Subject: Re: Wildcards and Nationals (was Re: MA Regionals)
From: parinell@tiac.net (James Parinella)
Date: 1996/05/23
Newsgroups: rec.sport.disc
In article <Brendan.Sylvander-230596085911@mg1_137.geol.utas.edu.au>
Brendan.Sylvander@geol.utas.edu.au (Brendan) writes:
>In article <4nvkbj$f59@news3.digex.net>, erics@access2.digex.net (Eric
>Simon) wrote:
>
><snip>
(Writers suggest 49ers and Packers were good enough to win it but didnt'
deserve the shot)
But this differs because only one team can qualify out of each conference in football for a title match between 2 teams, whereas in Ultimate 2 or 3 teams from each conference are part of 12 or 14 teams that are in the championship tournament. I think a better analogy is when the NCAA Basketball tournament used to restrict each conference to one or two teams (maybe I'm mixing my sports, football used to limit conferences to two teams in bowl games, basketball maybe had only one team per). Or, if you wanted to stay with pro football, you'd have to argue that the best team in the NFC that didn't make the playoffs was far better than some of the teams in the AFC that made it, and in fact that team would have a good chance at winning it all.
Any way you look at it, it's a tough decision on what to do. We can't even get a consensus on the purpose of Nationals (find a winner, find the best team in the country, reward the best teams in each area, promote growth, promote the game, have a party), so finding a scheme for selecting teams that most people can agree with is well nigh impossible.
Jim
P.S. I've almost completed transferring my WEb page to a new site. It's at http://www.tiac.net/users/parinell
although the old site
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/parinell/disc.html
should still be in service. I plan on adding to the new site over the next couple months. Please update your links and drop me a note so I can cross-reference yours.
P.P.S. In the "testosterone with honor" discussion going on previously, I didn't mean to try to take the high moral ground, saying "Look how great and honest we are". In 1993, I think my team played a fairly dishonorable game, now that I think about it, but I got caught up in the frenzy of it all just like the rest of my team. Now, I think we try to play pretty fairly, although of course we make bad calls now and then. But I think we try to play by the rules.