Imagine if the Brandeis men's basketball team faced mighty seven-footer Greg Oden and the Ohio State Buckeyes in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Facing a team of future NBA starters, the result wouldn't be much different from a scrimmage between my Jewish high school team and McDonald's All-Americans.It's clear, though, why this scenario is ridiculous: Most Division III schools and Division I schools are in different basketball stratospheres.

But this just happens to be exactly how the men's intramural basketball season was arranged at Brandeis. For the first time in years, the intramural playoffs didn't match teams of similar skill level against one another, as matchups had been arranged during the regular season. Instead, all teams were combined into one bracket. This meant that C-league teams with players no taller than my grandmother faced lineups of A-teams who could dunk over them in the early rounds of the postseason. And plenty of people were mad.

This snub hurt my team in particular. I was part of a B-league team, the Grundmans, which went 5-0 in the regular season and finished second in the standings. I felt pretty confident entering the playoffs, figuring that our undefeated season would place us ahead of the bottom-dwelling A-league teams.

But I couldn't have been more wrong. Every single A-league team, including one that lost every single one of its games, was ranked ahead of us in the bracket and given easier playoff matchups. While my team was given the 10th seed and didn't make it past the second round, the A-league team with no wins got to beat up on the worst C- and B-league teams all the way to the quarterfinals.

According to Tom Rand, the Assistant Director of Athletics, because no other intramural sport at Brandeis has separate playoffs, basketball shouldn't either.

"The first reason I chose to not have a separate men's B-division playoff tournament for IM Basketball this year was to make it consistent with all the other sports we offer," Rand said. "All the other sports have one men's playoff."

Although I can understand this attempt at uniformity, it still makes as much sense to me as the Brandeis housing lottery system.

While it is true that there was little complaint when the flag football playoffs were combined this past fall, there is much bigger disparity in skill level among the basketball teams than among the flag football teams. All it takes for one IM basketball team to be unstoppable is to acquire a few star players.

The team that won this year's championship, Duvey's Dozen, had two former varsity players, Tate Sherman '08 and Rocco Toppi '08, who destroyed B-league teams in the playoffs by over 20 points a game.

In football, with seven players on a team, standout players cannot pulverize opponents the way a few all-star basketball players can on a court with three teammates.

While a B-league defeated an A-league team in the football playoffs, not a single B-team defeated an A-team in the basketball playoffs.

Rand also said the new playoff system was fair because more B-league teams should have been playing in the A-league to begin with.

"The second reason [for changing the playoff system] is that I didn't like the fact that last year, teams purposely played in the B-division for the sole purpose of trying to dominate and win the title," he said. "For example, one team in the B-division last year beat their opponents by an average of 42 points per game."

I admire Rand's desire to create a more even playing field in the regular season. But by making one playoff bracket and matching up teams of vastly different skill levels, there is an even greater likelihood of embarrassing blowouts-and playoff losses also hurt more.

Additionally, is it fair to punish the entire league for a few B-teams that are too good.

Last year's intramural format was much more fun in the regular season, knowing you could enter the playoffs and have a decent chance against teams of your skill level.

I am not bashing Rand. He has done a remarkable job building an intramural program that the student body respects, and participation has skyrocketed since his arrival.

But my expectations for intramural sports are high, and in the current playoff format, the program is not meeting those expectations. Luckily, this playoff format can be easily fixed, and once it is, this controversy can be a small blip on the radar screen of a wildly successful intramural program.