2003 - 1 seed (Chicago) vs. 1 seed (San Jose) 2004 - 2 seed (DC) vs. 1 seed (Kansas City) 2005 - 1 seed (New England) vs. 4 seed (Los Angeles)* 2006 - 2 seed (New England) vs. 2 seed (Houston) *Really, the whole source of the controversy - LA advancing and winning it in 2005. Colorado was also a 4 seed advancing to the final in 1997 under the best-two-of-three format.
Fair enough; on all points. The cruxt of that post and those comments wasn't to make a claim on the validity of those peoples comments. I was using their opinions as a current example of people not buying Onions evidence, as proof that all is well in MLS competitively. We can discredit FFF lableing them 'bitchers', we can discredit Armas because he perfers an unpopular E Vs W, we can discredit the guy that wrote the article cause we didn't agree with how a certain Becks situation was handled, but can we discredit everyone that has a contrary opinion on this topic? I wouldnt think so, so I was just inquiring on what a person so convinced of something thought of others, not into buying it. What do you think? Why all hubalub over something alot of you obviously intelligent fans (play by play guys) see as a slam dunk?
The same way some discredit those of us who don't agree with FFF or whoever advocates that which we don't agree. We don't have polling data. We have anecdotal evidence. MLS isn't a democracy. The people in charge do what they think is best or what is best for them. No matter what they do, they're not going to please everyone and there are going to be detractors. That doesn't mean one side is right and one is wrong. But I have virtually no doubt that for every person on one side of the debate, I can find you someone on the other side. That's just the way it is.
This about sums up the seeding argument. We still can gripe about low playoff attendances and boring first leg games though! Is this a good business model if you can't excite your fans and get them to the games? Another thread, another day...
I am saying based on evidence at hand the premise that seeding is irrelevant doesn't hold water. I am also saying that the magin of error now on variability season to season needs more time. Long term averages are easy to predicit, year to year variances are difficult to predict though with such a small sample size. In fact, the point i think Davis wants to make but isnt astute enough to do so, is that seeding in MLS is not substantial because it has a lot of volitility in the first round season to season. For example: in succesive years we could see 2 of 4; then 4 of 4, then 0 of 4, then 3 of 4, then 4 of 4. Averaged out it is an expected advancment rate of 65% in the first round within a margin of error. But that oh-for sticks out like a sore thumb and since people tend to look at playoffs through a current season prism it would seem like seeding is irrelevant and they could point to the variance stat as proof of that. But with such a small sample size variance is difficult to accurately calculate becuae the oh-for could just be a statistical outlier over the long term. Its tough math to nail down as it is based heavily in statistics and not your run of the mill law of averages and means we learn in grade school. Basically if you have a long term average of 66-70% but you have a lot of 4 for 4's and a lot of 0 for 4's mixed in with mostly 3 of 4's and 2 for 4's then your variablity between single seasons is very high which suggests a randomness to the format or at least a high rate of volitility in the outcomes. Contrasted, if we have tons of 3 for 4's and 2 for 4's with only occasional 4 for 4's and very few 1 for 4's and 0 for 4's we still reach the long term average but the variance year to year is small which suggests that the seeding format is insular to volitility in season to season outcomes. So until we get a large sample size the real variability is practically unknown and all can rely rely on at present is the average. I haven't has stats in years but if memory serves, the variance is the really important stat here. If you look at the FMF since they adopted the rule they have more sample sizes and their average is near mirror to ours in terms of higher seed advcancement overall, but they have a low variance season to season in the number of upsets. Thats why i said if current numbers hold i wouldn't change the system, but if the results trended to be more random that what they show now, i would implement they system i reccomended in my hypothetical previously. Got it.
Kenn, The problem and most people are stubborn to admit it, is that MLS is a parity league that is loaded with mediocre teams. When you invite 60%+ of the teams in a mediocre league to the playoffs, what you get is a mediocre playoffs no matter what the format, and more importantly you run the risk of a disastrous final. How mediocre you ask? The combined record of the championship teams from (2004-2006) is a staggeringly pathetic 35/31/28 record. 04 - DC 11 – 10 – 9 (37% wins – 34% losses) 05 - LA 13 – 13 – 6 (40% wins – 40% losses) 06 - Hou 11 – 8 – 13 (34% wins – 25% losses) Now let’s compare this with other sports: NFL (38% of teams make the playoffs) 06 - Indy 12 – 4 (75% wins) 05 - Pitts 11 – 5 (68% wins) 04 - NE 14 – 2 (88% wins) MLB (25% of teams make the playoffs) 06 - St. L 83 – 78 (52% wins) 05 - Chi 99 – 63 (61% wins) 04 - Bos 98 – 64 (60% wins) NBA (50% of teams make the playoffs) 07 - SA 58 – 24 (70% wins) 06 - Mia 52 – 30 (63% wins) 05 - SA 59 – 23 (72% wins) NHL (50% of teams make the playoffs) 07 - Ana 48 – 20 – 14 (59% wins) 06 - NC 52 – 22 – 8 (63% wins) 04 - TB 46 – 22 – 8 (56% wins) When you look at these statistics, keep in mind the different dynamics of each league and also that in the MLB, NBA and NHL playoffs you have to go through numerous best of 7 rounds to be declared the champion. Not so in MLS. So the argument is and has always been that in a league filled with parity, such as MLS, to add meaning towards your competition, less teams in the playoffs is more. The root of the argument has never been about the format. Although, I do agree, that the first leg of the first round of the MLS playoffs is rather dull and pointless. And I “do” believe it has everything to do with the quality of teams involved. They are just not very good!
And it puzzles me why the 2005 Galaxy get all the attention when they were hardly the first team in MLS history to benefit from a crappy division, finish at or near .500, and win the Cup.
You lost me when you started comparing the percentage of wins in a league where there are draws with four leagues where there aren't.
Well if he really wants to do it he could eliminate W-L of all OT or extra inning games and see what it comes up to. But beside that point the only issue i have with it is that all that stat goes to prove if anything is that the best teams in MLS are not dominate teams with fantasic records like in other parity rule driven US leagues. If there were just 4 teams in the post seaon i doubt the MLS % numbers of the champions would be very diffrerent. That is my guess anyway.
And that's overlooking one point he and others seem to be missing: Soccer as a game lends itself to parity, due to its scoring granularity. In football or basketball or whatever, if one team is just slightly better than the other, that team is going to win by one or two points or somesuch, but still that's going down as a win for that team. Still, did that team dominate? The Colts might've won 75% of their games last season, but how many of them were within a touchdown? Meanwhile, in soccer, if one team is only slightly better than another, it's going to be a draw most of the time. Sometimes, a little luck will be involved and one team or the other will get the win, but there is no really no such thing as a close win or a close loss in soccer the way there is in football or basketball.
I think the argument you're making is a different argument. There are actually two or three arguments: (1) MLS simply lets in too many teams. Many of these teams suck. Therefore the regular season has less meaning and the playoffs suck. (2) The format itself is boring/confusing/nauseating/leads to bad results. This argument definitely is about the format. (3) The format is unable to compensate for the fact that MLS lets in too many mediocre teams. It doesn't do enough to favor the better teams, which makes jockying for post-season position less useful and therefore makes the regular season less useful. I think really, only (1) and (2) ought to be in play still. I think most people agree with (1), but are getting happier as MLS adds more teams. I think a number of people have some take on (2). (3) doesn't really hold much weight with me at this point (especially after reading some of the other posts on this thread). But I think we might need to revisit it in the future.
Actually all those points are completely different threads. This one was about Steve Davis Article that said seeding was irrelevant. What is happening here is what happens in every playoff thread. The small point of discussion is expanded needlessly into 5 or 6 points...all leading to the eventual free for all of people posting their prefered format. I am surpised we made it this far to be honest, but i think when looking at people leading the discussion the last couple pages, the reason it has stayed somewhat on track is because we haven't had the influx of retards yet. Don't worry they are coming soon i bet.
No, I admit that. Well, I admit that most MLS teams are fairly similar in quality, and that in a small league where one team can't really outspend another (outside of the DP) and in a sport where on the day the margin between winning and losing is very small, you're going to get a concentration of teams near the mean. That's just math. Well, I don't agree with you there. When you have evenly-matched teams participating in a tournament, anything can happen. Sometimes that's more exciting than watching Ohio State play Louisiana Monroe in the first round of the NCAAs or something. And how many "disastrous" finals have we had? I contend that regardless of format, regardless of how many teams make the playoffs (a percentage that is on the decline, BTW), the major reason, IMHO, that the playoffs and season aren't more compelling is this, which I've said before: MLS is an average league full of average players coached to play average soccer by average coaches in front of average crowds in mostly pretty nice stadiums. That's got, in my opinion, a lot more to do with it than how many teams get into the playoffs or how you decide to have them play off to get to a final. As for comparing MLS with sports where, as Herm Edwards says, "you play to win the game," that's just silly. You can't tie in the NBA. You rarely tie in the NFL. The mindset in soccer is, and has long been, that "not losing" is fine. Doesn't matter if you win. You play, too often, "not to lose." I believe there have been more arguments than just how many teams. Though the number of teams constrains the format you can have. But there have been people arguing for years that 80% was too many, then 67% was too many, this year 61.5% was too many, next year 57% will be too many and in a few years 50% will be too many. Yet, no one has ever answered the question, as it pertains to the supposed boost in intensity that fewer teams making the playoffs will bring: Were MLS games 5.5% more intense this year than last year? Will they be another 4.5% more intense next year? And how will you measure that? Well, the league is designed to give everyone a chance. We're not going to see a St.Louis Browns situation, or a situation where the Pittsburgh Steelers didn't contend for a championship for the first 40 years of their existence. The powers that be have decided that parity (their word, you can use "mediocrity" if you like) is good. It works. The chance that a team can recover and win a championship gives fans hope. It is believed (and I don't know if it holds up or not) that hope helps sell tickets and that a lack of hope is bad for business. Again, I don't know if that would stand up to scrutiny. But I'm pretty sure that competitive and economic balance are two of the pillars on which MLS is built. Maybe that'll change eventually. And everyone likes to run down MLS teams as "not being very good." Well, they're all playing each other, aren't they? They don't have to be very good, do they? But our best teams are competitive with teams from other countries. Not dominant, but competitive (Houston's CCC tie with Pachuca is one bit of evidence). MLS' very nature precludes competitive inbalances that create long-lasting, dominant teams. Whether or not that's good is another discussion.
Interesting post. I think the biggest factor is one you only mention obliquely-- that MLS simply doesn't have the tradition and general public interest that other sports have. Even the hypothetical perfect format isn't going to unlock huge, rabid crowds in the playoffs and the regular season, or turn Carey Talley into Cristiano Ronaldo. In contrast, boring playoffs don't have much to do with the quality of players or coaching. We know that because we routinely follow sports at much lower skill levels than MLS (e.g. high school football, college hoops and the NHL). Frequently, we find those sports utterly compelling. So really, I don't think it has much to do with MLS's skill level. But just because the biggest problem with MLS is that it's soccer, that doesn't mean that the format is unimportant. It might be the difference between 15,000 and 14,000, but I think there is still value in the format. Why would you measure that? I had to take a professional exam in NY and Massachusetts. In NY, the pass rate is around 30%. In Mass, it's about 80%. I spent four months studying for NY. I spent about four days studying for Mass. Why wouldn't the same logical process apply to how much effort players put into games?
To try and prove what people have long said: that fewer teams in the playoffs would make the regular season "more meaningful." By a factor of what? And it seems to me it would be incumbent upon the people who say it's going to make the regular season more meaningful and say that players are going to play harder to actually show me that players are playing harder and that games are more intense and meaningful when it actually IS harder to make the playoffs now than it was five years ago and not just rely on, "Well, logically, it has to be." Because your boss isn't going to bench you for putting in less effort on the Massachusetts exam than on the New York exam. Not to mention that you're comparing preparation with actual performance. If the test is easier, you put in less prep time and less effort during the actual test. I'm going to presume that most coaches worth anything want to see actual effort in training (at least as much as a player can give) and in games. Which is not to say you have to expend exactly the same effort to beat DC as you have to to beat Toronto, but the margin isn't as big as you seem to be making it out to be. At least not to the point where you can just slack off all the time (or even some of the time) and just turn it on when you need to.
Do you think all problems can be measured? I agree that, if you're making a change to something, it's on you to prove why it's necessary. But it's silly to ask for evidence that can't be given. All we have, one way or the other, are logical arguments. If everyone's putting in the same (low) effort, no one gets benched for low effort. Besides, the coach will be in on it too-- if there's simply less risk of failing to make the playoffs, there's less need to bench a good player because he dogged it in training. Your idea is that players, simply because of the field they work in, need to give 100% (or close to it) all the time. Maybe Carey Tally needs to show up every game, but what are the consequences for the difference-makers if they don't show up? If there are consequences, they might not show up immediately-- look at LD, Mathis or Guevara. Frankly, I see lazy players and hard-working players, just like in any other profession. Do you disagree about that, or is there an explanation for them?
You're being too literal with the example. Think of exam preparation (i.e. effort in the regular season) as insurance against failure (i.e. failure to reach the postseason). If you only need to beat Toronto FC to make the playoffs, then your game against United really isn't as crucial.
You guys are discussing something that doesn't amount to a hill of beans re: this thread and the article attached to it. No offense but i sense the derailment is underway here.
Onionsack, indeed, all has been said. But it will go on and on. What do we have now, three threads at the same time? Better check the DC-Chicago score...
None taken, but one of the reasons you want seeding and home field is so you can reward the regular season. If you don't think that it has any effect on the regular season, it actually does go to the heart of whether Steve Davis even needs to write the article...
Yeah, we had a good discussion, no complaints..i just saw a bunch of posts about measuring intensity and stuff i thought we were getting off point there for a minute. I will say this was one of the more intelligent playoff threads i have read or been involved in, was hoping to see it continue. Thats all.
"My shyte doesn't work in the playoffs." - Billy Beane Well, I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death here, again, and I don't have time to read everything. But to me it seems like we're trying to find an answer when it's not clear what the question is (i.e. something more fundamental than "what do we really want out of home field advantage"). Seems to me that the question you want answered, for any league championship, is "Who is the best team?" That's what I want to know anyway. But then teams are not static entities. There are personnel changes, they may get better or worse, adopt a better strategy, suffer injuries, get people back from injuries, etc. So do you want to measure who's better at the end of the season or determine who's better on average over the course of the season? For the latter, you could use single table and it wouldn't be a bad measurement, though I'm not sure that there are enough games for a real good measurement. But I think it's a reasonable approximation. For the former (who is the best team at the end of the season) I think it's just not possible. You can only get a handful of games in. You can't get any statistical significance whatsoever with that kind of sample. So the playoffs are going to be largely a crap shoot almost no matter what you do. You can try to create built-in advantages for the teams that have done better during the regular series based on the logic that they are probably the better team because they performed better over the season. But we don't really know. An injury here or there, a key pickup here or there, a bad run of form, all these things can make a team that finished lower in the standings the better team at the time of the playoffs. So I'm not sure that the precise playoff format really matters all that much. It's largely a crap shoot, a nice little tournament at the end of the season. But I don't think it's an effective measure of the best team, at the end of the season, or over the course of the season. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. The playoffs can be very exciting, just like any tournament can be exciting. It's only a bad thing if you want to have some sense that the league champion is the best team, either over the course of the season or at the end of the season.
Just to take one little step back to earlier in thread and the point about perception. Last nights first round finale' paints a picture that the regular reason doesn't matter as much as it should/could. 8th seed moves on against the 1 seed that wasn't given any tangible reward for finishing best in league. As you statistically proved earlier, the higher seeds win more often. That's what the caluclator says. No argument there. Fans though, by and large, are not sitting at home crunching result numbers during these matches. Instead, many fans (writers) will see the an injustice of Chicago (A mid table club) moving on, pretty much, as a result of a format that levels the playing field. Chicago didn't beat DC at home. As it turned out, DC didn't get much of a reward for finishing first, did they. Chicago, the 8th best of 13 recieved the same home match reward as did the SS winner. This paves the way (rightly or wrongly, I am not going get into a debate on this) for the regular season doesn't mean that much perception. That fuels the just get hot in the end and the format will go a long way leveling things out mindset many have adopted. You computer might go a long way in proving the top seed wins more often. I wouldn't challenge that. People looking on often don't get that same impression when they watch how these seasons unfold. Sure, these writers should be more exact in their writings. No doubt. Perhaps the tone of these articles (an others) are simply born from the perception that the regular season doesn't matter. A perception that was further cemented last night. Dom Kinnear (whom I am sure we can discredit in one way or another) last year on ESPN said something along the lines of doing well in the regular season success doesn't translate to post season success.That might come-up true when we populate our excel spreadsheets, but doesn't matter as much as how people actually feel about the process. Atleast in my opinion. Perception rules. People think George Bush is stupid, so he must be stupid. If we don't make the advantage/reward more tangible and obvious, this perception will live on. Unless ofcourse we can install lap-tops in the back of the seats of the new soccer specifics. That might change a few peoples minds. I don't know if this exactly talks to the topic you are looking to continue, but I hope so. Otherwise, just ignore it.
No. What's been proven is that people will use the scant evidence provided by a tiny sample size when it supports their perspective. And they'll argue that the sample size is too small to be meaningful when it doesn't support their perspective.
That's your opinion. Mine too, quite frankly. I just didn't want to get into a raging debate about it.