Jeff2sf
Postdoc
Posts: 4466
Reg: 11-22-04
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05-28-18 07:15 AM - Post#257256
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
My two criteria for supporting the tourney are:
1. Do the players want it? Overwhelmingly
2. Do I have fun when I watch it? Hell yes. Might be different if Penn doesn't play in the tourney though.
The argument that it removes meaning from the regular season is absurd and is akin to saying you don't watch the regular season of any league, football baseball whatever. Does it reduce the intensity? I mean, sure, I guess. But when Penn played Harvard and Penn played Princeton, my mind wasn't thinking about how the game didn't mean anything. I wanted to win, the players wanted to win. A loss wasn't the end of the world, but heck, a loss in the sacred "14 game tournament" wasn't the end of the world either. You'd just catch them on the other half of the round robin.
Having said that, a few nitpicks with you PF10:
1. Your focus on espn showing "the last few minutes of x game". ESPN always showed that and we usually got credit as the first team to enter the dance. Further, in years where there was a playoff game, I'd argue the exposure was more than in the tournament. You can't rely on having a tie for first of course.
2. Besides the decision to keep it at 4 teams, virtually every decision the IL office makes has been to make the tournament worse, most of the time due to sheer cheapness. It's really reduced my confidence in them:
a. Most importantly, the idea to couple the men and women's tournament to "bring together" the ivy league is stupid and makes things so much more complicated. Initially I thought it was just a way to support the women so I grudgingly put up with it. To find out the women's coaches don't want to have a joint event, makes the decision inexplicable.
b. They really botched the idea of fairness by having it at a lower seed's venue in year 1 and then to double down the next year (though they were saved by Penn unexpectedly being the 1 seed). Now they'll triple down by putting it at an expected lower seed while more than halving the seating. And will they show any sort of forward thinking by posting that this is a round robin that each venue will get to host? No, they want to make up the rules as they go along.
c. They need to either spend some money to have it at a neutral site (which I'm not convinced they can pull off to be anything other than 1K people in a 6k arena but at least would show me they can spend money) or put this in the higher seed's venues.
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