MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 9:51 am
It's a bit humorous watching posters get all twisted up... Here's a 'prediction': They'll change...a lot.
First, yes, they will change a lot. With that said...
I love this ranking.
That there are people who are so bent out of shape about it, to each their own. For some, they hate anything but an eye test. (And, FWIW, the eye tests tend to be extraordinarily similar, across the board.) For others, I can say with surety, they don't understand the rankings. Either way, I love it. I'm not sure when, 5 years ago, might be more, seven, whatever, I started playing with creating a ranking system that made sense to me. Did it all on Excel. My furst system was, If A beats B and B beats C, the ranking should be A, B, C. Then, if C beats A, it should be a three way tie of ABC. (I don't like scores being a factor in rankings. Just Ws and Ls. That's a different discussion.) Anyway, for years, I played with different logic patterns and... it was fun for me. Again, to each their own. Eventually I created a system that I liked and. more than this, it made sense. It was fair. (I think it's safe to say, an eye test is not "fair".) So I replaced the Excel spreadsheet with a digital back-end system and... That's where I am today. I have a
more detailed description here but the gist of the system, once teams piece together more games (MD, as you spoke to), is that teams are judged based on their 3 Best Wins and 3 Worst Losses. There are million questions like, Why 3? How are Best ranked? How...? etc. but that's the gist. You can see more by looking at the link created previously. Bottomline, this ranking is objective and, more importantly, at least to me, fair. Personally, I genuinely believe that all rankings should be based on this system. Obviously I'm prejudiced because I built this stupid thing but... I built it slowly over many years with lots of thought and my thinking was not superficial nor was it with an agenda and... Whatever, I love this ranking.
As you're saying, after one game, the rankings are substantially less meaningful than after 5, 6 or whatever games but, whatever. After 1 game, it's still meaningful. It shows, after one game, who has proven the most, who has proven the least. And, for the UVAs of the world, who has proven absolutely nothing.