Is there a "better" ACC Baseball Tourney format?

FredJacket

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Been wanting to post this for a while. What if you were ACC Baseball Commissioner (I’m pretty sure no such title exists)? I’ve posted below the “features” for the ACC tournament formats going back to 2007 as well as the SEC’s tournament format from 2017.

For your money, what would “the best” baseball conference championship tournament format? I am not convinced any of the ones below is the "best"…. but I cannot think of better ones that would not last 2 weeks or force teams to play too many games in 5-6 days which would be obvious show-stoppers.

For me, there seems to be no obvious format that works best when you begin to weigh all the factors that the conference seems to have to consider. Here is a list of things I “think” the conference must factor into its format choice. Some of this is stuff I’ve read or seems obvious:
  • Maximum NCAA committee exposure for bottom tier teams: The ACC went to a 12-team format in 2017 and publicly stated they were motivated to give those 11th/12th place teams opportunity to “help” themselves for NCAA Tournament committee. (see UNC in 2016).
  • Conference Tournament “fatigue” v NCAA Tournament prep: The conference tournament comes at end of a long season and may force teams to play 1-2 more games over a week perhaps taxing a pitching staff right before heading into the NCAA tournament the following week. Format must not force a team to play too many games.
  • Entertainment Value: Fans do attend/watch these tournaments. Putting an exciting/interesting product on the field is important. The ACC’s pool play inevitably means you will have some games that are meaningless to the tournament outcome. The SEC’s format includes no meaningless games

2017 ACC Format:
  • Pool Play
  • Tues-Sun
  • 12 Teams
  • 15 games total (3xTues, 3xWed, 3xThurs, 3xFri, 2xSat, 1xSun)
  • Pool Play with 4 pools of 3 teams created situation where 4 of the 12 pool play games had no bearing on final pool winner (i.e. meaningless games wrt tournament)
  • Pool play guarantees 2 games per team
  • 4 games (max) for the 2 teams in Championship over the 6 day tournament
http://raycomsports.com/sports_labs...dium=post&utm_campaign=base&utm_content=champ


2014-2016 ACC Format:
  • Pool Play
  • Tues-Sun (Tues- PlayIn for bottom 4 seeds)
  • 10 Teams
  • 15 games total (2xTues, 3xWed, 3xThurs, 3xFri, 3xSat, 1xSun)
  • Pool play Wed-Sat with 2 pools of 4 teams each. Typically, 2-3 “meaningless” games in pool play
  • Pool play guarantees 3 games per team
  • 4 games max for 2 teams in Championship over 5 days (Wed-Sun)… if a bottom 4 team makes Championship (Ga Tech in 2014), 5 games over 6 days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atlantic_Coast_Conference_Baseball_Tournament


2007-2013 ACC Format:
  • Pool Play
  • Wed-Sun
  • 8 Teams
  • 13 games total (3xWed, 3xThurs, 3xFri, 3xSat, 1xSun)
  • Same format as 2014-2016 without PlayIn on Tuesday

2017 SEC Format:
  • Bracket (Combo Single/Double Elimination)
  • Tues-Sun
  • 12 teams
  • 4 game Single Elimination/PlayIn with bottom 8 seeds
  • 17 games total (3xTues; 4xWed, 4xThurs, 3xFri, 2xSat, 1xSun)
  • Championship Game was LSU v Ark
    • Ark (4 seed) played 5 games in 4 days (2xThurs, Fri, Sat, Sun)
    • LSU (2 seed) played 4 games in 5 days (Wed, Thurs, Sat, Sun)
http://a.espncdn.com/SEC/baseball/2017/2017 SEC Baseball Tournament Bracket.pdf
 
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