A common question I get from players when they are looking at UPA Sectional and Regional formats on the SRT is, "Why is there a 30 minute break between rounds?" An example of what I am talking about is Pool A above.
Start of Round-9AM(So far so good)
Start of next round-11AM(Got that)
So.."what is that 10:30AM time?" is the question I receive. Just to back up for a moment, the old nomenclature for rounds is reflected in Pool B. Here is the way it went:
Start of Round- 9AM
End of round-10:45AM
15 minute break between rounds
Soft Time Cap-15 minutes before the end of the round
Start of the next round-11AM
This is overly complicated and, when one looks closely, one realizes that the "end of the round" serves no real purpose. The round does not actually end at that time (unless there is a hard cap at the end of the round).
The language on this was changed about a year ago, I believe. The Championship Committee discussed that a reasonable amount of time between the SOFT TIME CAP and the start of the next round was 30 minutes. This 30 minute break was edited into every one of the official UPA formats on the SRT. It is a much more clear and concise way of describing things:
Pool A(the same schedule as Pool B above)
Start of Round:9AM
Soft Time Cap:10:30AM
Start of Next Round: 11AM
Just as additional examples, I have included pools C and D as examples of different times between the start of the round and the soft time cap.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
UPA SRT Formats: Soft Time Cap/End of Round, etc
Friday, April 06, 2007
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Monday, February 12, 2007
Ulitmate Season...rant.....comments
I will be traveling with my family next week, so I will not be posting. Expect some info about UPA Series stuff come March 1.
Also, Mark M's rules blog has moved and become the UPA Rules Blog. I highly suggest that folks check it out. Reading the 11th is required for my Wellesley girls. We did a lot of work last week on ground checking the disc while putting a live disc into play.
Onto the topic of the week:
There was a call by Neva on RSD that results need to be posted on the SRT in order for ranking systems to work. Hear..hear! We seem to treat our tournaments as if they are in a vacuum. That they don't intersect with the concerns of others. That the data produced couldn't be of use somewhere down the line. While there seems to be a collective sense that a formal Ultimate season would be positive and exciting for the sport, we seem content in passively bleating about what we would like to happen and determined to resist the most primitive baby steps that could start us in this direction.
In my more extreme moments, I just find the fact that two of the lead posts on RSD this morning are players pleading for the most basic information about President's Day and Mardi Gras galling. This type of lack of information plus the derth of info from College Vegas is, to me, unacceptable. If we view things from this context, even asking why Ultimate is a not a big time sport is a joke.
If we want to take advantage of the small opportunities that are available to us in kick starting the development of a season for Ultimate, we need to be much more clear about what we expect from our tournaments as players, spectators, coordinators, and remote viewers. The concern of this post is not "which tournaments should be considered the "regular season" as that, in my opinion, puts the cart before the horse. Our "regular season"(events prior to the UPA Series) now is a mish-mash of "fun" tournaments, "serious" tournaments, lack of data, rumor on RSD, lack of communication, little documentation, and no standards in terms of formatting or accountability. The result is a "product" that has, in general, no continuity, few stories that draw us in, and little reliable data. Despite our best efforts to handicap ourselves, great rivalries and stories do manage to crawl out of the muck and, like some oasis in the desert, provide compelling drama and excitement.
Here is a summary of some things I would love to see.
For tournaments that want to be part of the Ultimate season:
1) The results and final standings should be clearly posted on the SRT within a day of the completion of the tournament.
2) The seedings and format should be locked down and published on the SRT by the Tues before the tournament.
3) Tournaments should have a bid/registration system with clear deadlines and defined policies toward teams dropping out. These policies should encourage teams to feel that they are making a serious commitment to attend when they submit their registration fee.
4) The format should be close to the standards defined by the UPA Formats Manual. If we are going to use the results of tournaments for such things as seeding, then the results need to be determined fairly. The format shouldn't change during the weekend.
5) Seeding should be done, as best as possible, in an order of relative strength. Pools shouldn't be built based upon "playing new teams", for example.
6) Teams need to understand that results will be used as data. No complaining after the fact that "we were at half strength"...or hungover...or whatever.
7) Results, if at all possible, should be updated on the SRT during the tournament.
8) The TD should be prepared with a variety of formats (very easy to do on the SRT) in the event that teams drop. The TD should publish the intended format ASAP, but also indicate that the format is not confirmed if they have teams that might drop. In this case, the TD should pro-actively communicate, on the SRT, how teams might be affected if the format were to change.
For tournaments that are not concerned with being part of the Ultimate season:
Ignore the above. Run whatever BS format you want...oops, I meant BCS format. Just keep it off the SRT. Leave your teams in the dark about seeding and the format. Or better yet...just make it up as you go along and seed things to favor your own team. We need to remember that teams are just there for the party.
Then we can let the market decide. Teams that want to be treated respectfully at an event with a modicum of "professional" standards will know where to go. They will know that their results will be derived fairly and that they will become part of a story larger than themselves...the Ultimate season. Perhaps we might even to get to the point where basic communication is an expected part of what teams are paying for.
This will also hold tournament TD's accountable to certain standards as well, and, possibly, mitigate the possibility of TD's influencing such things as Sectional and Regional seeding by creating seedings and formats at their own tournaments that are unfair and biased.
There will be many factors that will come together one day to give us an Ultimate season. Luckily, we have some things we can influence and control today that can start us in that direction. This post does not claim to offer an opinion or an outline of what an Ultimate season would look like. I just think there are some small things we can do today to raise the bar a bit higher.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Same As It Ever Was.......
I feel like this really should be on my "Joke of the Day" calendar. Its like deja vu all over again
Monday, October 16, 2006
Crap Formats #2
Very busy times these days.
I am working pretty hard on Nationals logistics. Seeding, observer rules, schedule, etc. It looks like I might be Head Scorekeeper....so that will be fun.
Bumpersticker I saw the other day:
"George W: Pull out like your father should have."
Brilliant.
Worked on the 2-handler set with the girls the other day. In my attempt to indoctrinate them in this set, I decided I wouldn't even teach the 3-handler set this year. My vets don't seem comfortable in the 2 set, though, so they fell back on the 3 set this past weekend at a Smith College tournament.
Speaking of tournaments, my girls have this format to look forward to this upcoming weekend:
http://www2.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=34&id=2773
I can't make any sense out of the seedings as I don't think that MIT and BU should be seeded behind us. Also, 16 teams in 3 pools??? I guess this is being driven by the 6 field issue, but 16 teams in 4 pools can be done on 6 fields in 4 rounds. The byes aren't any worse than the published plan.
Then there is the brackets. First, both A and C pools have their 1 and 2 seeds on the same side of the bracket. That's a big no-no. In terms of match-ups, A1(1) vs C3(8...9??) makes sense. B1(2) vs A2 (6). No problem, kind of. C1(3) v B3(8). Low seed plays a high seed. That's good. B2(5) v C2(4). Right on. What happened to 7??
I think 4 pools of 16 in 4 rounds followed by 2v3 pre-quarters makes a lot more sense.
Ok...that's the bitch for the week.......
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Formatting-World Cup Style
A couple of Fridays ago, I spent much of the afternoon tuning into the live webcast of the World Cup Final Draw. My main reason was to check out seeding and formatting for the biggest tournament in the world. In the end, I was quite surprised by the acceptance of pure randomness in generating the pools.
The tournament starts with 8 pools of 4. After pool play, the top 2 teams from each pool qualify for a round of 16, then qtrs, semis, and finals. Pretty good so far.
While the above makes sense from a formatting point of view, putting the teams into the pools is done by a random draw. There is a committee that selects the top 8 teams. For this year, Germany, the host team, was given the A1 slot. Brazil, as the defending champ, was given F1. Coming from my point of view, I wondered "why these slots?". Germany is probably a 6-7 seed at best, so why the A1 slot? And then, if Brazil is the actual #1, why F1? I asked a friend of mine who played semi-pro soccer in Russia about this. He is a fanatic of the sport. He had no idea why the teams were put where they were, and, furthermore, seemed to have no interest or critical thought about either the seeding or format. I was a bit surprised as I have had heated discussions about seeding and formatting BUDA Summer League tournaments.
Once Brazil and Germany were in place, the other top 6 teams were drawn at random. From there, the other 24 teams were also literally drawn out of a hat. There are geographical rules about where teams can be placed. For example, I believe that no more than 2 teams from Europe could have been in the same pool.
The bracket basically just places a first place team against another pool's second place team, but as there is no attempt and seeding reflecting ranking, there is no sense that, for bracket play, the #1 team is playing the #16 team.
I spent much of the time pondering the contrast between seeding and formatting the World Cup and what we do in Ultimate.
I came away with a great amount of respect for the care and thought that goes into the UPA formats manual. I think ranking teams in order of strength is positive, and designing brackets that set up "correct" match-ups also works. I also think that the formats go out of their way to correct for possible errors. There is no double elim in soccer, or even pre-quarters. I find it hard to believe that the World Cup format selects only two teams out of each randomly-drawn pool. I feel quite coddled now.
As I have said before, there is work to do around developing consistent seeding guidelines, but I think the inevitable quibbles and bickering about both seeding and formatting is something to be both appreciated and expected. At least we seem to care about what is going on.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Crap Formats
One of the things I have enjoyed about my UPA job is that I have learned about formatting tournaments. I am certainly still in diapers compared to Adam Tarr, but I have enjoyed learning from him and the others in the formatting committee. I have great respect for their concern for fairness and well as their attention to detail. If you are a TD or tournament planner, I think the Formats Manual is a must read.
As I coach a college team at "social" tournaments, I am often presented with "napkin" formats. There are often serious problems with these formats. I suspect that a lot of the mistakes come with lack of knowledge or experience. However, when my girls asked one TD about a format, the response was "Its our tournament, we can do what we want". Not only does this acknowledge an awareness that problems exist, but it also signals that there was intent to take advantage of the organizational role. I am not going to guess as to what the intentions of a TD are, but if the intent is to gain an advantage, I do not understand how someone could put themselves in a position of upholding SOTG on the field, but clearly show disrespect in devising an unfair format. I have heard the "Hey, we are here to have fun and play some games...." rationale. It seems pretty clear to me that a team can have fun and "just play some games" equally well in a fair format.
I want to make clear that what follows next makes no assumptions about intent. It will point out some interesting wrinkles, but, honestly, my point is to say that players care about formats and is not trying point fingers or call someone a cheater.
So, exhibit A of crap formats is the tournament we played in this past weekend. The link is here:
http://www2.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=34&id=1943
The first thing that one notices is the decision to run it with 3 pools of 4. While the formats manual is very clear about the specific problems of doing this, I actually think that due to having only 4 fields, this is not a terrible idea.
The most significant problem is the way that the pools break into brackets. One notices that, for some reason, pools A and B graduate 3 teams while pool C gets to send only 2 teams. Again, I am not questioning intent, but it does raise a red flag when the the two host teams (Brown A and B) just happen to be seeded third in their pools. One would assume that the break between the C2 and C3 teams would be the 8-9 break. This would make sense as the top 8 teams make it to qtrs. Looking at the seeding, however, there seems to be no clear way to get to a place in which C2 and C3 can be seeded 8 and 9.
Looking at the brackets, the top game is A1 vs B3. So far so good. If one does a traditional snake (pool A: 1, 6, 7, 12: Pool B: 2, 5, 8, 11: Pool C: 3, 4, 9, 10), then this makes the qtr the 1 v 8 game. Let's look at the 2 seed, it is B1, down at the bottom of the bracket. Their opponent: C2!!. So not only does pool C send only 2 teams, but the reward...play the 2 seed. Again, if we are going with a traditional snake, this means we have the 2v4 game in qtrs. Seed number 3 (C1) is in the same bracket with the 1 seed, and they play A3, presumably the 7 seed. This leaves us with the 5 seed playing the 6 seed in the final game.
An additional problem with this bracket is that B1 and B2 are on the same side, meaning that, if one were to mis-seed and put the 2 best teams in pool B..... both could not make finals.
The other real problem is the seeding. I won't go into specifics, but Cornell at 5 is a joke, Yale above Wellesley (we beat them 12-3 two weeks before)doesn't work, and Brown-B at 7 is really an insult to everyone 8 and below.
So, I don't think it is particularly beneficial to be solely crtical, so I do have two alternate ideas. I think a strong possibility should have been 2 pools 6, stright into semis. 4 fields means playing the round robin in 8 rounds, so with semis and finals that means 10 rounds. A bit tricky, but possible. The other idea would be 3 pools of 4, but pre-qtrs on Sunday morning. This would have kept everyone in the ballgame, possibly corrected for seeding errors, and given 4 teams a bye for finishing in the top 4.
The teams that ended up getting screwed were BU and Yale. They finish 3 and 4 in C due to point diff, and then win the swill pool against, surprise!!!, Brown A and B.
In summary, if you are a TD, show respect for the teams that are taking time to travel to your tournament. Do the right thing and devise a format that is fair. If there is a need for deviating from standard fair practice, be very clear and upfront about why you are straying from the norm. Lastly, read the Formats Manual. It is a great resource.
