but a fun way to end all this shoulda/coulda/woulda’s with top c teams playing bottom b teams and top b’s playing bottom a’s

in honor of my favorite sporting event of the year

end of season tourny march madness style

single elimination (or double and make it more exciting)

Will Afternoon Delight Beat Marshall? Will Kansas lose to Cornell… no probably not

But could the Snowmen have a fighting chance against Slow Children
Sure why not, The University of Vermont beat Syracuse a few years back!

Make it even a two day affair,
sure the odds are against a c team winning it all, but the idea that awesome express could be this year’s cinderella and win it all just tickles me

pass out brackets, get vegas involved

I played on Tarmac in A division and in B division. And even though we had some close games last year in A it wasn’t very fun to know we were going to get spanked on the drive up. Like Seth said, last year I knew there were 3 games that might be fun/competitive and all the others we would lose (some more than others). But as a B+ team this year it was kind of boring too. I thought the B division would be tougher than it was and was surprised by how easily we breezed through some of our games. Honestly we are not that good and think that either Milquetoast or Top Shelf (both winless in A) would beat us handily if they brought the people listed on their roster, but who knows? As B league shows, you can’t always go by rosters or past years’ performances (see Ultimate Scorgasms). Compared to some of the other teams in A division, Marshall doesn’t have the most intimidating roster but they have played together for so long it makes them tough to beat. On top of having the skills they each know what the other is going to do and that is what separates them. No B division team I saw this year has that groove yet and maybe after a few years that will change – Slow Children seems to be getting there. Ultimate is a game of anticipation and timing, and not always raw skill and athleticism. Fact is, no matter how you split it, there are going to be teams on the cusp. Tarmac just happened to be the beneficiaries of a winter league designed specifically for our team to be successful because some of our players complained the loudest. I’m just as torn as anyone about what to do with a B+ team like Tarmac.

The regular season standings don’t matter that much anyway as long as the games are competitive. It is nice to be the top seed at the end of the regular season, but if you don’t win the tournament then who cares? I’ve seen Empire limp through a regular season before bringing their studs to dominate the tournament. I’m not bagging on them, but that is where they have set their priority. For others it is excelling in the B division regular season. Playing the crossover games based on regular season play is just a way to see how your team stacks up against A division teams. Maybe the sucky A division team wants to see how they stack up against a B league champ. I think it would be interesting for a team that wins a crossover to have the option to move up for the tournament (if they are bored of slaughtering everyone in their sucky division) and have more competitive games and potentially win the Grand Prize instead of the second-rate B championship. Teams would have to decide if getting 5th or 6th out of 6 in A, would be better than the B division title. Or they could just stomp the A team and remain in the B division for the tournament and see if they can shut everyone out. At least a team on the cusp controls their own destiny. If one or both top teams lose their crossover, then at worst they get bumped down to 3rd in their division’s regular season and in the tournament the two best B teams might meet in the semis instead of the finals. Big whoop. Happens all the time. You still have to win them all to win the tournament.

Another scenario could be to keep it as it is but set the tournament up so that everyone has a chance to win the whole thing - seeding based on divisional placement. Then the crossovers will happen naturally and the losers should fall out into brackets where they belong and at the end of the season there is reasonable certainty where your team belongs in the grand scheme.

I believe that our league commissioners do they best they can to provide us with the best product possible, but unfortunately you can’t create a specific formula to perfectly bound every season. And you definitely can’t make everyone happy every year. I liked the three divisions. It wasn’t perfect but it was pretty darn good (minus the make up games on a dark field that we paid for in addition to league fees that go to rainouts).

So suppose Tarmac and Slow, being the top 2 teams, both play an A-team in the final week and both lose. By Awesome Express plays a B team and wins. Suddenly, Awesome Express gets the B-Tourney 1 seed based on the fact that Tarmac and Slow lost to teams that were not in their league.

And if they don’t count in the standings and are just scrimmages, then why did we play league fees to play them? If we built a rain-delay week into the schedule for last-week make-ups, but there weren’t rain-outs to make up, then I think doing inter-league games would be fine. But I am in the B-league this year; my opponents should be also.

The main point I’m hoping to convey is that if the goal is close matchups, brackets are beneficial for the very top and very bottom teams in WL and that more brackets creates greater inequity.

A misplaced team is a greater issue in a bracketed system, even more so the more brackets you have. It’s more likely to leave teams winless/ with very few wins (there’s a bottom in each bracket that someone must occupy). That carries over to the tournament as well. Take Tarmac/ Top shelf/ Milquetoast/Slow Children - Where would you place them come next year? The Zoo vs. Ultimate Scoregasm. These are all games that should happen. If we could perfectly seed all teams, brackets are great. But we can’t.

As it stands, I think the great advantage in the current system is for the bottom of the C league and the top of the A league. Top of A league (Empire, Formidable, Kong, Marshall) got to double up games against competitive teams at the expense of Milquetoast/top shelf getting to play more equitable games. Same is true in reverse for the bottom of the C pool.

But if those teams gain, who loses in having equitable games? Bottom of A (as explained above) Top of B (They don’t play their next closest matchup, bottom of A). Bottom of B (same as bottom of A explanation) and the Top of C.

The model I always liked was for a seven game season is no brackets, but weight the teams and strive for a schedule that gives
3 games that are a tossup,
1 games that you have a shot at, but you are underdogs
1 games you are favored
1 game against an elite team
1 game against a beginner team

(If you are one of the very top teams, you get 2-3 games that you will win without much effort, and if you are one of the weakest teams you get 2-3 games you probably can’t win no matter how well you play. It’s the price for more equity everywhere else.)

Now if you are at the top or bottom of that scale, it won’t work out quite like that for you. But for everyone else, it’s pretty good. The only problem is you have to weight the wins/losses for the tourney on strength of schedule

Lets look at a specific example as to how it illustrates equity in games. Here’s Tarmac’s schedule from 2009
Kong, Milquetoast, Pirates, Marshall, Jarnspikar, Homers disc, Pist, Top Shelf, Empire.
That’s 4-ish likely loses, 4 competitive games, 1 possible but tough win.

In 2010, the new brackets made Tarmac, Milquetoast, and Top shelf have less equitable games. If Top shelf and Milquetoast dropped down as well, I think it’s pretty clear they would run over most B teams.

Lets be clear about what these brackets are doing in practice.
Favors the top A and bottom C teams
Gives more shots at championships (something that was really unattainable for most players in WL unless you played at a pretty high level of frisbee … or have/had a legacy spot on Marshall or Damn)
Hurts equity of games for teams on the top of B and C, and the bottom of A and B
Incorrect ranking of a team has a dramatic effect. (Marshall in 2003 was put in B league, I don’t think anyone got within 7 points in any game in our bracket)

As to the desire not to get blown out by the top teams, that’s a personal preference. Perhaps these days are gone, but I fondly remember getting spanked by Quake (and I’m hoping they fondly remember our “big cocks” cheer), being amazed that someone could throw a disc THAT far and high on a pull, and playing against people that were wildly out of my league. I don’t expect everyone to like it, but I sure would have enjoyed a game against Slow Children this year or even one against the Zoo and meeting a few new people.