To all of you who have found me because of this very benign tweet that somehow went viral, 1) I think all playoff systems are stupid and 2) I would have said this if it were USC, Cal, LSU, or anyone else and it has nothing to do with UCLA. I am VERY consistent on hating playoffs.
Zlatan Ibrahimović calls American fans the softest fans he ever played for because they didn’t care about losing until the playoffs
"Most of my career I played in Italy, France, Spain, England, then I came over to US. I think US had the softest fans"
"when we were losing games, they were like don't worry, we just need to reach the playoffs. and I'm like what do you mean don't worry? in my world I am worried"
"if you think about my contract, I get paid now. I don't get paid when the playoff starts"
UCLA went 52-8.
One of the greatest regular seasons in decades.
National No. 1 seed.
And it doesn't reach the regional final.
@JacobRudner on a stunning loss in Los Angeles ⤵️
https://t.co/QjmWteVoVG
@JordanFalls I'm aware of college schedule limitations, which is why I believe you need some sort of threshold to distill the number of teams (I would propose conference consolidation and using conference regular season champs) and then a larger sample of competition b/w qualifying teams. 2/2
@JordanFalls American sports use them to create dopamine hits and jack up TV revenue. They don't care about whether the team with the best claim to being called champion actually wins the title. 1/2
@AllAmPotatoes@realjdbreen I have a half baked proposal in my replies. Would fully flesh it out if I thought the system could be changed. I think fewer teams and more games (round robin format home and away) would produce a truer champion than exists now.
@AllAmPotatoes@yawearesoback@janderson_22 I don't know that UCLA had the best year. They probably did, but different conferences and schedules and all that. MLB does not need a postseason, but college baseball probably does given the number of teams. Just need something with much more weight on the regular season.
@JordanFalls I had no pretensions about them being the best team in college basketball that year. I enjoyed that they got hot, but that’s what it was. Would they have been a champion as the word is meant to be used? No. They would have been a tournament winner.