Buckeye Fan 19

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Although I’d argue that the U.S. did care about winning, just not to the point where we played our starters all game. Whereas nfl teams don’t give a frick at all if they lose 42-0 that final game. However I do agree that your analogy of week 18 in the nfl is better to describe this game tonight.

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The better analogy might be the backups playing in the 4th quarter of a college football blowout… except in this case it was the entire match and not just the 4th quarter. The players on the field want to perform well, but it really doesn’t matter at all or give you an indication of the actual quality of the team (i.e., the starters).

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lol no it’s not. Argentina lost a group stage game last World Cup. Spain lost one in 2010.

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And those were matches they actually cared played their top players / cared about winning. :lol:

Some of the freakout here is mind-boggling to me.

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It probably mattered to the folks who paid thousands of dollars for a ticket.

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The equivalent of paying thousands of dollars for an NFL preseason game in August.

Overall, yes, I think advancing the slight majority of #3 seeds has been a positive. But the combination of removal of GD as the primary tiebreaker in favor of H2H (which I’m generally fine with) combined with group winners being locked into certain matches will make for some boring match #3 of the group stages.

I still think a straight #1-32 bracket with 1-12 the group winners by pts and GD, #13-24 the group #2 by pts and GD, and #25-32 the top 8 group #3 would both be the best way to enhance excitement throughout the entire group stage and be the most fair/most “rewarding” to the top group stage teams. If you get a rematch in the round of 32 or 16, so be it.

Perhaps you’d need to take a 4-day break of no matches between the final group stage match and the first knockout stage match to guarantee each team gets at least 4 days rest (and no more than 7) but I think it’d make the entire group stage better.

That’s what I want to know, too. It seems a bit strange/complicated to me.

I guess it has to be this way if you’re trying to both avoid rematches and give proper rest, but idk, feels like just doing a 1-32 seeded bracket with the 12 group winners seeded 1-12 by pts then GD, followed by the 12 #2 group teams seeded 13-24 by pts then GD, followed by the remaining 8 #3 teams seeded at #25-32 would be most intuitive.

Would also give some incentive to teams in match #3 that have already clinched the group. Unless I’m mistaken/misunderstanding, I think our match against Turkey means literally nothing, because it doesn’t impact our seeding/opponent at all.

For the groups that are assigned as #1 vs #3, does the top group winner (e.g., the team with 9 pts and best GD) play the 8th 3rd-place team, or is it a random draw?

Antonio Freeman TYFYS

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It was actually a solid piece, I was cringing when I read the thread title. I say this as somebody that took out a bajillion in loans to get my graduate degree from an Ivy school:

- Adjunct professors at those universities are some of the best educators the world has seen due to their real world applicable skills.

- Tenured professors and administrators at those universities are the 7th levels of Dante’s inferno for the intersection of hubris and uselessness.

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Brooks was head of the American Enterprise Institute for a while and is a devout Catholic. I highly doubt he’s MAGA, but a lot of people will prob see “Harvard professor” and just assume it’s a liberal communist nut job.

His research / writings on happiness is actually very interesting and something that I think a lot of people on here would find very intriguing. He examines four main buckets of family, friendship, work and religion/spirituality, and how each of them are required for a happier life; I’m presuming sports fandom would be in either or both of family and friendship.

The per capita income of the population within a 1-mile radius of Wrigley is significantly, significantly higher than the American median.

Jets and Giants represent the NYC metro as a whole. Devils are in the NYC metro but in my opinion really only represent New Jersey.

Islanders are a bit more interesting as they represent “Long Island” more than “NYC” I’d say, but they probably could be counted as a team whose base extends into Queens and even Brooklyn a bit.