5 Comments
Mar 21, 2023Liked by Ian Boyd

Nice job, again.

What you are describing for college football probably applies to everything in life. We have this human need to know the best.

How do professional schools select from a large pool of applicants? A standardized test, GPA, an interview, “activities”? Probably doesn’t even choose the best students, much less the best doctor, lawyer, business administrator, etc.

Google “the best” for anything…the best place to retire, the best movie, the best hospital, the best green beans…and you get lists in rank order from various sources.

All of these involve subjective choices made by a group of people. Even if criteria are defined in advance and the best simply falling out of that filter, the criteria were chosen by people. Why would the best high school recruits or the best team be any different?

Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” We could substitute “there is ‘no best’, only trade-offs”.

Go Knights!

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IAN….I love the statement….”Complaining is for the losers”!!

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Totally spot on - and while basketball, just by its nature, will have some "fluke" wins/losses the team that wins the championship must really really good because you can't win six straight games spread over three weeks against the best teams in the country unless you are really really good. (Which is why FDU/Princeton won't win it all.) The best basketball team(s) have the ability to somehow avoid losing when they don't have their "A" game - it's part of being "the best". Purdue didn't have that this year.

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