sahayman@watcgl.UUCP (Steve Hayman) (08/29/84)
The local college football league is undergoing a certain amount of turmoil because four of the older schools want to break away from the rest to form their own "Big Four" league. Presumably there will be more interest in these old, traditional rivalries. The league is attempting to avert this problem by investigating some alternate scheduling and playoff schemes that will simultaneously keep the Big 4 happy and prevent blowouts of little schools by big ones, while still giving everyone a reasonable shot at the playoffs. In the current football format there are 8 teams in the league and you can probably tell right from the start of the season which 4 are going to make the playoffs (although surprises do happen; Waterloo made the playoffs in 1978!). Everybody plays everyone else once; then for the playoffs 1 plays 4, 2 plays 3, etc etc. Pretty standard stuff. Here at Waterloo it's a big year if we win 2 of 7 games and due to the old 'nothing succeeds like success' formula the team seems destined to stay at this level. So even if we have a REALLY big year and win 3 games, and knock off the number 1 team in the country in the process (as has actually happened), we're probably still out of the playoffs. One proposal the league is considering is a voting scheme for playoffs. As I have heard it, the idea is that 1 and 2 would make the playoffs and there would be some sort of a 'vote' to determine which other 2 teams would qualify - who would be the most deserving teams of the remaining 6. I find it hard to believe that this system would work, but perhaps something like this needs to be tried to keep everyone interested in football. I'd like to hear of any actual working strange playoff systems, particularly any at the college level. If something isn't done around here than I don't expect Waterloo Warrior football (or York Yeomen football, or Windsor Lancer football etc etc) to last more than a few more years. More generally, what can you do about the perennial-loser problem? (Recall that as a rule Canadian schools don't offer athletic scholarships.) Much of this is compounded by differing academic standards as well although it works both ways. Waterloo has very high standards and for some probably related reason relatively low success in football but high success in basketball. Any ideas? Steve Hayman University of Waterloo watmath!watcgl!sahayman "Warrior Football ... No Offense Intended!"
jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) (08/29/84)
The problem Steve spoke of has existed in that league for years. One of the
years I was going to the University of Toronto (1978, I think), they tried
an experiment to combat this age-old problem: they sort of split the
league into two sets of four, one with the top four teams, and the other with
the bottom four. Each team played only one game against a team in the other
four, and the other six games were two each against the teams in the same
group of four. Even though they really had two separate divisions, they
lumped all eight together and let the four with the best records into the
playoffs. It worked pretty well because it gave the bottom four something
to aim for, and one of them made the playoffs, but the bad point is that
Toronto, who was probably better than anybody in the bottom four,
ended up with a record of 1-6. If they couldn't beat any of the
top three in six tries, they probably wouldn't go far in the playoffs,
but it made for a pretty disappointing season for us Blues fans, who
were used to our team being in first or second.
If you want a weird playoff system, I think the National Hockey League
takes the cake. They let 16 of 21 teams into the playoffs, which means
that even the most disgustingly hopeless of teams is usually still in the
running until the last month of the season. The problem with it is that
for the most part, the regular season is totally meaningless so most people
don't bother to watch it.
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073
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