mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
02-26-18 01:36 PM - Post#249599
In response to SomeGuy
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...
|
