Is a tournament the best way to determine a champ?

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Sholehvar

25+ Posts
I am probably alone in this, but is this tournament the best way to determine a champion? Not sure it really says that much if you have a great season (30+ wins for example) and then lose one game in a tournament. Maybe this is an American thing but why cant a champion be determined over the course of a regular season (i.e. the Premier League)? Maybe we can have a regular season champion (which would be more meaningful in my opinion) and a tournament champion akin to a league title and a cup title. Upsets are fun but they make for a crap final 4.
 
oookay then. so a final 4 of baylor/duke, msu, butler and west virginia will no doubt set ratings records and be talked about for years to come.
 
Better - maybe we can tally votes on which team is the best, a la figure skating, then have a computer work with those numbers. Then, the computer decides who the best team is.

We may just be on to something...
 
Are you retarded?

That has nothing to do with the point you're trying to make. Or do you think they'd talk about it for "years to come" if the regular season champion was Kentucky this year, since they had such a good regular season?

Sorry you don't like the Final 4 teams this year.
 
Or, just maybe, the team that wins the most games against quality opponents over the course of a whole season and doesnt just get hot or jack up a bunch of threes for a few games might be more deserving. Maybe one and done is exciting (at least in the early rounds when there are still good teams left to upset) but doesnt (especially in college basketball) produce the most worthy champion. Just a thought.
 
No particular gripes with any of the teams left. If you win all the games in a tournament, you deserve to win that tournament. It is more about what is (or is not) an ideal champion. Thats why I like the way they do it in soccer with a regular season champ and a cup champ. The regular season championship is more prestigious because it is, in a sense, more hard earned. Obviously, there are a lot of problems with determining a regular season champ in college basketball. The teams dont cant play a home and away against each of the other teams as to give a fair picture. This is a pipe dream but I would love to see a super NCAA league of the top 20 or 30 teams with relegation/promotion, etc. With basketball in particular (in contrast to football) one and done strikes me as sort of unfair. Plus it tends to produce championship games that nobody gives a s*** about.
 
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I think the season should be split in half, with the first National Champion being named after 17 games.












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The tourney does not erase the excellence the losers have demonstrated over the course of the year.

The tourney does not make any promise regarding establishment of who the best team is overall.

The tourney crowns a winner who is given the NC. The #1 ranking doesn't really do justice to the whole thing.

The rankings are a side show meant to hold our interest and to provide some small measure of guidance to the selection committee, though the RPI, which has no effect on the rankings, is clearly more important.

The tourney is crazy for sure, but I cannot see how naming a champ based on the regular season is all that interesting. After all, we have a #1 at the end of the season and no one really cares.
 
I dont know if anybody really cares that much who wins the tournament either. I mean if the final turns out to be Butler vs. Baylor, I think a lot of us will be helping with wife with spring cleaning instead of watching the game. This is why I love college football and, despite its flaws, I can live with the BCS. If they really expand the tournament to 90 something teams (and it looks like they will), that only underlines my point. Seriously, who cares about the tournament at this point? I am just watching to see Duke lose (and this time of year there is absolutely nothing else on).
 
This has to be a joke. The original poster HAS to be making this crazy argument to show traditionalist college football fans how insane no playoff is in college football.

If he were serious he would suggest a best of 3 or something for the elite 8. Otherwise this is a joke of epic proportion.
 
A regular season title is not feasible in a sport with over 300 teams. It works in domestic soccer leagues because there are ~20 teams, and they all play each other the same number of times over the course of a season.
 
The only true way to determine a champion is a best of series like the NBA and MLB, etc has. One and done is an abysmal way to do it. It's exciting, sure, but a best of is better. Of course, it's hard to do unless you reduce the number of teams in the tournament, which will never happen, so we're stuck with the one and done.
 
Maybe we could have something like a BCS and use a computer to decide the best 8 teams. The best 2 could play 1 game for the championship and let the others play for 3 thru 8. We could put in a rule where Notre Dame automatically get into the top 8 if they win 10 games.

Now that's a really good way to do it.
 
Sholehvar, you shouldn't ever have even thought of starting such a discussion. Some of us learned, like a couple of decades back, that it is NO use to even start talking about anything to be an alternative to the greatest thing since sliced bread -- the single elimination playoff! .. Just let it go. Just absorb all the abuse and just go to bed
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R.J.
 
We shouldn't stop there. What about pro baseball, stuck with that tired old World Series format? They should play the regular season, then the division winners would compete, position by position in a sumo wrestling tournament. We need more fresh ideas, keep 'em coming.
 
That last baseball remark is the most clever yet. Remember how they used to play for pennants? You probably dont. Sorry - and how does that even make sense as a comparison especially given that no one has even suggested changing the baseball playoff formats? FYI (and I cant believe I have to remind somebody of this) - in pro baseball (and to a certain extent in college) they play multiple game series. Even nowadays when they have given us mutiple divisions and baseball wild cards, far fewer MLB teams make the playoffs than in other sports leaving the regular season with some vitality. I should have followed the last posters advice...
 
I was just thinking along the lines of Sholehvar this AM.

All year, the main thing that we focus on is what seeding we will get in the tournament (or, for other teams, whether we will get in the tournament). We gauge our success by how far we advance in the tournament and obviously, the tournament is a lot of fun.

The obvious problem concern is just that the best team doesn't generally win. With at least a third of the games coming down to the wire, one shot at the buzzer can seal a team's fate, and the season's done.
 
Hypothetically a team could: lose its entire non-conference slate; learn to play basketball during the season; qualify by winning the conference tournament; and end up national champions. The american dream, right? Slack off until you need to perform at the wire.

And yes, I prefer that the regular season maintain its significance. But I also think that College Baseball has it right with a true champion at the end.
 
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