The Martlet

The UVic men’s basketball team’s playoff hopes hung by a thread on Saturday, Feb. 13.

Fighting for the wild card spot in the CanWest postseason with both Trinity Western and Lethbridge, the Vikes needed a very specific set of circumstances to lock up their seventh consecutive playoff bid.

First, the Vikes needed to win against SFU, which they did with a solid 77-67 in the early afternoon. Next, UBC needed to defeat Trinity Western and Calgary to beat Lethbridge. UBC came through, but Calgary was upset in a nail-biter. With the Vikes and the Pronghorns tied in terms of record, the wild card spot was to be determined by a set of eight tie-breakers.

This is where the insanity began. Every league and sport has a system for tie-breakers. Baseball rectifies ties with a single-game playoff. The NFL uses a set of 12 criteria to determine a winner.

Unlike the reprehensible CanWest system, the NFL’s system allows for a winner to be determined by the first tie-breaker that either team wins. But whoever designed the tie-breakers for CanWest must have forgotten to take their logic pills that morning — the CanWest criteria requires one team to win more of the tie-breakers than the other for a winner to be determined.

Because UVic won two of the criteria, and Lethbridge won two while the teams drew even on four, the final decision was made via a vote of non-playoff coaches in CanWest.

Let that sink in for a moment. The fate of the UVic men’s team, after an entire season of hard work, came down a vote. The UVic basketball program has been silent on the issue since the ruling was made last weekend, and probably is right to do so.

Let’s address some of the issues the vote decision has caused.

This is one of the most inexplicable rulings ever seen in the sporting world.

There are six teams in CanWest that don’t get into the playoffs. A basic principle of polling, voting and surveying in general is that the smaller the number of voters, the less representative the vote is of reality. It’s a hard pill to swallow that this six-person vote was valid.

This kind of action also defies and undercuts what sports are supposed to be about. Whoever is best at putting this ball in this net wins, and there is no grey area. There is a winner, there is a loser and there is no debate over that.

Bringing a vote into something so pivotal as to who will be crowned champion undermines that virtue, that black and white simplicity that attracts people to sports.

This is not politics, this is athletic competition. A case could be made that this rule made the battle for the final spot in the playoffs into a popularity contest.

This article is not a plea for the Vikes to be admitted into the playoffs. In reality, Lethbridge deserves the berth, as they won the season series against UVic. In most sports, the head-to-head record between tied teams is what the tie-breaker comes down to.

But attention must be called to this heinous rule. The phrase “leave it all on the field” is popular in sports. Coaches call on their teams to leave no energy reserved and to give it their all on the court. That’s the only element of control that exists in sports. You play as hard and as well as you can, and that’s all you can do.

For an entire season, the Vikes left it all on the court. And now their season ends because a miniscule group of possibly biased people decided it would be so.

The direction a team takes through the journey of a season should be determined on the field of play. CanWest should be ashamed of itself for allowing this provision into their rulebook, and for taking the power out of the hands of the athletes.