From: ST403070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Guy Beadie)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.disc
Subject: Seedings
Date: 7 Apr 92 21:00:35 GMT


  In response to the question of seedings, I think I'll go ahead and
ramble on for my 2 cents worth.  Certainly the strongest opinion that
I have is that any seeding based on the previous year's performance
at the college level is, let's face it, laughable.  How can you give
credit to a team one year for performance of a team that was totally
different the year before?  Of course there will be a fair amount of
overlap in the personnel, but for most teams the leading players, and
hence the players that make the biggest difference, are seniors.  Since
these people aren't even around the next year I think that it makes no
sense to base current seedings on their ability.  It's almost like saying
that despite their horrible performance the Yankees should be ranked number
one this year because they've had so many of the greatest players in the
past.

  The problem, however, is that there is so little to offer in the way of
constructive suggestions beyond this opinion.  Certainly I feel that a
team should be based on current play and players.  It is nearly impossible,
however, to compare two teams on opposite coasts.  You can get a good sense
of how teams stack up within their respective regions, but not too good a
sense of how teams from different regions compare.  I think that this may
be part of the answer: I think that you can seed teams within their
respective regions.  By looking at tournament results and by talking to
different captains (though that is a tricky issue in and of itself) I feel
that seedings could come out that would satisfy most everbody.  At that
stage you have a good portion of the problem licked.

  To go much beyond that, however, would take an inordinate amount of
information.  Mere scores of games aren't really enough, though they
are certainly the most important data by far.  The problem is that
scores come largely from playing games within regions: there isn't enough
cross-regoinal play to give reliable information about relative strengths.
To really compare teams that haven't played each other, you'd have to
take stats on games.  I'm not saying that this should be done, it's far
too problematic to implement at this stage of the game, but instead that
it seems to be the only objective way out of the dilemma.  Certainly the
two most important stats would be turnovers committed and turnovers
caused (how many times was the disc thrown away/dropped and how many
D-blocks).  Perhaps those alone could form some basis for comparison,
but let's face it: would anyone attempt to keep these stats, and would
they really be accurate if they were even logged?

  No, unfortunately I think that subjective seeding between regions
is the only way things could work.  The problem with that is you
need people who have actually witnessed teams from different regions.
This means finding people to travel around to all the big collegiate
tournaments to attempt to compare the teams that they've seen and
thereby mesh the regional seedings together some.  This MAY be practical,
though my gut feeling is that it would be hard to find people willing
to put in the frequent flyer miles necessary to do the job right, esp.
since it would also be necessary to have a decent number of people all
doing the same thing.

  Thus, I think that ultimately (I know, poor choice of words), that we're
kinda stuck with the individual captains hashing it out with the people
at the UPA (who have a slightly wider view of things) to crank out the
seedings.  It's an imperfect system, one that is guaranteed to screw a
large number of teams, but it's one that players will likely have to
learn to live with.

  I've done a lot of rambling, sort of free associating, with only the
very first opinion clear in my head (and it still stands!) before
starting.  The question becomes, then, does the rest of my diatribe
hold water?  If so then we're stuck with what we have, but I'd be
awfully surprised (and a little disappointed) if someone didn't have
a couple of good arguments about some of the rather sweeping statements
I've made above.



                                    - Guy Beadie

                                Brownian Motion - WUFO
                                WUFO - Brownian Motion
Newsgroups: rec.sport.disc