Elimination round playoffs are the best thing in sports. There's a reason college football fans were clamoring a few years ago for a playoff system like all the other sports (and why the BCS finally caved and awarded them with one): there's a primal emotion inside almost all men to have a playoff, winner-take-all, win-or-die elmination format. Not to be sexist, but I do think it has something to do with men in the course of history going into combat and fighting for their lives: either kill or be killed, the rigors of war. Men were historically those who had to go out there and expect to be the warriors representing their families, their country, their very existence. So I think it's in men's DNA to want an elimination tournament in sports (I know it doesn't totally figure since men are descended from men AND women, and genetics and all, but maybe men have that comative gene in the Y chromosome? I haven't really thought it out).
I was just watching the 2003 NBA playoffs Lakers v. Spurs Game 5 and Derek Fisher's last-second shot and that came to me: the joys of winning a close playoff game. The playoffs are just totally a different animal than a regular season game: the added element that the winner not only wins and moves one step closer to their goal of eventually being the champion, but the loser is out and lost forever. The loser has much more to lose because that's their only hope, while the winner still needs to beat other teams to make the result meaningful, but for the loser it's all over. That's why fans watch playoff games, and I love to be in competitive situations of playoff games: we know everyone is trying, no one wants to lose and watch their hope disperse, it gets more intense (I've yelled at a lot of refs during my time in playoff situations), a lot more is on the line. It is, essentially, the closest thing most non-military people, non-law enforcement, non-organized crime related people have to a do-or-die situation. Because most people don't have war to deal with, and their lives are not on the line, sports is the next closest thing, and really competitive people like myself feed on that adrenaline rush of pure competition (and the fact, I'm sure, that even if we do lose we don't ACTUALLY die, that we might get another chance). That's why I love elimination playoffs.
I kind of wish there was an elimination tournament-style playoffs for the Republican presidential nomination right, seems like there's too many cooks in the kitchen and it's allowing Donald Trump to continue leading the "race."
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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