(12-06-2015 11:36 AM)adcorbett Wrote: (12-06-2015 08:36 AM)quo vadis Wrote: In a four-team tournament, unless there is home field advantage involved, seeding is meaningless, because the teams are so close in quality it's not clear who the better teams are.
I mean, if you are Clemson, what's a tougher game for you, Alabama or Oklahoma? Oklahoma or Michigan State? You can easily make arguments for any of them.
It only doesn't matter if everything goes chalk: and even then it does. It
may not matter as much to the bottom seed, because you likely have to play the top two seeds to win, but it very much matters to the top two seeds, both in far they make it, and their "Reward" for being the top team. They should not have to face the two other best teams. If you should be the number 2 team, and instead you are ranked fourth, and lose the first round, you can have a legitimate gripe that you were not given your proper chance to make the championship game. Also there is a chance the number 4 seed is a matchup problem from the number one seed, such as Ohio State vs. Alabama last year, and as the team who earned the number 2 seed, you may get to miss out on playing them (the same is true for the number one seed possibly avoiding the number 2 seed). Same reason the NCAA tournament began seeding the number one seeds.
Seeding matters in every tournament because most of the time, they don't go chalk. And the higher the seed you are, the better you are to be rewarded for upsets. When seeding is not done properly, it takes away that... let's call it a "championship advantage" so to speak. So it does matter. I would agree it matters more the larger the bracket, but it still matters.
In a big-field event like the NCAA tournament, where there are obvious huge differences in quality between the Kentuckys and Dukes and the winners of the SWAC and MEAC conferences, seedings are a big deal and thus well-worth arguing over.
But if the entire tournament is a Final Four, then there is no meaningful difference in quality. You're talking about the four best teams! They are all A or A+ level.
As for matchups, I agree they do matter. Maybe last year Alabama would have beaten anyone but Ohio State, and maybe Ohio State would have beaten anyone but FSU, such that if the semis were Alabama-Oregon and Ohio State-FSU, Alabama wins the national title.
Problem with that, though, is that there is no correlation between seeding and matchup. If you are #1 Alabama, and you will beat two teams and lose to the third, the one matchup problem could just as easily be the #2 seed as the #3 seed or the #4 seed. You never know who it's going to be.
And, you're not going to rejigger the seeds. For example, let's say that when making the seeds last year, the committee actually foresaw that Ohio State was the biggest matchup problem for #1 Alabama. Did that mean they were going to artificially make Ohio State the #3 seed over a more-deserving FSU to give Alabama a break in the first playoff game? Obviously, they did not.
So the matchup issue is both unknowable and moot anyway.
Seedings really don't matter here.