In my perfect world, there would be no elimination of sports tournaments in both individual or team tournaments. The purpose of the tournament to find out who is the best at something. Single elimination tournament type are rarely, if ever, quite meet this criterion. Practical? Yes. More exciting for the fans? Absolutely. Easier to plan and run? No question about it. I do not get me wrong, often the best athlete or team - or at least an athlete or team who performed the best during the tournament - a victory. In addition, there is something being said is that if you want to claim to be the best at something you have to be able to perform well when the pressure and the stakes are highest.
I understand all this, however, it is impossible to always be performing at your best. In fact, by definition, no individual or team comes close to accomplishing that. Fifty% of the time you (or team) perform below average and 50% of you perform above average. Rarely, do you play your best. Nothing will save you, if you or your team has a bad tournament. However, a non-elimination tournament, you can save if you're the best, but it happened to be a below average game. Or, sometimes you do well, but some other individual or team played their best game or match in his life. These are examples of bad luck - not usually suffocation - and the elimination of one type format to increase the chances for good luck in the tournament. Which, of course, reduces the likelihood of the best athletes or the team or winning the tournament. For me - it does not seem right
.In a typical golf tournament played 18 holes 4 times - which seems reasonable. In sports such as tennis (and volleyball, table tennis, badminton and the Olympics), at least they play a series of sets (best of 3, 5 or 7) which makes it pretty fair. The same is true for most field events (example: throwing a ball), in athletics, where you get 3 or more attempts. However, in races (swimming and track) and only get one shot. It was tough in the sprints where if you do not get off to a great start (or you are against Usain Bolt!) probably will not win, or worse, lose up to 1 / 100 second. Ouch!
In American football (NFL), with respect to the physical nature of the sport does not allow them to play more than once a week, an elimination tournament is the only practical way to go (at least the best team dobivaprednosti home field for each round, but the Super Bowl). College football without good reason, there is one game and there is no tournament. Moronic is too soft a word for this system. I love the NBA, NHL, MLB, and because they all have the best of 7 series in the playoffs (except for the first round of MLB, which is the best of 5 - I find this stupid). College basketball has too many teams and therefore has no choice but to run a single elimination tournament.
In football (soccer) World Cup's preliminary pool matches followed by an elimination tournament where at times World Cup winner is actually determined by penalty kicks. I can not imagine that anyone thinks this is the best way to run the world's biggest sports tournament team (especially since it is held only once every 4 years). I would only have 16 teams (currently 32) in the finals and they have 2 pools of 8 teams. teams will play round robin tournament and the top four (1st and 2nd in each pool) teams play a double elimination tournament. (If you do not need to reduce the number of teams - you can have semi-finals before the finals - maybe the top eight with eight teams in the world (or 6 Zonal winners and next 2 highest rated teams) getting healthy for the final ).
This will result in more games (10-12 for the winner, and currently play 7), and the possibility of 2 final games (this is why the double elimination tournaments are popular, although they are clearly fairer), but so be it. After all, sometimes honesty has its price. Welcome to my perfect world (impractical as it May be ).
random thoughts: Honestly, this is not sour grapes - I have no interest in U.S. women's Olympic softball team. However, the U.S. goes 7-0 in pool play, including a 7-0 win over Japan. The American defeat of Japan (the first and second seed), 4-3, in the semifinals, while Australia defeated Canada (3rd and 4th seeds) in the semifinals. "Canada has been eliminated, but Japan is not. Japan defeat Australia in the finals. "Then Japan defeats U.S. in the "Grand Finale", 3-1. Huh? Japan gets the gold and silver to the United States. Both the U.S. and Japan, one loss after pool play and 1-1 against the tournament during that segment. U.S. posts record 8-1 for the tournament, defeated Japan 2 times of 3 and outscoring them 12-6 while going 8-2 with Japan in the tournament. Why do we have to defeat Japan twice in the playoffs and Japan only has to defeat the U.S. in the aftermath. If Japan is not eliminated in the semifinals after losing to the United States, why is their no double elimination format that is used in the U.S. team who won? After all, in softball, they only play 7 innings and could have played a double header if necessary. The problem with this format is that it only protects the No. 1 or 2 seed in the semifinals LOSSES, not the one who wins. How to make sense? This is the stupidest tournament format - called "the page playoff system" - in the history of mankind. I do not care if all the teams agreed to the format. And frankly, I'd feel this way, even if the U.S. position in Japan.
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