dperry
Postdoc
Posts: 2214
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
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02-28-18 12:51 AM - Post#249799
In response to mrjames
Yeah, I’ve always found the anti-tourney folks to be more intellectually lazy than the pro-tourney side. That’s not to say all 14GT supporters are intellectually lazy, just that many refuse to engage with this argument as a set of tradeoffs rather than as a moral imperative that the 14GT always leads to the right outcome because the only right outcome is the outcome of the 14GT.
Some arguments from the anti-tourney side have held water over time:
- The Ivy League office would screw up the logistics from a fairness perspective
- The league isn’t good enough to get an at large right now
- It’ll take the focus away from a really exciting title race
But what all of those have in common is that they are probabilistic statements and one’s sentiment about the tourney should be set through how you weigh those odds moving forward, rather than your absolute belief that one side is “right.â€
I believe there are non-trivial odds that a first-place team could have a late season injury that drastically changes its competitiveness in the NCAA tourney. I believe there are non-trivial odds that the timing of key injuries could change the quality of the opponents that each of the teams in the title chase play based on the schedule that make the SOS different from a true round robin. I believe there are non-trivial odds that in a sample size as small as 14, a significantly inferior team could win the regular season and the tourney could select for the better team.
For me, the upside from these odds outweigh the expect value of the negatives from a perfectly executed conference tourney. But our current iteration isn’t perfect executed, and is instead repeating the same error that dogged the America East for years (and kept some REALLY good teams out of the tourney at the expense of some 15s and 16s). I’m in the anti-tourney camp for now, but as the expected values change, I expect my stance to do so as well...
My moral outrage comes more from the fact that if this thing continues, we will never have a season like the 2002 men or the 2016 women again. Both of those years are among the most precious of my sports memories, and the Ivies were one of the few places I could experience such things anymore, particularly since baseball f'ed itself up. I would trade ten abominations, even really good ones, for one year like those.
I will also note that some of us have different estimates of the probabilities behind the tradeoffs than others. We may disagree on how much more likely the 14GT is to produce the real champion than the abomination, but I think we do agree that it is more likely. On the other hand, my estimate of how likely it was that the league would not only screw up the logistics, but also the timing, ticket prices, network, etc., was 99.5% (and as I've pointed out before, the irony is that most of the pro-abomination folks would completely agree with me if we were discussing any other aspect of the league's performance, but somehow they thought that this was magically going to go swimmingly.) My estimate of how likely it is that the league will get a second bid in any given year going forward is also much lower than yours, not so much because I don't think we'll continue to improve (I'm a bit more skeptical about that than you are, but not much), but because I do not believe that the NCAA has any plans to be fair in this area--and there's been plenty of evidence the past few years to back me up on that. The loss of our uniqueness has already had negative effects, as we pretty much completely fell off the media radar during championship week last year. It also costs six teams more class time, and probably hurts the two first place teams more than the old system did as well. Add all of that up, and I don't need the 14GT to be too much better to conclude that the other way ain't worth it.
As far as odds go:
1. There are also non-trivial odds that the best team in the league could suffer a major injury in the abomination that would greatly lower their competitiveness in the NCAA's.
2. Any injuries that affect the competitiveness of the round-robin are just as likely to help the best team as anyone else, so in the long run that should be a wash.
3.) There will also be times when a significantly inferior team wins both the regular season AND the postseason, and others when the two championships will be won by two DIFFERENT significantly inferior teams, which need to be factored in when considering the relative merits of the formats.
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!" |
Edited by dperry on 02-28-18 12:52 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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