Losing Human Interaction

The seeding for the Geneseo Regional were posted on the IHSA website yesterday. The results were:
1- Geneseo
2- Galesburg
3- Alleman
4- Dunlap
5- IVC

Before I begin to give my thoughts, let me make one thing clear-- based on IHSA seeding guidelines, Geneseo should have been the #1 seed, so that is not the issue of my thoughts.

Back in the old days, each coach attended the seeding meeting and you had to sit across a table and give your seeds. So if you were going to seed a team low, you had to say in front of that schools coach. In the years this method was used, there would be some times when one coach would raise a question about another coach's seeds. And then a coach had to defend their seeding. At one particular seeding meeting, a Peoria coach verbally attacked a coach from the Mid-Illini for the coach's seeding. It was heated and it had some profanity in it.

The bottom line, if as a coach you failed to do your homework, you might be called out. And when we had 16-18 teams to seed, it would become apparent that some coaches would gently try to manipulate the results by sliding one team up 2-3 spots and another down 2-3 spots. The intent was usually to either have a positive impact on your own seed or to try to avoid an opponents. These little "manipulations" were carefully done.

Now with only 5 seeds, it is much less complicated. In our Regional seeding, there were a lot of teams who played each other.

Sadly we had two coaches who rated one team that had beaten another team, lower. In other words, on the court, the team beat the other, but the coaches chose to seed the other team better. This would not happen if we had been face to face. Either the other coaches don't do their homework, or they are trying to manipulate the results for what they perceived as a personal gain. Sadly, it opens up a whole can of worms. Next year it will be interesting if we are all in the same Regional if other coaches decide to use the same method in seeding the offending coaches' teams. I am sure we would hear, "But we beat them, how can you seed us that way." And their complaint would be valid, but....

Human interaction eliminates all of this. But in our world we will not go back.