Board 8 > In professional sports, how do you prefer a champion be decided?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i think it depends on the sport

with baseball i prefer the regular season because it's so random

with basketball i prefer the playoffs because matchups matter and everyone actually tries

End of season standings providing enough games are played and there's some sort of parity in scheduling. I'm not American but have lived in the US for 11 years

Obviously it's not always an option due to schedules which is frequently the case in American football. But the concept of a team not being anywhere near the top in the regular season being champions is just bizarre to me. Or a team being dominant and then getting fucked by a late season injury.

It's the same with fantasy sports. You could just do a straight up most points scored like other countries do got fantasy sports but nope, gotta have the playoffs where the best team in the season frequently does not win the title due to a one off week in the final 2-3 weeks

I get why playoffs exist though. They are certainly more exciting and generate a fuck ton more money

In terms of crowning the fairest champion though, they suck

I appreciate Baseball and Basketball doing multi-game series, which mitigate the issues, but end of season standings are "better" and a more clear way of finding the best.

That said, if you're going to divide the teams into separate conferences of roughly equal quality then playoffs are a necessity.

Shattered posted...

Or a team being dominant and then getting fucked by a late season injury.

I mean, teams can also get screwed by mid-season injuries if you go by regular season standings.

I think playoffs are the best format, but most sports have too many playoff teams (obviously for the money). Either way and injury or slump can derail a team's chances, but I'd rather reward teams that show up on the biggest stage than teams that show up in the middle of the season. Also, most teams would have nothing to play for halfway through the season.

I don't think there's a truly fair way to decide a champion, as the regular season is also prone to randomness, injuries, hot streaks, etc. but at least the playoffs are exciting and both teams are mostly on equal footing, as opposed to the regular season where one team could be coming off a back-to-back, in the middle of a long road trip, had a bye week the previous week, etc.

I guess I prefer end of season standings, but you have to organize the season/league right for it to work.

If you have divisions like most US leagues where strength of schedule can be radically different between teams then you need some kind of playoffs. Though I prefer limited playoffs with fewer teams so that it's hard to qualify for them.

Baseball has too many wildcards at this point. It's nice if you are just wanting to see your team have a chance, but if you actually want to crown thr best champion foe the year it should be just the division winners and one Wildcard team.

Playoffs, but not allowing more than 50% of all teams in. NBA, MLS & USL go overboard.

MZero posted...

I mean, teams can also get screwed by mid-season injuries if you go by regular season standings.

To me there's a big difference between a team losing a guy mid season and a team losing a guy for elimination series against what is statistically likely to be stronger opposition

To me the goal of the season is to crown the best team over the course of the entire year. Not the best current team at the end of the year.

I don't think injuries are truly random

You can mitigate them with accurate sports science and training regimens and a good medical staff can reduce downtime. That comes down to good management just like a strategy does. Also you should have adequate replacements

Then again we're talking about different sports here

Playoffs but they should be fairly exclusive or give significsnt advantages to regular season record.

This topic was made for me and I have thoughts. Ones shattered already said but I am going to repeat them because man do I feel strongly about this, as people who are in the sports discord channel will tell you.

Sports are fluky. Some more than others, but any given team can win on any given day based on innumerable factors. This makes it imo impossible to determine the best team based on "Well this team beat this team but lost to that team and only beat this team by 5 etc." Matchup strengths and weaknesses exist, but if team A matches up well against 28 other teams but doesn't matchup well against 1 team, I would consider them better than team B who matches up well against 25 but doesn't against 4. But playoffs give us that exact possibility: The best team can run into a buzzsaw spoiler who got lucky in round 1 and just happens to be their kryptonite. I hate that.

I get the hype around playoffs. I participate myself in march madness, I get that people love chaos. They want to see the successful team fail. Tons of people love an underdog story. But my enjoyment of sports is derived from seeing the better team win, and playoffs provide avenues for the worse team to win. Like the teams who are "just good enough" but clearly aren't an elite team get a second chance they didn't earn. I don't like that. I do not enjoy seeing a 9-8 team in the NFL beat a 14-3 team. Unless it's the pats, but talking beyond fandom here.

It's even worse in the NFL where rounds are a single game. I get why, NFL is the most physically punishing sport and you can't have guys playing 3-5 game series. But it also lends itself heavily to single-game flukes. As a pats hater, I can enjoy as much as the next guy the year the pats went 18-0 then lost in the super bowl, but objectively the patriots were the best team by a mile that season and should not be thought of as losers because they lost a single game that we as a society have arbitrarily deemed to be the most important one. Using playoff success to measure a player is STUPID because we just decided that some games matter more than others. They shouldn't, just like how say NBA players get lauded for being "clutch" by scoring a lot in the 4th quarter. Hey maybe if they scored those points in the first quarter they wouldn't be in that spot. Points in any game should matter the same, and any game should matter the same.

This is why I like the NBA the most, because even with playoffs, the NBA is the least fluky sport and it's rare for one of the top seeds to fall before they're supposed to. THe 1/8 & 2/7 matchups are usually treated like jokes, but even then, NBA arguably suffers the most from "Regular season doesn't matter." At least fewer games in the NFL makes each one matter. Not so for the other 3 major ones. So even the NBA isn't perfect.

I don't even like the idea of conferences or divisions. In my ideal sports world, every team plays every other team a couple of times and then the one with the most wins, wins. I don't care about things like travel, because if everyone plays everyone then the travel is the same for them all. This is probably the toughest in the NFL where there just aren't enough games to do this, I'm willing to accept it there, but I find the idea of "interleague play" in MLB anathema. "Let's just split up teams arbitrarily and make it so you only usually play your own div to help feed in to the playoff system!" I hate it. Sorry wigs, I hate it. That system doesn't determine the best team in the whole league, it determines the best in each conference and then pairs them together which just doesn't work for me, because maybe that's a bad matchup for one team! Maybe one of those teams played weaker competition! It just isn't fair. That is what I want in my sports, fairness. Even if it's impossible to be completely fair, that doesn't mean I don't want to strive for as much as possible.

To summarize, I understand why playoffs exist but I don't want them. They don't give me what I want, which is the team that proves itself over the course of playing every team to be the best one. Not the team who got hot for 10 games or the one who matches up well against the favorite. I will be "old man yells at clouds" about this.

Eddv posted...

Playoffs but they should be fairly exclusive or give significsnt advantages to regular season record.

Yeah I agree with giving the best teams more advantages in the playoffs. In Japanese baseball, the top 3 teams from each league make it. The 2nd and 3rd place team play a best-of-3 series exclusively at the 2nd place team's stadium, then the winner plays the 1st place team in a best-of-7 series all at the top place team's stadium, but the series starts 1-0 in favor of the top team so they only need to win 3 games to advance instead of 4.

I agree that playoffs are best when they're on the more exclusive side, but I'd also be interested in weighting them more heavily based on regular season.

I guess the main question kinda comes down to fairness vs. excitement, right? It's pretty hard to argue against standings as the more accurate measure, but playoffs make the ending more (reliably) interesting. It'd feel weird to get hyped for the championship to come down to two teams that aren't even playing each other, or for the winner to be decided with weeks left in the season.

Emerald nailed it. Everyone plays everyone, end of season standings crowns the victor. Playoffs are reserved for international competitions where it's assumed the best of the best are already playing.

AriaOfBolo posted...

but playoffs make the ending more (reliably) interesting

This is the key point for why things are the way they are in US sports. More exciting -> More money involved, even if a team other than the "best" one wins it in the end. Hype and intrigue sell.

That said, if your goal is to crown a champion, and you want it to be the "best" team as reliably as possible, a long regular season with no playoffs will typically do that. That sort of format has a lot of issues for engagement though. I very much like baseball, but I still tune out of a good chunk of the regular season because of it beyond keeping a basic eye on results, standout performers and injuries. Basketball and Hockey would be very similar if I followed them particularly. But at the end of the season in all three sports, the best teams will pretty reliably be the ones with the best records.

Meanwhile, the NFL with its relatively small number of regular season games and high variance sucks for attempting to objectively determine the best team. But it sure is exciting to follow specifically because of those reasons.

Reg posted...

This is the key point for why things are the way they are in US sports. More exciting -> More money involved, even if a team other than the "best" one wins it in the end. Hype and intrigue sell.

That said, if your goal is to crown a champion, and you want it to be the "best" team as reliably as possible, a long regular season with no playoffs will typically do that. That sort of format has a lot of issues for engagement though. I very much like baseball, but I still tune out of a good chunk of the regular season because of it beyond keeping a basic eye on results, standout performers and injuries. Basketball and Hockey would be very similar if I followed them particularly. But at the end of the season in all three sports, the best teams will pretty reliably be the ones with the best records.

Meanwhile, the NFL with its relatively small number of regular season games and high variance sucks for attempting to objectively determine the best team. But it sure is exciting to follow specifically because of those reasons.

I think people could be conditioned so that it wasn't so weird, given enough time. Right now we're just too steeped in it, it would take decades at least.

I mean, soccer is the most popular sport in the world right? And there is so much money in euro football specifically, I see some of those transfer fees. They seem to be doing alright with that format.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Emerald nailed it. Everyone plays everyone, end of season standings crowns the victor. Playoffs are reserved for international competitions where it's assumed the best of the best are already playing.

Yeah, basically this. There's plenty of underdog stories when leagues without playoffs aren't dominated by money, and when they are it's a different issue entirely. Having a separate cup or reward through a playoff system is also chill (like how extra promotion spots are typically decided through playoffs in soccer), but it's especially lame when it makes the regular season hold so much less weight, or if you can't do multiple matches between teams in the knockouts because of scheduling. And wildcard systems just kinda blow.

without commenting on this, just commenting that we should also take note of how sports like boxing and MMA do it - without regard to season

European leagues dont have divisions because European countries are all physically a lot smaller than the US. Outside of special events like the Champions League, they never have to take more than an hour or two-long flight.

Playoffs aren't always going to crown the absolute best team, but sure beats the anticlimactic finish of 'welp seasons over, lets look at the stats.'

And no Cinderella runs?! That's like the best part of watching sports.

Emeraldegg posted...

I think people could be conditioned so that it wasn't so weird, given enough time. Right now we're just too steeped in it, it would take decades at least.

I mean, soccer is the most popular sport in the world right? And there is so much money in euro football specifically, I see some of those transfer fees. They seem to be doing alright with that format.

I'm no expert in soccer, but I think English soccer is beginning to experience an issue with all that money. As a fan of a team that used to yo-yo between Tier 1 and Tier 2, the larger gap in ability between the teams in each tier is stark and it seems really hard for a team to plant roots in the Premier League before being kicked down to tier 2 again. At that point they have a lot of money spent on their roster and no longer have the income to justify that unless they are able to bounce right back up. Meanwhile there's only ever like five teams that have a chance of winning the Premier League.

There's more nuance to it than that and surely somebody who has been a fan longer than I have can expand on it, but the overall health I don't think is as great as the money would suggest.

Emeraldegg posted...

I mean, soccer is the most popular sport in the world right? And there is so much money in euro football specifically, I see some of those transfer fees. They seem to be doing alright with that format.

The biggest events in European Football are all tournaments (UEFA events, World Cup, etc), though, so even they're in on it to some extent. I do agree that it's a uniquely American thing to emphasize playoffs so heavily though, which is why I specifically said "In US Sports"

That said, the Promotion/Relegation system in European Football (Which is another thing that would never fly in American sports) helps keep the regular season interesting by giving teams a reason to not tank/give up on the season. Overall, I agree that the format is better for competition and crowning a champion. It's just not something that'll ever realistically catch on in the US.

ZaziGuado posted...

I'm no expert in soccer, but I think English soccer is beginning to experience an issue with all that money. As a fan of a team that used to yo-yo between Tier 1 and Tier 2, the larger gap in ability between the teams in each tier is stark and it seems really hard for a team to plant roots in the Premier League before being kicked down to tier 2 again. At that point they have a lot of money spent on their roster and no longer have the income to justify that unless they are able to bounce right back up. Meanwhile there's only ever like five teams that have a chance of winning the Premier League.

There's more nuance to it than that and surely somebody who has been a fan longer than I have can expand on it, but the overall health I don't think is as great as the money would suggest.

Yeah, soccer is a bubble that will probably burst someday. Money is concentrated at the top, but the top clubs rely very heavily on smaller clubs existing to find the best players. The main thing that might keep it afloat is that literally every nation in the world cares about soccer, and there's always room for expansion or a new country to get big and bring new audiences. Don't think it's anything to do with the format though, it would probably be even more wealthy and concentrated at the top if it integrated the playoff style, especially if it meant an end to promotion/relegation. Big clubs have been trying to do it for years, but they're too integrated with local communities and culture, and too reliant on smaller clubs who have zero desire for a playoff system to change that (for now, anyway).

xenosaga posted...

Playoffs aren't always going to crown the absolute best team, but sure beats the anticlimactic finish of 'welp seasons over, lets look at the stats.'

And no Cinderella runs?! That's like the best part of watching sports.

Well, that's why you have other competitions within the season that are straight knockout to scratch that itch

Also, off-topic: the middle east getting involved in football this heavily prevented the bubble bursting for quite a while I would say. Pre-City there was a chance it might happen.

With that said, 10 out of 20 PL owners are American now I think. There's a chance that it will soon be 14, at which point they can bend the competition to their will - create a truly closed shop with no relegation, guaranteed CL for certain teams, potentially a playoff system, etc, and truly Americanise it.

Saudi owning Newcastle is morally grotesque and for me personally killed a lot of my interest in the competition, but American owners in the PL are potentially a graver threat to whatever sporting integrity it has, and a closed shop may lead to the death of many of the smaller, local teams

Like many large sporting brands, the PL is a fairly vile organisation (see the way they allowed the Newcastle takeover), but the competition itself still allows for cool things like Luton being in it with that tiny stadium. That potential should be non-negotiable.

I think in sports playing under pressure is an actual skill and playoffs measure that way better than just season stats

It's not a "better" measure of the best team but I do think there's more merit to it than given credit. It's not ALL about drama. Just mostly.

That is true, the clutch matters

Real Madrid winning multiple CLs despite quite blatantly not being the best team in Europe (or even top 5), for instance. They have a certain knack for that kind of situation that others don't. It's not an accident, despite their overall inferiority.

Playoffs are a terrible way to determine the best team, but they're way more fun that just checking the standings at the end of the season. The whole point of professional sports is to be entertaining. Arguing against playoffs because they aren't "fair" is missing the point entirely.

XIII_Rocks posted...

With that said, 10 out of 20 PL owners are American now I think. There's a chance that it will soon be 14, at which point they can bend the competition to their will - create a truly closed shop with no relegation, guaranteed CL for certain teams, potentially a playoff system, etc, and truly Americanise it.

On this note, it's not physical sports, but let me tell the tale of League of Legends as an esport, which is basically speedrunning your exact concerns here.

When Riot Games took over the Professional League of Legends circuit in America and Europe, and transitioned it from an open circuit to a closed league (End of 2012/start of 2013), it was originally a Football-style promotion/relegation system - Bottom of the standings in each region's top league had to play to avoid being relegated to the secondary league. After five years of this (Going into 2018), all of the orgs complained about the lack of stability (Getting relegated was largely a death sentence for an org in the scene, and not many of the promoted teams did particularly well), and the top league in each region transitioned to an American-style system.

When this transition happened, the amount of money and investment into the scene (Which was already trending up in anticipation of this exact happening) exploded, especially in America. Most of the teams partnered with existing sports orgs (Most notably, MSG/New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors) or other major investors (Literally Disney was, and still is, involved).

And, now that we're five years after that, it's become clear to those major investors that the ROI for them is not what they were hoping it would be. People who follow that scene have been watching that bubble slowly burst in real time for the past year or two.

And the point I'm trying to make is, if you think EU Football is a bubble waiting to burst now, an Americanized system will probably follow a very similar path, flood in a bunch of money to blow that bubble up even further for a few years, and then burst just as you're fearing.

I was a competitive Magic player for years, and there's one problem with the lack of playoffs: The last X rounds just don't matter anymore.

You'll see this in Magic even if there is a top 8 cut. Top players will intentionally draw in their last 2 rounds to make sure they make the top 8. I know "intentional draws" won't happen in organized sports, but if a team has locked first place with 3, 5, or even 7 games ahead in prolific sports like baseball, then the season may as well be that much shorter. This is something low-placed teams already deal with, but it shouldn't end up like that for everyone.

Reg posted...

On this note, it's not physical sports, but let me tell the tale of League of Legends as an esport, which is basically speedrunning your exact concerns here.

When Riot Games took over the Professional League of Legends circuit in America and Europe, and transitioned it from an open circuit to a closed league (End of 2012/start of 2013), it was originally a Football-style promotion/relegation system - Bottom of the standings in each region's top league had to play to avoid being relegated to the secondary league. After five years of this (Going into 2018), all of the orgs complained about the lack of stability (Getting relegated was largely a death sentence for an org in the scene, and not many of the promoted teams did particularly well), and the top league in each region transitioned to an American-style system.

When this transition happened, the amount of money and investment into the scene (Which was already trending up in anticipation of this exact happening) exploded, especially in America. Most of the teams partnered with existing sports orgs (Most notably, MSG/New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors) or other major investors (Literally Disney was, and still is, involved).

And, now that we're five years after that, it's become clear to those major investors that the ROI for them is not what they were hoping it would be. People who follow that scene have been watching that bubble slowly burst in real time for the past year or two.

And the point I'm trying to make is, if you think EU Football is a bubble waiting to burst now, an Americanized system will probably follow a very similar path, flood in a bunch of money to blow that bubble up even further for a few years, and then burst just as you're fearing.

Thanks for that.

Both genuinely and sarcastically. Something to look forward to!

It's super annoying to be a fan of clearly the best regular season team only to see them get knocked out early, like the Braves in baseball this year.

But I'd still rather have playoffs than have the season just...end. Mid-season tournaments just don't have the same level of excitement to them.

Nobody wants to see the champions lose in their final game.

Play-offs are best off of that alone. The other arguments make sense, they do...but the high stakes and an important final victory caps the narrative search for the best team nicely, and narrative sells.

Yeah as a Suns fan I don't think they deserved to be champions in 2022 even though the had the best regular season by a mile. They folded when it really mattered

Also the Jazz would have won in 2021 and no one wants that

hell in a cell

Steiner posted...

hell in a cell

Nike already kind of did this

https://youtu.be/f65EwG10kgY?feature=shared

Sports would be boring as fuck without playoffs. The drama and excitement of sports is what makes them fun. I don't give a flying fuck about crowning a "fair" champion and I don't know why people go on about it so much.

Depends on the length of the league/season.

I think in some Australian sports they award a 'minor premiership' to the league winners and a 'major premiership' to the playoff winners. That's a pretty good way of doing it.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Sports would be boring as fuck without playoffs.

as a neutral observer people in this country still lose their minds over football every week so they seem to be able to get enough excitement from it

Playoffs for all sports except motorsports.

Holy hell why would people not want playoffs.

Steiner posted...

as a neutral observer people in this country still lose their minds over football every week so they seem to be able to get enough excitement from it

It wasn't like this til we had this weird obsession with fantasy football. It became this weird week long event where people wanted nonstop football instead of Sunday.

red13n posted...

It wasn't like this til we had this weird obsession with fantasy football. It became this weird week long event where people wanted nonstop football instead of Sunday.

I reckon Steiner is talking about soccer in England

MZero posted...

I reckon Steiner is talking about soccer in England

oh yeah. we do the same shit here though just different sport. We're even getting the fights.

What if we had an algorithm, or better yet a group of sportswriters, to determine who the best two teams are and have them play a championship game?

ZaziGuado posted...

What if we had an algorithm, or better yet a group of sportswriters, to determine who the best two teams are and have them play a championship game?

Great idea, but some simple changes would make it perfect.

1) We should also give the coaches a vote in these rankings. Obviously they would be great at figuring out which teams are the best, and surely we can trust them to avoid any personal bias in their decisions.

2) If the computer algorithms ever disagree with the reporters/coaches, they should be changed going forward because the computers must be the ones getting it wrong.

I'm pretty sure that was a BCS joke

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm pretty sure that was a BCS joke

So was the reply, tbf

Yeah, now that I read it again, I picked up on that.

For a serious reply, the BCS was better than it was given credit for. I think people overreacted to a few weird outcomes (Nebraska in 2001 and the LSU/Alabama title game being the main "offenders").