Not fielding your best team and losing on purpose are not the same thing. Many teams bat 11 on Saturday when clearly they would hit better with 9. You don't throw your number one pitcher every game and sometimes try moving people around. At the same time you don't tell your fielders to make errors on purpose or hitters to strike out without trying. I know people have done some things to get another inning in like having someone strike out with 1 minute left, but that is actually trying to win.
Teams accused of throwing playoff game
- Thread starter GOINGDEEP
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There was a case, a long time ago, when the players of a certain NBA team, Golden State Warriors, appeared to be deliberately tanking games in order to get the coach fired. I don't know if that was the case or not.
HOWEVER, the coach WAS fired.
I ran some interesting statistics on the team before and after the coach was fired. The team dramatically improved as soon as the coach got the boot. The only other time I saw a team improve that quickly was a few month later, when Larry Bird returned to the Celtics after an injury.
The placement of seeds in the regional brackets (see brackets in post #19) invited this - they put 1 & 3 in one half and 2 & 4 in the other half, so the teams wanted the #4 seed. Normal bracket seeding places 1 & 4 in one half and 2 & 3 in the other.
Not sure I follow that. The bracket in post #19 shows #1 seed Blackman playing a #4 seed, then the winner of a #2 vs. #3 seed. Isn't that the way it should work? Where would the two suspended teams have landed in the draw?
OK, I looked again and I see what you're saying now. ....
But it's still 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 in the first round. The fact that #1 and #3 are from the same district is fine, IMO. The problem is that one district champion (Blackman) is considered to be a whole lot better than another district champion (Tullahoma). If you seeded it the way you are suggesting, but insert Tallahoma as the unbeatable team and make Blackman a soft district champion, the same incentive to tank would have existed. So IMHO, the brackets are fine. The opportunity to manipulate your draw exists in either case, depending on the strength of district champions from year to year.
TN seeded the bracket correctly to get inter-District pairings in the first round. This is a quirk of essentially an 8-team seeded bracket from 2 pools of 4. On larger brackets (e.g. 16 teams), the 4 teams from each pool should be distributed so they don't face each other before the semi's and the potential semi pairings would be 1v4 and 2v3.
Evidently, the 2 teams were more concerned with getting on the opposite side of the bracket from Blackman than the difference between playing District 8's #1/#2 seed in the first round. Seems like District 7 must be a lot stronger as a whole than District 8 to make it worthwhile.
- Feb 3, 2011
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I'm not sure how closely you follow the NBA, but there's a lot of discussion about this issue this season, especially with respect to the 76ers. The team most at risk is the Lakers, who have to be in the bottom 5 or else they'll lose their 1st-round draft pick this year (they'll still owe the pick, but it's deferred to 2018).
The Indianapolis Colts have enjoyed a huge amount of success since drafting Andrew Luck. If he eventually wins a Super Bowl with the team, will anyone be talking about how the Colts tanked in order to maintain a lock on the #1 pick that year?
I hold that athletes have an obligation to play hard, even if coaches/owners don't put the best possible team on the playing field at all times.
Yep, that's what I see. My guess is that Tennessee matches up districts like this into 8-team groups rather than 16-team groups in order to save on travel. If you have 8 districts and pair them off into 4 groups of 2 (1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6, 7 vs. 8), that minimizes travel, which is a bigger concern for principals and superintendents than it is for fans who might grumble about the competitive imbalances that it might cause.
Of course, no matter how you divide it, as long as the bracket format is known ahead of time, you're always going to have the possibility that a team playing for a seed in a district tournament will have some twisted incentive to lose. I don't think this instance was caused by the bracket format, but rather the fact that one district's champion (and the district overall) is much stronger than another.
That's how I see it. Yes, it's no secret that some teams are hoping to get the highest draft pick, but I don't think they are stooping to the point of asking players or coaches to lose. Naively or not, I believe that the players are playing hard with the intent to win. You might give more playing time to a lesser player who is part of your future, and you might rest a sore player who would be playing if the team was in contention. But the players don't have much incentive to help teams get a better draft position because those players aren't guaranteed of being around next year. They must play for their future, not the team's.
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The 76ers are just that bad. They have been tanking for 3 years just by not having players good enough to win. In the NBA, the players on the court try hard to play well. I don't understand why one of the teams just didn't show up. Unless there is a rule that says they can't advance after one, it seems the first coach to think of forfeiting should have done it. I don't condone losing on purpose, myself, but they obviously thought it was ok.
HS sports are about winning. I played 3 sports in my 4 years, and we all wanted to win. I could never imagine any of my coaches telling us to lose, and I'm equally sure we would not have done it. I always said I would be happy if we/I lost to the eventual champion, no matter what round it happened. If that team is that good, I would rather lose to them early with my dignity intact, than go around them that way, just to face them in a later round. Just think if those kids did that, and lost to another team in the next round anyway.
HS sports are about winning. I played 3 sports in my 4 years, and we all wanted to win. I could never imagine any of my coaches telling us to lose, and I'm equally sure we would not have done it. I always said I would be happy if we/I lost to the eventual champion, no matter what round it happened. If that team is that good, I would rather lose to them early with my dignity intact, than go around them that way, just to face them in a later round. Just think if those kids did that, and lost to another team in the next round anyway.
