I had thought about tournaments that are designed to determine championships. What if — and I’m not necessarily suggesting that this could or should happen — only the best teams in the country or world were selected to participate. This would be instead of representatives from each conference or each part of the world. For example instead of James Madison or Tulane being in NCAA football playoffs earlier this year, you had Notre Dame and BYU. Instead of Curaçao, Jordan and Cape Verde participating in this year’s World Cup you had Italy, Denmark and Nigeria. The same principal could be applied to the NCAA basketball tournaments. If your goal is to really find out which is the best team, shouldn’t you only invite the best candidates? This has been: just a thought.
I think it depends if you believe that the purpose of the tournament is to identify the best team, in a Bayesian (or maybe Elo) sense. I don’t really think that’s what they deliver—flukes happen. Some structures reduce variance (best of seven, etc.), but ultimately I think tournaments just produce a champion—the team that won the games when it mattered.
While I value the spirit in which the proposal is intended, I am reluctant to fully support it. It also devalues achieving the conference championship of some conferences based on reputation, and thereby becomes an avenue for favoritism and corruption.
I'm not arguing that James Madison or Tulane are better teams than Notre Dame and BYU; I'm saying that this is an avenue for groupthink and favoritism as we've seen with the SEC, when they may actually be in decline. Even with conference champions advancing to the CFP, that's no guarantee that favoritism won't occur. See again, the SEC.
Sometimes the difference between better entities that are excluded over lesser entities that are included are clear; at some point, the difference blurs, or becomes a line so thin you can see thru it. If there aren't clearly measurable criteria, (track & field for example), its an increasingly difficult subjective decision.
A second consideration is how valuable is inclusion to fostering improvement? Can those lesser entities improve without a somewhat near path forward? Or does the gap become more insurmountable? This is the issue the Group of 6-8 face, for example.
While I agree with you in your points, I think it goes beyond that. I think how you constitute a field can have profound effects on the health of programs within the FBS community, and that will have resonant effects particularly on the mid-majors (what you refer to as Group of 6-8).
The more exclusionary the field becomes even as it is widened will degrade the survivability of mid-major programs.
The move to restrict membership in Division I, then Division I-A, and now FBS, has been an ongoing battle. It's amazing to me that there are any mid-majors in FBS today as none of them do better than break even; most of them lose money. And when I make that assertion, I base it upon the notion that football is not a standalone program within an athletic department. Its future is tied to its ability to fund other programs that will help meet the host institution's Title IX requirements. This is not a small thing.
WordleBot beat me by one guess. And here's my expression of incredulity: with essentially the same first two guesses as I had, WordleBot hits it on the 3rd guess. It took me one more guess (4).
It was only better in that I got more information because it eliminated letters and words that I otherwise could have guessed. You still only used one more guess than I did to arrive at the solution.
Yeah, I always feel I could have done better if it takes me 5 guesses. But that's not how it always goes.
WordleBot has a new starting word, TARPS as of last week. i stuck w/ its previous favorite word and beat the Bot today by 1.
there is much discussion on the use of TARPS because it is a plural and could never be the actual word. and yet it is supposed to narrow down the list of possibilities the most.
excitement on the final day as there was a tough climb to start and then a long drag to the finish. Demi Vollering was 40 sec out of the lead and ended up beating Van der Breggen by about a min.
you dont see "come from behind victories" in cycling too often.
meeting up w/ HAG and no 1. in Brooklyn today for game 3 viewing. they say the watch party outside MSG has been cancelled since Trump will at the game.
game 2 was insane. Knicks were up by 14 or so in the 4th and proceeded to give away the lead. only to win it at the end on some questionable Spurs (in)decision
This NBA Finals reminds me, in some ways, of the 1975 NBA Finals. That Finals matched the Golden State Warriors vs. the Washington Bullets. Washington was heavily favored. Golden State won it in a 4-0 sweep.
Al Attles was the Warriors' head coach. I think you got the main players for the Warriors.
The Bullets included Wes Unseld (as you noted), Elvin Hayes, and a 24-year old kid named Phil Chenier (!), whose alma mater was the University of California. There were others on the roster of that team that won 60 games.
I wasn’t living here that far back, but Unseld and Hayes are much talked about. After his playing career, Chenier was a longtime announcer here and is still a huge fan favorite.
OK, now I looked it up, and the Warriors had a Cal guy, Charles Johnson, who must have made a good impression since he played for the Bullets a couple years later.
I had thought about tournaments that are designed to determine championships. What if — and I’m not necessarily suggesting that this could or should happen — only the best teams in the country or world were selected to participate. This would be instead of representatives from each conference or each part of the world. For example instead of James Madison or Tulane being in NCAA football playoffs earlier this year, you had Notre Dame and BYU. Instead of Curaçao, Jordan and Cape Verde participating in this year’s World Cup you had Italy, Denmark and Nigeria. The same principal could be applied to the NCAA basketball tournaments. If your goal is to really find out which is the best team, shouldn’t you only invite the best candidates? This has been: just a thought.
I think it depends if you believe that the purpose of the tournament is to identify the best team, in a Bayesian (or maybe Elo) sense. I don’t really think that’s what they deliver—flukes happen. Some structures reduce variance (best of seven, etc.), but ultimately I think tournaments just produce a champion—the team that won the games when it mattered.
I do think it would be interesting to design a tournament that produced the maximally informative Elo ranking!
While I value the spirit in which the proposal is intended, I am reluctant to fully support it. It also devalues achieving the conference championship of some conferences based on reputation, and thereby becomes an avenue for favoritism and corruption.
I'm not arguing that James Madison or Tulane are better teams than Notre Dame and BYU; I'm saying that this is an avenue for groupthink and favoritism as we've seen with the SEC, when they may actually be in decline. Even with conference champions advancing to the CFP, that's no guarantee that favoritism won't occur. See again, the SEC.
Pick your posion.
Sometimes the difference between better entities that are excluded over lesser entities that are included are clear; at some point, the difference blurs, or becomes a line so thin you can see thru it. If there aren't clearly measurable criteria, (track & field for example), its an increasingly difficult subjective decision.
A second consideration is how valuable is inclusion to fostering improvement? Can those lesser entities improve without a somewhat near path forward? Or does the gap become more insurmountable? This is the issue the Group of 6-8 face, for example.
While I agree with you in your points, I think it goes beyond that. I think how you constitute a field can have profound effects on the health of programs within the FBS community, and that will have resonant effects particularly on the mid-majors (what you refer to as Group of 6-8).
The more exclusionary the field becomes even as it is widened will degrade the survivability of mid-major programs.
The move to restrict membership in Division I, then Division I-A, and now FBS, has been an ongoing battle. It's amazing to me that there are any mid-majors in FBS today as none of them do better than break even; most of them lose money. And when I make that assertion, I base it upon the notion that football is not a standalone program within an athletic department. Its future is tied to its ability to fund other programs that will help meet the host institution's Title IX requirements. This is not a small thing.
Digital Diversions
only off by 181 km on my first guess
#Worldle #1599 (08.06.2026) 2/6 (100%)
🔥 Current Win Streak: 1 days
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/share
🙂 Daily Quordle 1596
3️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/
some good guessing
🙂 Daily Quordle 1596
3️⃣4️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/
Wordle 1,815 5/6
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
WordleBot
Skill 93/99
Luck 30/99. More of a rabbit hole than I expected!
Wordle 1,815 4/6
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
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WordleBot
Skill 97/99
Luck 32/99
WordleBot beat me by one guess. And here's my expression of incredulity: with essentially the same first two guesses as I had, WordleBot hits it on the 3rd guess. It took me one more guess (4).
It looks like you could have gone down the same wormhole I did, but didn’t. Maybe your second guess was better.
It was only better in that I got more information because it eliminated letters and words that I otherwise could have guessed. You still only used one more guess than I did to arrive at the solution.
Yeah, I always feel I could have done better if it takes me 5 guesses. But that's not how it always goes.
WordleBot has a new starting word, TARPS as of last week. i stuck w/ its previous favorite word and beat the Bot today by 1.
there is much discussion on the use of TARPS because it is a plural and could never be the actual word. and yet it is supposed to narrow down the list of possibilities the most.
Wordle 1,815 3/6*
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
WordleBot
Skill 92/99
Luck 65/99
STRAP is an anagram of TARPS; STRAP is not plural.
Nonetheless, point taken about the use of plurals. I have used plurals in guessing and it has helped me.
there is some strange value to the yellow guess, where you know it is in the word not where.
if it is green then you are more constrained and sometimes it makes the next guesses harder (maybe?)
You're only constrained if you take that green letter as a given and struggle to build words around it.
Cal
Go Bears!!!
PRO
Women's Giro d'Italia
excitement on the final day as there was a tough climb to start and then a long drag to the finish. Demi Vollering was 40 sec out of the lead and ended up beating Van der Breggen by about a min.
you dont see "come from behind victories" in cycling too often.
Mets win again. getting closer to .500
Mets rookie Carson Benge records five hits in win over Padre. hit 3 singles, triple, and an HR. almost hit for the cycle.
meeting up w/ HAG and no 1. in Brooklyn today for game 3 viewing. they say the watch party outside MSG has been cancelled since Trump will at the game.
game 2 was insane. Knicks were up by 14 or so in the 4th and proceeded to give away the lead. only to win it at the end on some questionable Spurs (in)decision
everyone is predicting a traffic disaster in NYC. i drove the car in to collect HAG and his luggage. trying to get out of town quickly
they are shutting down the streets near MSG at 400p they say
This NBA Finals reminds me, in some ways, of the 1975 NBA Finals. That Finals matched the Golden State Warriors vs. the Washington Bullets. Washington was heavily favored. Golden State won it in a 4-0 sweep.
From memory (so long ago!): Clifford Ray, Keith Wilkes, Rick Barry, George Johnson…? Vs Wes Unseld and ?
Al Attles.
Al Attles was the Warriors' head coach. I think you got the main players for the Warriors.
The Bullets included Wes Unseld (as you noted), Elvin Hayes, and a 24-year old kid named Phil Chenier (!), whose alma mater was the University of California. There were others on the roster of that team that won 60 games.
KC Jones was the Bullets' head coach.
I wasn’t living here that far back, but Unseld and Hayes are much talked about. After his playing career, Chenier was a longtime announcer here and is still a huge fan favorite.
OK, now I looked it up, and the Warriors had a Cal guy, Charles Johnson, who must have made a good impression since he played for the Bullets a couple years later.