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Message: [QUOTE="OttoinGrotto, post: 2846659, member: 297"] Ok, look, let's go big picture sports philosophy for a second here... One of the fascinating aspects of competition is that it's a true zero-sum scenario. In every match up there is a winner and a loser (screw ties). In principle, the odds of winning any given matchup are even. The one W and one L result never changes. Therefore, the objective of the competitor is to win more than their fair share of their match ups. There are different ways of going about that, some that move the sport forward, and some that move it backwards. There are many, but I'll mention the 3 most important. Cheating is one way to try to win more than a fair share, but it's not desirable for advancing the sport. Having superior talent is another way to try and win more, but actually stagnates the sport. Just being better at the competition doesn't necessarily advance the sport. I propose that the way to win more than a fair share that in most cases also advances the competition itself (keeping in mind that no matter how much it advances there is still always only one winner and one loser) is through strategic innovation within the rule parameters of the competition. I also propose that talent fears strategic innovation, because it neutralizes and can even overcome talent. Because of the zero-sum nature of sports, we have a concrete way of seeing which strategic innovations succeed. The best interests for everybody is to reward strategic innovation when it's proven successful. That advances the sport and competition, and actually stretches talent to become even better, and decreases incentives to cheat by providing a better way. That's why I bristle so much at these discussions that favor teams that are "better" for reasons that don't tie to competition results. It's essentially a case for talent, which is an ugly case. It says that how good we think you are matters more than how good you prove to be in competition. That means your playoff qualification is determined in large part by recruiting rankings (one proxy for talent). That thinking does not reward innovation, and therefore does not advance the sport. It also betrays the zero-sum nature of sports. So, the solution for college football is to reward perfection, as much as it can be achieved. Let the ones banking on talent punch each other out. Let the innovators find their own path. Then at the end, line up the ones that came out unscathed (or that failed as little as possible) and let them hash it out. [/QUOTE]

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