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Why playoffs are stupid
Posted by Gene Claude on February 15th, 2009 under Uncategorized
A few months ago, I voiced my disdain for playoff systems in general, and especially as a way to identify a college football champion. More than anything, I think playoffs in major sports give the illusion of certainty to the masses, when anyone who has any clue about probability theory realizes that the outcome of any short playoff series is more random chance than anything else.
I am currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow. He is a physics professor and acually co-wrote A Brief History of Time with Stephen Hawking. There is a strong probability he is smarter than me. The book is centered on the strong effect random chance has on a variety of matters, and humans’ (mostly incorrect) tendency to attribute the cause of events to something other than random chance. As Mlodinow says :
[I]n the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge [in each game], the shortest statistically significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a very reliable indication that a team is actually the best one.
Of course, this analogy is to MLB. The NFL and any college football playoff is even worse in that each consists of a series of one game playoffs. Calling the winner of the NFL playoffs, or the proposed NCAA football playoffs “the best team” is pretty much ludicrous. At least the current system allows all information to be assessed before determining which teams get to play of the championship. A playoff system produces a strong probability that the 2 best teams do not, in fact, meet for the championship. Of course, the sports proletariats out there will never accept that anything that happens is random chance……
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Charley said:
February 15th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
so?
Gene Claude said:
February 16th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I realize this is incomplete, I wanted to get something up. I also realize that a playoff of some type might be, and probably is, the best of a bad lot in determining a college football champion.
My point here is that there is an irrational infatuation with the playoff crowd that irks me. A large majority of sports fans seem to think that a playoff is obviously the best solution to determining a champion, and it seems so evident to me that a playoff is mortally flawed as a device to select the best of something.
A plus one system would ensure that only the best teams have a chance to win, and allow voters/machines to consider all facts to determine who the best four teams are. I tend to think that is the best system.
What would satisfy me is if some of the national talking heads would just say “obviously a playoff does a bad job of choosing the best team.”
Roberto Frankfurter said:
February 16th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I serioulsy doubt that you really think Mlodinow, or Hawking for that matter, is smarter than you.
You started off so strong by writing…”especially as a way to identify a college football champion.” However, as you always seem to do, you start into identifying the “best” team. I can’t speak for everyone else advocating an expanded playoff system (yes, we have a two team playoff currently), but I agree that no practical system will necessarily yield the best team (MLB was as close as anyone when it played 150+ games to determine the two teams to play in the World Series).
Rather, I would like to have a system that has enough spots that every team playing in Division 1A has an opportunity to be crowned the college football champion. Under the current system, it is clear that a non-BCS conference school can not win such a crown so half of the Division 1A schools are eliminated before the first game. So, I’m not looking for a system to absolutely identify the “best” team (clearly, there is no such practical system), rather a system that crowns a champion that every team in the division has an opportunity to win.
The bottom line is that the politics in college football will never allow this to happen because the BCS conferences would have to give up their stranglehold on the national championship game.
Gene Claude said:
February 16th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I could beat Hawking in feats of strength, so I’ve got that going for me.
Oh, I think the current BCS does better than any other practical system at identifying the best team…much better than a standard playoff system does. Your criticism is a very legitimate one, though, and maybe the best reason to have a playoff. It is unfair to have a group of teams that cannot possibly be crowned champion; if you are going to do that, you should have two separate divisions.
Of course, any realistic playoff system is still going to make it incredibly hard for a non-BCS conference team to win the national championship, but at least it would be possible.
My real complaint is that playoff proponents seem blind to the practical and theoretical problems with a playoff. I GUARANTEE that some ridiculously large percentage of college football fans will think that a playoff champion is the best team, and will make that claim over and over. Do you disagree? I find that annoying, the BCS does a better job (and a plus one would do, I think, the best job) of choosing the best college football team.