Final rankings

[MU82]

The Wall Street Journal, Fox Sports, ESPN, Albert McGuire, your favorite Jay Bilas, etc disagree with you

Some of us don't care who disagrees with us or agrees with us.

While I respect many of those people and media outlets, not one of them can prove that any particular team in any particular team is the "best." All they have are opinions, and you know what they say about opinions being like butt-holes.

I, on the other hand, can prove that the champion is the best. Because the champion is the champion, and there's nothing better than the champion.

So keep having fun with your semantics. I challenge you to show any irrefutable evidence that a non-champion is the best team in any year.

[flash]

While it is hard to say that the best team is not the team that wins the championship, I think there is something to be said for looking beyond what a team does in a 3 week stretch of the year.  When deciding on the best team, the team's entire body of work must be considered.  If Wichita State had won this year, I don't think many people would be saying they were the best team in the nation.  They were a very good team, that got extremely hot at the right time.  If you look at their entire body of work over the whole season, there is no way they could compete with with teams like Louisville, Duke, Kansas etc...  The NCAA tournament is set up so the best team does not always win.  Anything can happen in a single game, teams have a poor shooting night, referees, injuries, unlucky bounces, yada yada yada.  That is what makes the NCAAs so exciting, because anything can happen in a given game, unlike the NBA where it's extremely hard to get lucky in a 7 game series. 

[ChicosBailBonds]

I challenge you to show any irrefutable evidence that a non-champion is the best team in any year.

I have provided plenty, from experts in the field.  Post below has data to back it up, here's just another one....about 33% of the time in the NCAA tournament the best team wins championship.  Wall Street Journal found something similar.  NFL its about 24%.  NBA and NHL have the highest probabilities, because of the longer series.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/blog/?p=102

[ChicosBailBonds]

Except there's nothing in the data to support what you're saying.

Data a plenty.  I would start by reading Scorecasting, fantastic book....I mean that, absolutely fantastic.

http://scorecasting.com/


Or read the work done by Ben-Naim and Nicolas Hengartner....all data backed on more than 300,000 games played.

Just one of the studies they have done, includes NCAA tournament.   http://cnls.lanl.gov/~ebn/talks/sports-mich.pdf

Or may I suggest The Drunkard's Walk; How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow....here's a good passage from his book:

"if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10.  And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups.  There is really no way for a sports league to change this.  In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you'd have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time.  And in the case of one team's having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant "world series" would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned "world champion" is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one."


Or famed Baseball guru, Bill James in his essay, "How Often Does the Best Team Actually Win?,  "The belief that in a 162-game schedule the luck will even out is certainly unfounded --- but that unfounded belief may also be essential to the health of the game. Would people lose interest in baseball if they realized that the best team doesn't win nearly half the time? Would it damage the perception of the World Series if people realized that the best team in baseball only emerges with the crown about 30% of the time?   For me, no. It would not damage my interest, and for most of you also, I suspect. I am afraid that for some people, the answer would be the other one. I've learned a lot of surprising things in running these simulations, and I'm happy to have that knowledge....But I don't think it's something I'm going to talk about a whole lot."

[jmayer1]

That's why USUALLY the MLB prove out who the best team is because it's over the long haul and not one and one.

Would it damage the perception of the World Series if people realized that the best team in baseball only emerges with the crown about 30% of the time?

about 33% of the time in the NCAA tournament the best team wins championship

Hmmm, your own posts indicate that the NCAA tourney isn't any more random than any other sport, but I do actually agree with your premise. The team that wins the NCAA, Super Bowl, or World Series is often not universally thought of as the best team, and probably aren't, but in my opinion any team that can't complete the journey also can't be considered the best team that year. So in 1996, if the 72-10 Bulls lost to the Sonics in the NBA Finals, then I would say that the Sonics won the title and probably weren't the best team, but the Bulls don't have a stake to that claim either, since their regular season was all for naught in terms of the ultimate goal.

Of course, this whole argument is stupid and semantic. People are always only going to ever remember the champion, and that's what counts in the record book. Nobody cares who the "best" team is if they don't hoist the hardware.

[MU82]

I have provided plenty, from experts in the field.  Post below has data to back it up, here's just another one....about 33% of the time in the NCAA tournament the best team wins championship.  Wall Street Journal found something similar.  NFL its about 24%.  NBA and NHL have the highest probabilities, because of the longer series.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/blog/?p=102

NONE OF THAT IS PROOF. NONE OF IT!!!

UConn proved it was the best team in 2011 by winning the championship. What did Ohio State, Kansas and BYU -- the top 3 teams in the final regular-season polls that year -- prove other than that they were just good enough to not win when it really counted?

I'm done here. This is a silly semantics thing. Define "best team" however you'd like.

Goofy me, I'll stick with the team that wins when the championship is on the line.

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

Some of us don't care who disagrees with us or agrees with us.

This - I don't choose to outsource my critical thinking to others.

I think you have unlocked the core of the Chicos douchiness

Poster: I think Crean is a douche!
Chicos: Others would disagree with you

Why don't you take your own stance here and disagree without outsourcing your critical thinking?

[hairy worthen]

Of course, this whole argument is stupid and semantic. People are always only going to ever remember the champion, and that's what counts in the record book. Nobody cares who the "best" team is if they don't hoist the hardware.

This is it. You don't get awards or accolades for being the perceived best team, (unless you are IU)

[MerrittsMustache]

Of course, this whole argument is stupid and semantic. People are always only going to ever remember the champion, and that's what counts in the record book. Nobody cares who the "best" team is if they don't hoist the hardware.

Agree 100%.

Who cares who "the best team" is? Being the best team means absolutely nothing if you don't win a championship.

[Goose]

There obviously have been times when the obvious best team did not win and I still feel they were best time that year. Too lazy to look everything up but Houston was best team when Jimmy V beat them. I will remember that team a long time and will remember the shot that beat them as well. Every once in awhile a great team does lose, yet team was so stacked people remember. Georgetown losing to Villanova is another example to me.

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

To be clear I'm not taking the position that others are wrong because we have a different opinion on "best"

Goose - respect, especially since you're sticking to how you feel about it

[jmayer1]

There obviously have been times when the obvious best team did not win and I still feel they were best time that year. Too lazy to look everything up but Houston was best team when Jimmy V beat them. I will remember that team a long time and will remember the shot that beat them as well. Every once in awhile a great team does lose, yet team was so stacked people remember. Georgetown losing to Villanova is another example to me.

I think those Houston and Gtown teams are remembered more due to the upsets that were pulled off, possibly not because of how good they were. If they had both lost to another really good team in the Championship, would they be remembered as much? Not sure either way, but I think they are the outliers of people remembering the "best" team if they didn't win a title.

[Goose]

JMayer

The Houston team was one of greatest teams I have ever seen in watching college ball. Two NBA HOF'ers on one college team is quite impressive.