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I agree with gregmorrissey, and would go further... by Kbyrnes

...There should be no discussion of "objectively deserving" or "objectively nondeserving" in sports until you define what you mean by "deserving."

I think a simple answer to "who objectively deserves to win the championship in a playoff system" is, the team that won all its games in the playoffs. In what other sports setting do we not agree that once you're in the playoffs, anything can happen? And if David survives to the end and knocks off Goliath, do we really say that team was objectively undeserving? I wouldn't.

Now, if you really meant that a team that looked bad on paper somehow beat the top teams in the country, yes, a team can look bad on paper.

I believe we tend to think that each team, each year, has some sort of inherent quality on the scale of good to bad, and that they can be assessed based on their size, depth, coaching staff, etc., when the only thing that ultimately defines goodness or badness in competitive sports, distilling all the subsidiary elements like size, depth, etc., is winning or losing each game; and teams could go up or down in their likelihood to win a game for a myriad of reasons. For a recent example compare Clemson when we played them at home in November to when we played them in the playoffs.

It's a lot of fun to compare, discuss, and cavil about teams; I remember loud arguments in Morrisey Hall over whether Texas or Ohio had better high school football teams. That sort of thing is part and parcel of being a fan. But if you want to introduce the idea of "objectively deserving to win it all," I think it has to come down to results.