with talent
to put up or shut up, so why not make them do that in a single game?
 
The reason for not doing it in a single game is the element of chance.  The
difference in the probablity of an underdog winning a single game and an
underdog winning two of three is greater than the difference between the
probability of an underdog winning two of three and an underdog winning three
of five.  As one expands the number of games in the series, the differences in
the probablities of underdog victories diminish to an insignificant number, and
thus the slippery-slope is avoided because after a certain point, nothing is
gained by increasing the number of games in a series.
 
For example:
If we assume that chance gives an underdog a 30% chance of winning a single
game, then it has a 9% chance of winning two games and a 2.7% chance of winning
three from a given team.  The difference between winning a single game and
winning two games is 21%, a significant drop.  The difference between winning
two games and winning three is 6.3%, thus, playing a best of five series may
not cause a significant enough advantage for the favorite to offset the fatigue
of a potential five games, despite the fact that the chance of an underdog
winning three is now down to 2.7%.  (The pros play best of seven, so the chance
of the underdog winning four is 0.81%--if we continue using my overly
simplistic numbers.  However, the difference between winning three and winning
four is now down to less than 2%, and thus there is really little to be gained
by expanding the series further than five games: the slippery-slope has been
eliminated.) I would definitely support a best of five championship, but as I
said in another post, it will never happen.
 
Why give the advantage to the favorite?  If we aren't going to invite the best
12 teams to the tournament, we should at least give the top 4 who will be there
the best chance to play for the championship.  That way, the tournament can at
least make some claim that its champion is the best in the country.
Additionally, the success of the favorite over 34 games in the regular season
shouldn't be absoulutely meaningless. That success should be worth some sort
of postseason advantage. This seems only fair.
 
Finally, why not just play a round-robin and give the title to the winner every
year?  Obviously, if every Div I team played each other 2 or 3 times in a
season, this would be the best way to determine who was #1.  This would result
in 90-135 games per season, (3 to 4 times the NCAA limit and hell on classroom
activities) it would be no fun for the fans, and we wouldn't have as many of
these stimulating discussions. :-) Just because this way for determining
which team has the most talent and which team is the champion is impratical, is
no reason to believe that we should not try to ensure the greatest
probability that whatever alternate method we choose actually determines who is
#1.
--
Dave [log in to unmask]
Cornell '91 OSU Med '95
Let's Go Red!