I feel like this really should be on my "Joke of the Day" calendar. Its like deja vu all over again
Thursday, November 02, 2006
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I feel like this really should be on my "Joke of the Day" calendar. Its like deja vu all over again
6 comments:
Hear Hear.
Hey Fishie,
You feeling better?
I will see you Sat....
-G
George, I figured out the reasoning behind the odd format.
On Sunday morning after filling in the brackets on my tourney packet I noticed that if seed held the semis would be rematches of pool play. I took this issue to the Brown TD and asked if he could switch it up so that didn't happen.
He proceeded to tell me that the format was created a couple years ago to give Brown a favorable schedule, allow them 2 chances to play their alum team , and that it wasn't going to be changed just because we were less than psyched about having to play UMass again.
Go figure. It's their tournament, so I guess that's allowed.
As a post script though, Cornell upset the Brown Alums and Tufts upset UMass, so there were no rematches in semis.
-Brett
Hi Brett,
Thanks for checking in on this and thanks for stopping by on Sat.
I appreciate your research, and I think the only positive news there is that at least they were forthcoming about devising an unfair format.
I think your comments bring up an issue I wrote about in my original "Crap Formats" post (and revisited in my Purple Valley post): Is it OK for tournament hosts to devise unfair formats because it is their tournament?
While it is easy to see that there is some kind of historical "social precedent" (that's the way it has always been done) and one could entertain possible arguments to support this (we are doing the work to host, so we deserve benefit from hosting), I think we are coming to the point where this is just not acceptable anymore. At a minimum, I think if a TD is going to devise a favorable format and seeding for themselves, then they should not publish it on the SRT. In my mind, the SRT is a public document and TD's are therefore accountable to "general ethical standards"(like the Formats Manual) if they are going to publish on the SRT and gain the benefits of both the legitimzing and communicative benefits of the SRT. Frankly, I do not think this minimum standard is enough, though. To me, devising unfair formats and seedings is disrespectful to the visiting teams and therefore a violation of SOTG.
I think that if host teams do want to devise unfair formats and "non-standard" seedings, then the TD should:
-not publish their results on the SRT AND teams should not be able to declare those results (both good and bad) for future consideration
-publicly declare that they are devising a format that benefits the host team
-publicly declare what seeding parameters they are using (having teams play new teams, giving the host team a better draw, etc)
This would allow teams to make an educated decision about which tournaments they would want to attend, and would subject tournaments to some kind of base standard of proceedure. This would allow captains to sort out which "type" of tournament might be best for their team.
I think Adam Tarr, a Brown Alum and Chair of the UPA Formats Committee, would be embarrassed by the comments of the Huck a Huck TD.......
Thanks, G
It seems that some amount of favoritism in a non-series tournament is fair, as long as it's for convenience rather than a competitive advantage. Examples:
1. TD giving his own team a first or last round bye (someone has to get it, why not his team?). Counter: should give first-round bye to a team who might be driving 3-5 hours that morning.
2. TD putting his team on field #1 all day despite being #4 seed.
3. TD seeding Team X higher than identical Team X' so his team can play X, who they haven't played before.
Jim,
I agree with these points.
As I said before, I like it when the TD is upfront about these "non-standard" changes.
-G
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