04/16/24
December 03, 2012
SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
Why is NE the #2 seed and Baltimore #3 when Baltimore beat NE in week 3?
posted by kokaku at 12:51 PM on December 03, 2012
It looks like the better conference record tiebreaker comes before the head-to-head one.
Here's the ESPN version which has notes on why teams are ahead of others if their records are the same. But even that doesn't totally make sense, because they have Pittsburgh in ahead of Cinci based on head-to-head, when Cinci has a better conf record.
posted by LionIndex at 01:08 PM on December 03, 2012
And yet head-to-head is first in all the tie breaking procedures. Is everyone using the same broken sorting algorithm? Unless this is because of a 3-way tie changing things.
posted by kokaku at 01:24 PM on December 03, 2012
I think it is the 3-way tie that messes things up. Each of Denver, Baltimore and NE are currently 9-3.
Under "Other Tie-Breaking Procedures," no. 3 states: "To determine home-field priority among division-titlists, apply Wild Card tie-breakers." This would apply here to a situation in which 3 division titlists have the same record.
The Wild-Card Tie Breakers are as follow (with commentary, and truncated once the applicable condition is met):
Three or More Clubs
(Note: If two clubs remain tied after third or other clubs are eliminated, tie breaker reverts to step 1 of applicable two-club format.)
1. Apply division tie breaker to eliminate all but the highest ranked club in each division prior to proceeding to step [Not applicable, as all three teams are from different divisions.]
2. The original seeding within a division upon application of the division tie breaker remains the same for all subsequent applications of the procedure that are necessary to identify the two Wild-Card participants. [Not applicable.]
3. Head-to-head sweep. (Applicable only if one club has defeated each of the others or if one club has lost to each of the others.) [Not applicable, but could be if Ravens beat Denver and all three end up with same record at 12-4 or worse.]
4. Best won-lost-tied percentage in games played within the conference. [Patriots prevail here based on 8-1 conference record, compared to 8-2 for Ravens and 6-2 for Broncos.]
Still plenty of time and remaining games for the three-way tie to become a non-issue over the coming weeks (Baltimore and Denver play each other and New England has some difficult games on its schedule), but stranger things have happened.
posted by holden at 02:40 PM on December 03, 2012
holden's got it. It confused the crap out of me last night in the post-game stories. It basically comes down to the Patriots being ahead of Baltimore right now because head-to-head is thrown out until Baltimore plays Denver. If New England & Baltimore win out Baltimore would take the tie-breaker because #3 would apply.
posted by yerfatma at 03:49 PM on December 03, 2012
So, as a Pats fan, I need to root for Denver based on the schoolyard logic that NE beat Denver beat Baltimore beat NE, thus is all cancels out? (since I'm expecting NE to drop at least one of the Houston-SF pair) I can live with that.
posted by kokaku at 08:08 PM on December 03, 2012
The botched Brinks job losses that occurred during the brief, evil reign of the replacement refs are not assigned less weight in the factoring of team records?
posted by beaverboard at 08:59 PM on December 03, 2012
So, as a Pats fan, I need to root for Denver based on the schoolyard logic that NE beat Denver beat Baltimore beat NE, thus is all cancels out? (since I'm expecting NE to drop at least one of the Houston-SF pair) I can live with that.
If Denver beats Baltimore there's not another game on their schedule that they are likely to lose. So New England would be forced to win out as well.
posted by tron7 at 10:24 PM on December 03, 2012
That whole "San Antonio Spurs versus the league" thing continues.