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WHY TOURNAMENTS AREN'T
SUCCESSFUL?
Have you ever wondered why a "minor" (less than 32-teams) annual tournaments appears to be successful
in one year, and then are either modified or cancelled the following year, or are
under-attended. What generally follows is some sort of marketing or
solicitation effort by the tournament director, but to no avail, as they are
marketing the same-old-obsolete-tournament-formats. Obviously, there are many reasons for
these problematic tournament headaches, but the
most significant by far is that team directors and coaches are generally
searching for or they may have had a less than satisfactory
past experience at your tournament for reasons that you may have never pondered.
In short, your asking the team directors to take a leap of faith, where your
asking them to lay their money down prior to actually seeing "The
Unfolded" actual
tournament format. WinNAdvance solves all of these related problems.
How ... read on!
To be direct, heavily
attended tournament have the same or similar shortcomings. Title
tournaments, such as a state or regional title will continue to draw as they
posses considerable momentum. Teams, coaches and players tend to focus on
the ellusive title rather than on their actual experience, but in time, this too
shall change. WinNAdvance is designed to draw teams away
from these larger competing venues as these large venues serve to grind lesser
teams as their fodder. It's just the nature of the beast.
Since June 21, 2002 I've
attended numerous tournaments. Although these tournaments have been quite
exciting to watch, which was primarily due to watching a particular individuals
team, to be direct, the formats used have been less than satisfactory. In
my mind, the questions that I've always pondered were:
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How can you make the experience
significantly better and more appealing for each participant? |
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How can you motivate coaches to seek
your tournament out where they want to be apart of it, especially knowing
that these directors have to lay their monies down prior to seeing a
tournament format? |
| How can your motivate the team's
members to participate and perform at a higher level (the prime directive of
any good coach)? |
| How can you do the above with a new
channel or path of experiences that leads to the same goal. |
The answer to these questions can only be
guaranteed if teams are forced to beat the best, without advantages, and if you lose early, to be
guaranteed to have at least one more shot at being the king of the hill
without having to face overwhelming disadvantages. Additional motivation can only result when teams of similar
skills are pitted against teams of the same or similar level.
On the surface, wish list of
observations may seem absolutely impossible to achieve, but only if you consider
and accept what has always been done in the past. This was the prime reason for
creating the WinNAdvance or Win and Advance Tournament Format.
We, that includes every one
of us, are here
to change every obsolete tournament formats ... for all time. Since
that double elimination tournament of June 21, 2002, I've studied several tournament formats of a
broad base that crosses over to multiple sporting events, and to be direct, I've
been distressed by what I've seen. I've included numerous examples of
these tournaments, which are attached & discussed as apart of this web. These are neither a reflection on upon any organization,
it's tournament directors, or it's personnel, but rather on what is available
for use for running a tournament.
One
of the most obvious and most glaring and abusive shortcomings is in regard to
the tournament host, which can place themselves squarely into the
"soft-schedule" drivers seat . The concept, and the
challenge, is to provide a tournament format that offers no particular advantage
to any particular team. If a tournament directors states that they are
using a WinNAdvance tournament, it doesn't matter what seed you are, you'll have
a level playing field between all teams that is both reasonable and dare I say it,
fair! So,
you might ask, what drove me to seek out this new format? It was due to a
first hand experience:
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Double elimination tournaments are
not only wrong, they are abusive. Double Elimination dumps burden
after burden into the losers bracket. Is this amicable when your team
just lost on a last second bucket in the first round. In a 17 team double elimination
bracket, the champion could be 5-0 {wins - loses} versus a team that
requires as bad as an 9 - 1 record. A championship game for only one
team ... are you kidding me? Imagine if you will NFL fans being force
fed this concept for the Super Bowl using the double elimination concept
with only one team fighting to prevent a championship.
One could argue that the world series uses a best of seven format, for
example, where a team having a 3-1 game lead gets to play for the title,
where the other team does not, but the difference is that all seven games
pit the same two opponents against each other and there is only one
home-away advantage at the start of that series. In other words, it
the same series for both teams. With double elimination, your deluding
yourself if you think its the same for both teams reaching the finals.
World Series games are played on separate days. As you progress
through a tournament, excluding bracket play, each progressive game has
considerably more weight assigned to it. Giving one team two chances at a
title, considering the title games enormous weight, is ludicrous.
With WinNAdvance every team needs exactly the same number of
victories to win the tournament and there is only one championship game. |
| Bracket Play ... sometimes I think
bracket play was invented to serve the requirements of a tournament director
alone, to have the same four (4) teams use one base/softball field all day
long. In reality, more often than not, there are as many as four
back-to-back backstops available at each complex. Exactly what message
do we send when games are meaningless and non-meaningless at the same
time? In some 8-game minimum formats, there are as many as 6 of 8
meaningless bracket games. Have you ever noticed that travel players tend to change over time ...
from the day they join a team until the end of the season ... the bracket format alone can destroy a
players confidence. Exactly what message are you sending when you make
a player on a team play bracket games only, or you just made a throwing
error in a prior game and are then benched when your team starts playing the
games that count. With WinNAdvance, every game counts toward the
championship game, where the efforts of each player is what got you to that
championship game. I would say the games equally count, but each
semi-finals and finals round game obviously has a much greater weight of
emphasis. So better said, games at similar levels count
equally. The difference here is ... lose early ... and your
gone. This requires not only greater coaching skill ... it works to
exude confidence in each player which builds the foundation toward the
ultimate goal. |
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In how many tournaments have you been
given only a one chance opportunity to defeat the eventual
champion. The following discusses actual tournament formats and their
shortcomings: single
elimination, seeding
or a round robin format followed by single elimination, and single
elimination followed by a consolation bracket. In tournaments of
these types, you just might as well burn your tournament money.
Hello! What's sticking in your craw is that lucky last second bucket
in the first round. The concept of bracket play is too great an
incentive for a tournament directors (that's in control) to ignore.
The objective then becomes paramount to schedule the
two best teams versus one another. The director will tell you that it was a
chance occurrence that these two powerhouses met ... the luck of the draw, but
in fact, it happens in just about every tournament of this type as they are
well aware which teams are the best teams. "I have no
incentive!" That's someone equivalent to saying that there is no
such thing as politics ... I have no friends ... and she's not pretty, I
just thought that would be a nice skirt to buy for you, honey! Again, consider the fact
that you know that you're fielding the best team, but you just lost your first round game
at the buzzer. I long remember an interview given by Joe Namath, where
he stated, "I guarantee that if we played the Colts 10 times, we'd beat
them at least once". Super Bowl XLII, is just another reminder of the
recent Patriots debacle. With WinNAdvance, as long as you keep
winning, it is guaranteed that you'll see that that team one more time. It
more importantly ensures that the two best teams will meet in the finals. |
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Have you ever seen a coach motivate
his team by stating, "This tournament was set up for team XYZ", or
hear the vanquished with hurtful or belittling remarks about an achieved
accomplishment for that very same reason I just outlined above. "We won your
trophies!" "You only won it because this thing was set up for the
host team!" It's time to shut them up. Never should any
tournament victor be belittled for their hard earned efforts and with
WinNAdvance, since there can be no gained advantage, comments of this nature
will be a thing of the past. You didn't win the event because you
lost! |
Obviously, WinNAdvance implies that officiating
is in a perfect world, which is
out of our control, but I'd like to think that each official takes pride in
what they do ... and for the most part ... they do. For the ones that have
ulterior motives ... it's only a matter of time where you're going to find
yourself on the streets instead of watching all those kids pouring their hearts
out, all the while, getting paid to do it.
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