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Cinderella is a myth


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1 hour ago, FastpacedO said:

I've always respected your posts and thoughts. After re-reading it really baffles me with this mindset.

You state there is nothing wrong with the thread title "Cinderella is a Myth" yet here we sit with a Cinderella (team outside the top 32 of 64) and you still feel it doesn't exist?

Regardless if Monrovia was the only sectional champ to be outside the top half of sagarin, they were still sectional champs and still outside the top half of sagarin.

Being an "extreme outlier" is an even STRONGER case that Cinderella is not a myth and does exist no matter how much lipstick you want to put on the pig.

You state bottom half sagarin rated teams went 2-76. Those 2 wins are still there. Are they outnumbered? Yes, but they still exist lending that there were 2 Cinderella's proving it is not a "myth". Now if it were 0-78 you would have a better case.

Regardless if Monrovia played the worst team in their sectional or 3A, they still knocked off some good teams in Speedway and Danville (both top 25 teams). Then followed it up by beating beating a top team that was undefeated on the road.

I will agree the post season tournament is broken. You can't ignore the fact though that Cinderella is not a myth and Monrovia is a prime example of that. Don't take it personal just pointing out it does exist and Monrovia may go no further but they still have a cinderella run.

Not taking anything personal. A statistical improbability doesn't change my mind nor rationale that the current format is inherently flawed. A tournament that doesn't recognize regular season success will always enhance the probability of a slim outcome occurring and Monrovia is the prime example. 

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10 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Bigfoot is a myth … and yet, there are still sightings. 😆🤣

It was inevitable that this would happen sometime. Bad luck for @Footballking16that it happened this season. But this has been tracked every year I can remember this debate going on, and this is the first time I recall it happening. The bottom line is that it is statistically insignificant. The basic question remains: do you design a system to accommodate the statistical outlier that occurs once every ten years or so? Or, do you design a system that returns benefits every season, to the disadvantage of the one team per decade that bucks the odds?

 

6 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

That's my approach and the numbers once again prove what I've been saying for years and a statistical improbability doesn't change the fact or narrative that the current format is flawed.

It'd be akin to a public health official coming out and saying it's a myth that jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge is dangerous because one person one time survived. Sadly, people would believe it. 

Bigfoot and a Cinderella Story are 2 different things though. One people claim to have sightings, the other there is real life statistical and even game footage of it happening that is unedited with no photoshop images. No matter how insignificant you deem it, it is there and is undeniable. It has no comparison to a public health official coming out and saying it is a myth that jumping off the golden gate bridge is dangerous because one person one time survived.

It has happened and no matter if it is a rare occurrence or not it is still a possibility which in a contrary position would not be possible. I know there is the steadfast turn the blind eye look of denial because it only happened this year. In all honesty the data is skewed towards an only rather recent study of it. Some of the other data (using sagarin) came only using past data after the fact of the season. There may (or may not) have been more teams outside of the top half with similar outside the top half of sagarin. That is impossible to judge because sagarin changes week by week. When you go pull data after a State Championship it won't be the same as the end of the regular season. Just like this year Monrovia after last week will get a boost in sagarin compared to where they were in week 8 because of their upset wins.

You can't however deny and say that "Cinderella is a myth" when a dispute of that is smacking you right in the face.

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2 minutes ago, FastpacedO said:

You can't however deny and say that "Cinderella is a myth" when a dispute of that is smacking you right in the face.

Keep your eye on the ball. This started as a discussion of whether the all in format is the best way to construct a post season, in order to promote the interests of Indiana high school football. If what we are trying to do is design a system that works best for all of Indiana High School Football, every season, the feel-good Monrovia story is irrelevant. 

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8 hours ago, Footballking16 said:

-78 first round match-ups that pitted a top half Sagarin team vs a bottom half Sagarin rated team. Bottom half teams went 2-76 and both promptly lost the next round.

-Monrovia was the ONLY bottom half Sagarin team in the entire state to advance to a sectional final by virtue of beating a top half Sagarin team. Literally a statistical anomaly. They also drew the worst rated team in the entire class by virtue of a postseason format that doesn’t reward regular season success.

-A run like Monrovia is on happens once in a blue moon, they’d happen even less if the IHSAA put on a tournament that acknowledged a 2.5 month regular season took place prior. Keeping a flawed postseason for the sake of a statistical anomaly doesn’t make sense, it never will.

This exercise I believe has run its course and the numbers don’t lie. They never have. Add a tenth regular season game, eliminate half the field at the conclusion of the regular season, acknowledge, reward, and seed teams based on regular season success just as it’s done everywhere else and hope for a better, more competitive tournament throughout. 

All definitely true ... to an extent, but in your arguments, you set it all up as it doesn't happen and, if it does, the only people who survive, don't actually survive, they just feed off the other dead.  Monrovia has shown that argument didn't happen in their case.  As a general exercise, remove PolyTech from the mix ... let's just say they got COVID and couldn't play Monrovia in the first round.  How does that alter the fact that Monrovia beat the #19, #25, and #12 ranked teams en route to a sectional and regional title.  Unless you are going to claim that PolyTech stole Coach Klein's special plays notebook for Speedway, Danville, and Owen Valley, then it's a non-sequitur. 

As @Bobref pointed out, bad timing on your arguments because, with the initial bluster and guaranteed future stuff that isn't actually guaranteed and the idea that everyone else just didn't see it, it makes for a somewhat compelling argument until someone shows that it isn't necessarily 100% guaranteed.  Like I've said before, I see merit in the argument of seeding the teams or at placing top teams on opposite sides of the bracket and let nature take its course.  I see little downside in playing an all-in tournament.  And, before you tell me that I'm part of the problem if I don't see it, I would contend that the argument that Indiana needs to "threat" to teams to make them perform during the season might be true of a few teams, but I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of coaches and players strap on the gear every week with the intention of going out there and playing all out.  Perhaps there's a statistical anomaly of teams that don't, by to use your reasoning, why have a system for a statistical anomaly ... and the case of cutting half the teams out, you are catching a lot of teams that aren't a statistical anomaly. 

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1 hour ago, Bobref said:

Bigfoot is a myth … and yet, there are still sightings. 😆🤣

It was inevitable that this would happen sometime. Bad luck for @Footballking16that it happened this season. But this has been tracked every year I can remember this debate going on, and this is the first time I recall it happening. The bottom line is that it is statistically insignificant. The basic question remains: do you design a system to accommodate the statistical outlier that occurs once every ten years or so? Or, do you design a system that returns benefits every season, to the disadvantage of the one team per decade that bucks the odds?

Can this be done while allowing for both?  Would seem that seeding the sectionals takes care of making the season count for something and also sets up the scenario of "the unworthy" exiting in the first round while still allowing for the "one team per decade" to make their run against the odds.  Coming from Texas, I definitely remember that coin-flip situation to determine who would be in and who would be out.  There was nothing about that event that said competition. 

I don't have an issue with a compromise component, I think there's a way to reach what both side are looking for with compromise.  Given what we have in Indiana, I think we are selling players/coaches short if we truly believe that our teams are just waiting in the wings until post season.  I just went to the Harrison football recognition event and watched them not talk so much about the conference championship and the overall record, although they did, but I was struck by the discussion of the fact that the boys had committed 200+ days during the year to that sport through running, lifting, strapping on the pads, film review, and it was in the rain, in the heat, in the cold, when they were hurting and tired, while they were still students first.  I know what my son and his teammates and coaches put in on a daily basis and again, maybe this is why I'm so adamant about just using a number to write off half of them.  I know that they take their games, week after week seriously, and having coached for almost two decades, albeit in youth, I've been around lots of kids and coaches from lots of programs and, in all honesty, I don't think my boy or his team is any more special when it comes to the other teams in terms of giving their heart to the game.  Are some up against odds where they can't perform the way that others do?  Sure.  But again, I think we sell our kids, coaches, and our state short if we believe that we need to cut half of them out to "force" people to act competitively.

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9 hours ago, Bobref said:

Keep your eye on the ball. This started as a discussion of whether the all in format is the best way to construct a post season, in order to promote the interests of Indiana high school football. If what we are trying to do is design a system that works best for all of Indiana High School Football, every season, the feel-good Monrovia story is irrelevant. 

only irrelevant when your not apart of it. ALL IN!!!  #whynotus

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3 hours ago, WCGrad92 said:

only irrelevant when your not apart of it. ALL IN!!!  #whynotus

Kind of like me trying to explain to my wife why she shouldn't be making so much noise when she's having contractions.

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On 11/15/2022 at 10:44 PM, Footballking16 said:

Warsaw beat a fellow bottom half Sagarin rated team (Elkhart) to advance to the sectional final due to a flaw in the current postseason format that doesn’t reward regular season success. Neither should have been in the tournament to begin with under my proposal and in any format that recognizes regular season success would have faced Penn or Carroll in the opening round.

and it illustrates why I think you proposal has serious flaws.  Warsaw was 7-2 and wouldn't have qualified under your proposal.  They won their first game of the sectional and was respectable in their loss in the sectional final to Carroll.  They finished the season 8-3, playing 2 post season games, including a secional final.

We shall agree to disagree that eliminating teams like Warsaw makes Indiana high school football a better experience.

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13 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

and it illustrates why I think you proposal has serious flaws.  Warsaw was 7-2 and wouldn't have qualified under your proposal.  They won their first game of the sectional and was respectable in their loss in the sectional final to Carroll.  They finished the season 8-3, playing 2 post season games, including a secional final.

We shall agree to disagree that eliminating teams like Warsaw makes Indiana high school football a better experience.

Warsaw went 7-2 and didn't beat a soul. They were pummeled by the two hardest toughest teams they played. Warsaw played the second easiest schedule of any 6A team in the state and didn't face a single 6A team the entire regular season. They made it to the sectional final by virtue of playing of playing another team who also wouldn't have qualified under my proposal. In a single elimination format, mathematically somebody had to win that game. 

Edited by Footballking16
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18 hours ago, Footballking16 said:

Warsaw went 7-2 and didn't beat a soul. They were pummeled by the two hardest toughest teams they played. Warsaw played the second easiest schedule of any 6A team in the state and didn't face a single 6A team the entire regular season. They made it to the sectional final by virtue of playing of playing another team who also wouldn't have qualified under my proposal. In a single elimination format, mathematically somebody had to win that game. 

Yet they played a final 4 team in the sectional final (Carroll) and they were only down 13-10 at halftime, and 20-10 at the end of the Q3.  They lost to Carroll 34-17, but absolutely played them more than respectively and competitively.  Warsaw more than represented in the sectional final and that performance illustrated through their play on the field that they belonged in that game.

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On 11/16/2022 at 8:46 AM, Bobref said:

Keep your eye on the ball. This started as a discussion of whether the all in format is the best way to construct a post season, in order to promote the interests of Indiana high school football. If what we are trying to do is design a system that works best for all of Indiana High School Football, every season, the feel-good Monrovia story is irrelevant

Actually if you read the title of the thread it says "Cinderella is a myth" and this statement was made: "One of the biggest talking points for keeping the all-in is this roundabout myth that bottom half Sagarin teams flourish in the state tournament. Short answer is....they don't."

Yet here we sit with a bottom half Sagarin team flourishing and being the Cinderella that is a myth in Monrovia after beating respectable teams in Speedway, Danville, and Owen Valley. That makes them very relevant. I mean the data has only been tracked for a recent amount of time. For the other data only Sagarin data after the State Championships (which is completely different than week 9) was used. You can have a team that was in the lower half after week 9, but after the State Championship they could have been in the bottom half

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On 11/16/2022 at 6:20 PM, WCGrad92 said:

only irrelevant when your not apart of it. ALL IN!!!  #whynotus

Don't know much about Monrovia this year and have not found any stories on what has inspired or specifically contributed to the turnaround... Did Monrovia have some star players injured that came back? or are there some other explanations to help understand, from a newcomer, their Cinderella story.

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6 minutes ago, khayward said:

Don't know much about Monrovia this year and have not found any stories on what has inspired or specifically contributed to the turnaround... Did Monrovia have some star players injured that came back? or are there some other explanations to help understand, from a newcomer, their Cinderella story.

i read something.... hold on

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16 minutes ago, khayward said:

Don't know much about Monrovia this year and have not found any stories on what has inspired or specifically contributed to the turnaround... Did Monrovia have some star players injured that came back? or are there some other explanations to help understand, from a newcomer, their Cinderella story.

sbriant20

  • sbriant20Enthusiast
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  • Monrovia

Monrovia plays in the ICC, a VERY tough conference, (Lutheran, Triton Central, Secina, Speedway, even Casacde was much improved this year, also played Linton) Playing teams like those when healthy is difficult let alone when dealing with injuries, Monrovia got healthy at tournament time and are playing like we thought they could, also Danville and Owen Valley im pretty sure are not familiar with playing the style Monrovia does, its hard to stop even when you've played against it alot, ask Mater Dei about that. Not the first time a team has gotten hot a tourney time when it counts most.

This is in the thread that got hijacked by some idiots (Owen Valley vs Monrovia)

Edited by dazed and confused
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and this from Lawrenceburg Monrovia thread

On 11/13/2022 at 10:27 PM, WCGrad92 said:

a few things.  1 we got a bit more healthy.  2. while injuries were happening, we found kids that could do the job..  3. moved some kids around once back and found a good formula for our offense. 4. Most teams in the playoffs dont see our offense.  5.  we have played some REALLY GOOD teams in the ICC. 6. we as a coaching staff found a way to convey to this team that this is it, when our back are against the wall, this team figured out how to fight.

So thats what were doing.

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8 hours ago, WCGrad92 said:

and tonight we lost to a very good Lawrenceburg team, Good Luck to them in the Finals.

Nice job to the players and coaches keeping the flame going after many thought it had gone out.  Didn't wallow in the past and kept looking forward and making things happen with a chance given.  Good stuff to build on in the off-season to get geared up for next season.  Pass on to the team that we enjoyed being along for the extended ride!

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