CU77 wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 4:09 pm
Chousnake wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 3:28 pm
I have a better idea. How about we eliminate the post season tournaments altogether and give bids to the 9 regular season champions.
How about we also eliminate the NCAA tournament, and just have regular seasons only? That would get us closer to the true spirit of sport, would it not?
OK. Touche. I get it. I understand where you are coming from and don't want to argue with a fellow Cornell fan and I did not mean to be snarky.
Most Ivy programs measure success in tiers. Make the ILT. Win the Ivy regular season title. Win the ILT. Get a tourney bid. Play on Memorial Day weekend. Win the Natty Championship. I think Cornell and most of its fans view a season as a success when they get a tourney bid. We all remember those seasons when Cornell didn't qualify - 2024, 2019, 2016-17, 2012. We also remember the Memorial Day seasons. I could not tell you without looking it up when Cornell won the ILT.
In my view, awarding a bid to the ILT winner only cheapens the regular season dramatically. I know that the 1 and done NCAA tourney can do the same, but the only unseeded team to ever win the title was 2016 UNC. It's hard to find a tourney when an AL team was not capable of winning the title. Have a good season to qualify and then win games to win the title.
I do not think it is equitable, fair, or logical for a team to go 6-0 or 5-1 in its league and tear it up in the regular season out of conference to go, say 12-2 and have to play a 3-3/7-7 team ( that they already beat) in a league tournament, possibly on that 3-3 team's home field.
I'm a pro football fan. NFL teams play a similar number of games as D1 lax teams. Should the NFL go to a system where, after the season , each division plays a post season tournament where 1 plays 4 and 2 plays 3 and the winners play to see who makes the playoffs? So Kansas City goes 15-2 and beats a 4-13 Denver team twice and then has to play them a third time to make the playoffs? When you really come down to it, the league that probably awards a championship to the best team over a season is the Premier League in England (and I'm not a soccer fan). Every team in one league and every team plays every other team and the team with the best record at the end of the season wins the title. But we all know that's not happening in lacrosse or any other US sport.
We all know the selection process is imperfect. We all have ideas on how to improve it (or some who think it is fine as is). I think that the last 10-15 seasons have shown that every year 1-2 teams or left out who shouldn't be and the difference between in and out is decimal points on some formula or some criteria that is given more importance one year vs another. Sometimes bids are stolen by teams ranked outside the top 15 or 20 winning a post season tournament. I'm just trying to find a way to get those teams in. I have a hard time thinking of another sport that I follow where teams that can win the title are left out of the playoffs.