NightCap takes issue with intramural brackets

Because of numerous e-mails and phone calls from my most loyal fans (mainly my mother), the Night Cap is back. With my return, I wanted to talk about my favorite type of sports at this university: intramural sports. I will admit that I take intramurals way too seriously, but hey, I am still trying to live the dream for one last year.

Now, to more pressing matters.Two years ago, the university switched the intramural playoff format in the sports people actually care about.

Before, the fraternities had their own 10-team playoff bracket, while open league teams played in a different bracket. The fraternity and open-league champions were supposed to play in another championship game after both brackets were complete, but the fraternity team usually skipped the game. Beginning with the 2004-2005 school year, a new system came about that said all teams, fraternity, graduate school and open league, would all play in one bracket.

When I caught wind of the new format, most fraternity members, including myself, were furious with this decision, because it took away from the rivalry that comes with fraternity intramurals. At the time, intramural director Chris Hutton told me that the format was switched to allow for an all-school intramural champion to be crowned.

At that point I felt like that was a decent reason for the change, but I still did not like it.

I was later told, by an undisclosed source, that there was more to this decision than what was on the surface. Apparently, the university demanded this switch in the aftermath of a nearly full-out brawl during a fraternity basketball game. (I will not give the names of the houses involved, but I will say that I was ejected from the game myself.)

Regardless of how the new system came to be, it is deeply flawed.

My biggest concern with the system is that open league teams have the ability to recruit anyone they want for their team, and they have the ability to choose any student or faculty member to participate, while fraternities have to choose from a group of 60 to 100. Most of these guys have lived the frat-life for a couple of years and are not the athletes they once were.

This becomes a major disadvantage in the playoffs when fraternity teams are playing the club soccer team, when they themselves are used to playing other out-of-shape frat guys. In soccer only one fraternity, Phi Delt, made the semifinals this season. The same held true for basketball, when no teams qualified for the semifinals and only one, again Phi Delt, made the quarterfinals. What about football? No teams in the semifinals, either.

This new system has greatly diminished the intramural scene for fraternities, and maybe it has made it better for the open and graduate teams, but it is the fraternities who sign up teams for every sport and take them more seriously.

Another flaw in the new system is how the fraternity point system is handled. Under the old system, houses received points for their regular season finish, and then again for how they finished in the playoffs. The system is the same for the regular season still, but points are allocated in the playoffs to the teams who make it the farthest. This would seem to make sense, only that the houses are playing these open teams that change their rosters week to week and add guys who played on the SMU basketball team just for the playoffs.

A point system for the fraternities simply should not be based on games that are not played against other fraternities – it greatly diminishes the credibility of the system.

The last point I would like to make is how players are allowed to play on multiple teams in the playoffs. This is like if A-Rod played for both the United States and the Dominican Republic in the recent World Baseball Classics. It just does not make sense. I am guilty of this – I play on an open team and a fraternity team and have had nightmares of them having to play each other in the playoffs.

A simple solution would be to go back to the old system, but with one additional rule that will keep the spirit of having an all-school champion alive. The champion of the fraternity bracket should be forced to play the champion of the open bracket, and if the fraternity team forfeits that game, then it loses its points for winning the fraternity championship.

Hopefully, something can be done to bring back the excitement that used to be fraternity intramurals.

Disagree? Contact the Nightcap at [email protected]