Watered down playoffs

UL Monroe is actually not even hosting a first-round conference tournament game, after all. But the LHSAA wisely chose to not risk it and just moved their Wednesday games to Louisiana Tech for the day, because of the uncertainty in the Sun Belt. It's not the first time events have had to be juggled around due to scheduling conflicts. The LHSAA actually did the smart thing in this case and didn't take a "wait and see" approach. It's just for one day and the teams that are playing in the Ladies' Top 28 on Wednesday will just drive into Ruston and stay in Ruston instead of going to Monroe. No big deal, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Football, in which there is a very small number of games and a very significant risk of injury for every additional game a team plays, is the only sport in which restricting the playoff field makes any sense.

I'm not sure if there's any state in the nation where basketball teams play less than 20 regular-season games.

To play a 32-team field down to a champion takes five games. If you expanded the field to 256, it takes three more games. Remember of course half the field goes home after every round.

Rather than listen to the teams on the borderline piss and moan about how unfair it was they didn't make it, let everybody in, let the 0-20 teams get beat 97-12 in their first-round game, and in two or three weeks you have a champion.

 

In our state everybody makes the playoffs and just because you lose doesn't mean you are finished. We figured up the other day that a team in theory can go winless in the regular season and post a 7-3 record in the playoffs and be a state champion.

Everybody goes to the district/conference tournament. Top four move on to the region. Top two from the region go to sub-state (sweet 16). Final 8 move on to the actual state tournament. It's possible to lose in the district semis, district consolation and region final and not get put out.

It's all about money. The state association gets (I think) 27 percent off the top of each night's gate even before paying the refs, janitor or light bill. Tournaments used to play four games per night and move it along. A few years back the state "for the kids sake of not missing class or being out late" said you can only play two per night if school is in the next day. What they really meant was if we play twice as many dates, we sell twice as many tickets and get more for us.

Football is just as bad. Back in the good old days conference champs only went to the playoffs. Then the state added another round by taking 1/2. Then they added another round where the top four go, and there are a butt load of 70-0 games in the first round. In the largest and smallest classifications some conferences only have five teams, meaning as long as you win one conference game, you're in. I've seen teams with 1-9, 2-8 records go to the playoffs.

 

Never mind watered down... snowed out is the problem now.
Groups that were scheduled for first round tonight are scheduled for second round Wednesday, so now they'll have to go back-to-back, no flexibility in the schedule.

 

No problem. The teams losing the first-round games 70-0 were (mostly) the ones pissing and moaning about how they "just missed" the playoffs under the old system.