A Modest Proposal for the 2022 United Wiffle National Championship
Everybody seems to have an opinion. Here's mine
Once again, Old Line Wiffle Club had the opportunity to participate in the United Wiffle National Championship. Though we (again) went 0-3 in pool play, it remains an awesome experience to play in the tournament and truly shows who the best of the best is in fast pitch wiffs.
A lot (and I mean a lot) of people have expressed their opinions on the tournament format for this year. For those of you who were not in the know:
12 Teams automatically qualified for the tournament; the Final Four teams from the 2020 tournament, as well as eight automatic qualifiers from around the country; those teams qualified for “Route 2”
32 other teams registered, and played in “Route 1”. Pool play winners there advanced to the knockout round.
Some teams from Route 1 had to detour to Route 2 for a chance to play on Saturday.
Once the field was whittled to 16 teams, it was a single-elimination format from there.
The United Wiffle site does a much better explanation of this than I just did.
Some people have a lot of consternation with the format. I, personally, don’t have a problem with it. If you win your games, you advance to the knockout round, no matter which route you come out of .
But the United Wiffle player survey that came out earlier today got me thinking, and I submitted a modest proposal for a format that might make people a little happier and reward teams for good performances in the tournament.
In an effort to reward teams for winning their pools, I recommend the following:
Tournament Field: Expand the available slots to 48
Automatic Qualifiers: Narrow the field of automatic qualifiers to eight: the MAW Champion, NWLA Champion, Hometown Cup Champion, Golden Stick Yard Champion, Wiffle in the Mitten Champion, SE Wiffle Champion, Texas Champion, and either the AWA or PLW Champion. This ensures, at minimum, an automatic qualifier representing the East, Midwest, West, and South. It also eliminates the “legacy” automatic bids for the Final Four Teams from the previous year.
Pool Play: The field of 48 is divided into eight pools of six teams. Each pool would have one of the automatic qualifiers. Teams play five games in pool play, four-innings a piece. Games can end in a tie. Pool play will be scored like soccer pool play; three points for a win, one point for a tie.
Knockout Round: 24-teams advance to the knockout round
Poll Play Winners: Eight pool winners advance to the Round of 16, seeded #1-#8 by points, wins, run differential, other tiebreakers.
Knockout Round Qualifiers: Eight second place pool finishers and the eight best teams remaining play each other in the round of 24. Second place finishers would be seeded #9-#16, with the other qualifying teams seeded #17-#24. Both sets of seeds would be seeded by points, wins, run differential, other tiebreakers.
Knockout Round Play: Single-elimination until two teams remain.
Championship: Championship is a best of three series between the final two teams.
Is this even possible given the parameters of the two-day weekend? I have no idea. Would this proposal make everybody happy? Absolutely not. It would mean every team would have to play between ten and thirteen games in two days in order to win the championship. It would also mean, at minimum, five games for every team in the tournament.
You could also create twelve four-team pools, and allow the pool winners and either the second place team from each pool or the top-12 teams based on tiebreakers to advance to the knockout round.
Like it, don’t like it, it’s just an idea to generate discussion. No matter what format is used for the 2022 United Wiffle National Championship, the same naysayers will still be there trying to win it all.