Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:55 pm
The fact that wild cards are ubiquitous in contemporary professional sports is due to their money making potential and has little relevance to the structure of the Barnstormers Tour. Period. The chance of the best team actually winning a professional championship is, as a result, diminished compared to the pre-wild card era. Blame it on the vast revenues that prime time postseason play creates for the league in question. The Barnstormers, however, is designed specifically for managers to demonstrate their acumen across a wide range of conditions. The current postseason structure is inimical to that. For example, outtaleftfield totally dominated League One with the 11-35 player group, yet got nothing for it. I don't believe that players who finish as low as 60th (59 since Hank dropped out) should have the same opportunity of advancing to the finals as the league with managers 11-23. And this time we are getting two of the finalists with 85 win teams, which is more luck than anything else.
Obviously given the structure of the rules, the guys who will be drafting 10-12th are in because they got there because of their performance within the context of the current rules. My point of my initial post is to bring to light the inherent inequity in the Barnstormers playoff system, one that favors fortune in a single league as opposed to performance over 5 of 6 seasons and, should the tour continue beyond this year, create a fairer system that rewards overall performance in the tournament, thus at least increasing the likelihood that the most successful manager wins a ring. It was not intended, per se, to denigrate the achievements of those individuals who qualify because of the current rules, although Sociophil clearly took it as such. Oh well.
Historically many of the tournament winners were not the most successful managers (i.e. who finished first in the overall standings). This happened to me the year DonFesq won it, and will also probably happen this year as well. If it were up to me I would dispense with the Barnstormers postseason all together in favor of two more events in the tour itself and whomever finishes first is the Champion.
I sat out last year because the previous year I had amassed the best overall record across the 5 events that contributed to the total score, but completely crapped out in the post season and so finished in the 12-24 group. I still think that the postseason results are weighted too heavily in the final standings and I lobbied to change this and the board listened - they just didn't quite go far enough IMHO. This time I had four great events, despite being lucky enough to garner four rings as well. I had two bad events but still managed significant positive run differential with those teams. I actually liked both those teams a great deal and would draft them again, but stuff happens.
If the tour continues beyond this year, I do have a rather radical idea for the post season. Only the top 12 managers make it, or conversely the top 11 and there is 1 semifinal league for managers 13-24 to get the one "wild card" spot.
The finals then consists of the top 12 managers, but they play two identical leagues. One live draft but two identical leagues. This was something I did several times back in ATG III and IV against very high level opposition. If the same manager wins both leagues, he is the champion. In the more likely event that there are two winners, then the best overall record across the two leagues (between the two league champions) gets the overall Barnstormer's Champion title.
This is a format that would be much more likely than the present format to reward skill over chance and be much more likely to create Champions who really earned the title.
