Who Knows What Tangled Webs We Weave. . .

And how 'bout them Broncos of Boise State!  I don't now about you, but I'd like to see them playing Ohio State in the National Championship Game (no disrespect to  you Gator fans); any team that runs the table earns that right in my book; ignoring the fundamental importance of winning is a huge error. Once again, the BCS system is the culprit.

Say what you will about the expertise of voters, the evidence of experienced and reliable eyes, etc. You don't know what's going to happen on any given day until the players lace 'em up.  You can also trot out all the strength-of-schedule or average winning margin numbers you want - it's no more convincing than arguing over the strength-of-draw for a Grand Slam champ.

A winner is a winner, and anybody who doesn't lose  is the unequivocal champ, or deserves the opportunity to be crowned the champ.

College football needs a playoffs. End of story.

Tennis, as if it were not already burdened with enough ambiguities, is presently in the midst of its first, awkward embrace of a system that, like the BCS, is compromised by a refusal to give winning - and losing - their proper place in the scheme of competition. I'm talking about the Round Robin format that is currently determining half of the tournament in Adelaide (after the RR prelims, the tournament reverts to straight elimination in the Round of 16). You might want to bop on over to the ESPN site where I just posted some thoughts on this subject. Let me flesh them out and add more here, starting with the fact that one other criteria that the ATP Board must have used in creating this bizarre hybrid was: Make sure the fans hate it and nobody understands it.

This is no off-the-shelf rant against Round Robin. Some of the most electric, memorable tournaments I've ever covered were Round Robin affairs; the old Commercial Union/Volvo/Nabisco Masters (a precursor to the current Year-End Championships) pop to mind, as does the  year-end ATP Masters and some of the WTA Championships of yore, along with WCT Tour events now encrusted with rust.

So I've been trying to figure out just why I reacted to the ATP's RR scheme so negatively.

My main problem is that the use to which the ATP is putting the RR formula is based on a shockingly poor understanding of the tool. It's pretty simple: You don't use a circular saw for a task that calls for jig saw, even though both are saws. The Round Robin works best with a small pool of more-or-less equally matched rivals. If you respect the notion of competition, the only good reason to think that Andy Roddick should have a chance to play Rafael Nadal after Roddick has already lost to Roger Federer is because all of them are proven champs gathered to have a sort of festival of competition.

This isn't star-centric either, because it would be equally fun to see a shoot-out between, say, the eight players ranked closest to the No. 200 ranking (or the No. 20, for that matter). All these scenarios are driven by a fundamental equality among the competitors, which is not true of classic, single-elimination, draw tournaments. In those, the idea is to take a journey to the final, with intriguing and unpredictable obstacles (including but not restricted to confronting your equals) popping up along the way.

A single-elimination tournament is an adventure, for all concerned. And one of the critical moments of that adventure is the Big Upset. Sadly, RR all but eliminates the Big Upset and the repercussions it has in single-elimination events. This is precisely the trade-off you make by choosing one format over the other, but it's an especially stinging forfeiture when you've designed a hybrid single-elimination /RR format, which in its attempt to get the best of both worlds delivers the worst of both worlds.

The most radical result of the hybrid format adopted by the ATP is that the upset of, oh, The Mighty Fed by Vince Spadea means nothing more to Spadea or Federer - or anyone else in the draw -  than any other L or W in the tally column. It diminishes Spadea's achievement (never mind what happens when that upset occurs after, say, Federer has qualified for the single-elimination portion) and also makes Federer's loss less dramatic.

This "neither fish nor fowl" proposition is wholly unsatisfying. If you want Round Robin, do it right, with the guys who stagger out of the smoke and mist on the battlefield in, at worst, a single-elimination semifinal.

The current RR seems to me little more than a strange form of qualifying from which nobody is exempt, and once the top players figure this out, they're going to have a problem with it.

The RR is an open season on top players (this may, in some ways, be a good thing),when journeymen will happily swing for the fences knowing that even if they lose to, say, Nadal, all they have to do is beat Volandri and Fish to still make the single-elimination stage.

And because of the statistical dilemmas posed by different potential outcomes, the RR stage has an aimlessness about it. A player isn't entirely in control of his destiny in many of the scenarios, and in some he has no control whatsoever. So they all mill around for a few days and then get out the Abacus or Microsoft Round Robin software to figure out who gets to play in the "real" 16-man event. Forget nailing your cross-court forehand, it's the math you better be practicing, Gonzo!

I don't care how smart you are. In fact, I think the smarter you are, the more you value and appreciate the venerable K.I.S.S. theory (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). How on earth could the ATP have so flagrantly ignored such a fundamentally sound principle? Take a look at the Adelaide draw and tell me it doesn't look like something the tax accountants at Enron came up with in the gruesome, Final days. Even the graphic suggest that there are really two different tournaments going on - RR qualifying, and a main-draw event. That's what happens when you try to fit more guys into the RR format than it was meant to hold.

And why? Ostensibly, it's to ensure tournaments that the stars will be around for at least three matches per tournament. But it's also to enable Tournament Directors (and broadcasters) to guarantee ticket buyers and viewers that on such-and-such days, early in the tournament, they will see the stars in action. Okay, obvious questions: How severely has tennis been impacted by The Mighty Fed or Nadal losing in an early round in 2006 (Granted, Marat Safin is, as they say, a whole 'nother story)? Would fans rather go to early-round matches, or more significant, later ones?

You know what I think? The ATP came up with this format to satisfy sub-Masters grade events whose TD's presumably have gotten sick to death of paying out huge appearance fees only to see the beneficiaries of their largess bomb out early in events. As losses and wins still count in the rankings, the chance of a player merely going through the motions for three consecutive matches (ensuring that he doesn't qualify for the Sweet 16) is certainly decreased by the use of Round Robin.

But this, if true, is one hailuva complicated, contorted, and game-altering solution to a problem that exists in the first place only because of the tour's compromised policy vis a vis prize vs. appearance money. As the Bard said, Who knows what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive . . .

Wouldn't it be easier to address all these issues by stipulating that players are obliged to remain on-site at tournaments to do promotional work or low-stress exhibitions for at least, oh, four days, in the event that they lose early?

There's my rant against Round Robin. I'm willing to change my mind. Let's see what the next few months brings.

Headline of the Day, from FoxSports News:  Top-seeded Jankovic Overcome Jetlag

--- Yeah, but she's got Insomnia in the next round!
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