Above are the 16 open teams at nationals sorted by win percentage in "games that matter." The "Record Finish" is the Finish based on record only, the "Actual Finish" is the finish based on the result of the championship bracket only, (i.e. all preqs losers are given a 9). There are 3 things wrong with this picture.
1. Patrol through High Five all Finished below Madison through TruckStop.
2. Machine Finished in the top 4
3. Bravo finished in the bottom 8
Since the Nationals format is lame and the cool thing to do is talk about potential new formats I feel like jumping in on the conversation. My goal of Nationals is to make the tournament as brutal as possible, I want every team to play a ton of games and I want every game to matter. The idea is how can I drag out an elimination bracket for as long as possible.
Thursday
1. 24 teams qualify for nationals.
2. 8 pools of three.
Top seed gets to determine the format of the pool. They choose one of the 6 options below.
| Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 | Option 4 | Option 5 | Option 6 | |
| 9am | 1v2 | 1v2 | 1v3 | 1v3 | Bye | Bye |
| 11am | 1v3 | Bye | Bye | 1v2 | 1v2 | 1v3 |
| 1pm | Bye | 1v3 | 1v2 | Bye | 1v3 | 1v2 |
At the end of this the last place team in each pool is eliminated. The second place teams play cross overs, winners advance losers are eliminated. At this point we've eliminated 12 teams and have 12 remaining.
Friday
1. 4 pools of three
Again top seed determines format of the pool, last place team is eliminated and the 2's crossover. This gets us down to 6 teams.
Saturday
1. 2 pools of three
Bottom 2 in each pool is eliminated. This gets us down to 2 teams.
Sunday
Championship game.
Summary
If you sweep through the tournament you've played 7 games in 4 days.
If you grind through the tournament you've played 9 games in 4 days. This would make it possible for a 7-2 team to win the tournament.
It is impossible to have a losing record on any given day and advance through that day.
The worst possible record you can have and make it to Saturday is 4-2.
I love Machine and I am pumped about the results of their Nationals, but any team that finishes 2-4 on a weekend should not be in the top 4.
One immediate problem I see is that running a tournament with 72 teams is very difficult, and greatly limits the options USAU has for locations. I think this is one of the reasons they continue to keep club nats at 16 teams/div, instead of 20 like in college.
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