Saturday, January 24, 2009
Super-Regional Plan: Qualification of Teams to "Super-Regionals"
What are your thoughts, ideas and concerns on the selection of teams to the "Super-Regional" events? What is your opinion on half of the teams (24) at these events being chosen by selection committee? Who should make up this selection committee? What is your opinion of half of these teams (24) qualifying as sectional champions? If you disagree with the selection committee and/or sectional qualification elements of the plan, how would you suggest teams qualify for Super-Regionals?
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I think a selection committee is a terrible idea.
ReplyDeleteDespite all the advances we have made through new media (ultivillage footage, all the different blogs, etc) we are light years behind major NCAA collegiate sports in terms of the amount of game footage available on teams. Every member of the NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee can watch, basically, every minute of play of every bubble team from the entire season. Surely most/all of them are not that diligent, but all of them have watched multiple full games of every bubble team. The same can be said for the poll voters in NCAA football.
Despite this titanic advantage in available information, the results of these selection committees and polls are routinely panned by the public, and frankly, for good reason. They simply aren't very effective/accurate by any objective measure. Why? Because these people, despite all of their expertise and available information, are victims of all sorts of biases and flaws of reasoning.
It's natural for people to overestimate their confidence in their assessments of relative team strengths. (The entire Vegas gambling industry is fueled by this overconfidence.) So it's natural for us to believe that we can make great predictions if we get a bunch of "well informed" people together to make a decision. The only problem is:
1) They're not really well-informed, except about a few teams in a small area
2) Even if they were, mountains of evidence from other sports shows us that they won't make an especially expert decision.
The collective-decision-based advancement of teams in NCAA college sports is one of the most routinely criticized elements of those sports. We should avoid inserting this flawed concept into our sport.
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The only real saving grace of the super-regional plan's selection committee is that it doesn't have to do a good job. It can actually be really random and inaccurate and we're still OK. This is because every team has a chance to get into super-regionals without the help of the selection committee, just by winning sectionals.
But this doesn't justify the use of a selection committee in any sense. We should avoid introducing a subjective, arbitrary measure into qualification. If only a rough measure of strength is needed, then why not use something impartial, like team placement or power rankings?
Tarr--
ReplyDeleteI hear you on some of the flaws of a selection committee (SC). Every system will have some flaws (for instance, power rankings have tended to over-rank teams from the west that play each other a lot and often earn early season wins over teams from other, colder parts of the country). The benefit of an objective system is those flaws are more known quantities, where as the biases of a SC are more nebulous and depend on the individuals on the committee.
On the other hand, because the flaws in a power ranking or team placement system are known, teams could manipulate their schedules to try and unfairly maximize their chances of advancing. For instance, teams are currently in the top 10 of the UPA rankings without having a win against other highly ranked teams. Would a team be able to "sit on a lead" like that in an algorithm based system? With a selection committee, at least it would be in teams' best interest to play tough schedules. Although I guess that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms for teams that might not be able to get into top tournaments.
You're right that many cold-weather teams have done poorly at early season events. That said, has any team in the history of college nationals ever argued their seed up based on the argument that they were limited in the big early season tournaments by their practice schedule? In 2005, eventual champion Brown picked up some narrow losses at Stanford and Centex, and had to settle for a #3 seed at nationals as a result. There's plenty of examples like that.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that if historical seeding patterns are any guide, we're not going to give much extra credit to the cold weather teams anyway. It's hard to imagine this really changing with a selection committee - in the end you can't give a team credit for beating the teams they lost to.
As far as "sitting on a lead" based on playing only weak teams - again, this would be a tough one for a selection committee to handle as well. The real solution here is to make the requirements of "tier 1" play such that any top team will have had to have played some other top teams by the end of the regular season. Since the Super-Regional proposal hasn't hashed out its play requirements yet, I can't argue whether or not the scenario you outline is realistic or not. In the Conference proposal, it definitely could not happen, as a tier 1 team has to play in at least one of the national events.
I think there is a difficulty when you compare national seeding versus national qualifying. Many of the time arguing up a seed wouldn't get you too far, Arguing from a 2 to a 1 wouldn't get you far because eventually you are still going to have to beat either a 3 or 4. Arguing from last seed to second to last will still end up with you having a difficult game to start.
ReplyDeleteBut arguing from not in to in has huge ramifications, you would at least get a chance. So then you would have the problems of "well team x lost to team y 13-5 in january but team X beat Team z 13-7 in april and team Z has beaten team y twice by 13-9" So then what is the committee going to about the game in january if X is from minnesota/wisconsin/etc. and y and z are both from florida/texas/cali?
Of course in my imaginary situation the last spot to be given from the SC is between X and Y (Z already qualified) If X has been on a terror and realistically should be in over Y, how are you going to explain your choices for picking a team over a team they have already lost to?
I know that was looking at a 3-legged cat but I'm sure everybody would hate to get shafted (either way) in that situation if it came down to a relatively arbitrary decision. People feel better about getting screwed over if the process of getting screwed over is laid out before them.
Okay, it is worth noting here that the argument being played out is about the unfairness of, say, Brown's early-season results vs. Florida's. But the question at hand is about bids to Super-Regionals, and Brown and Florida won't be in the same Super-Region. Presumably, and according to the tentative map, Brown and Florida won't be in the same Super-Region, so this argument is somewhat moot, no?
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that the reason we're skipping anyone to Super-Regionals is to avoid the rash of Goliath-Stomping-David games that are the Sectionals experience for most top teams. If we are going to skip anyone ahead, whether you use a ranking algorithm or a committee, there are bound to be flaws. I'm fine with a Committee, but it should be bound to use the algorithms results unless there are strong reasons not to do so...
~OD
David S.
ReplyDeleteThe way the plan reads now, the 24 picks to Super Regionals aren't allocated to any particular geographic areas. So, technically, all 24 teams could get picked from the Metro East area. Only 6 of those teams would get to play in the Super-Region that encompassed the ME and the other selected teams would have to travel to other Super-Regions. The sectional-to-SR bids are geographically assigned.
So, it is possible that Brown and Florida could be competing with each other in the minds of the selection committee for the 24th auto-bid spot.
Gambler,
ReplyDeleteGood point - thanks for correcting my leaky brain. That's what I get for trying to process both plans simultaneously.
I am with Tarr in that I simply don't think that there is enough media coverage/ enough unbiased "media" members that could make up a selection comittee that could do a good job. We are just not there yet....
ReplyDelete