Okay, I realise that it is not worth it to get upset over a show that, in a best case scenario, is only lowering my IQ by 20 points. But the elimination pyramid that American Gladiators is using is stupid.
There are 24 competitors in the season, 12 men and 12 women. Each week, two men and two women compete against each other, for a total of six pairs of each sex. That results in six winners for each. But only the winners with the top four times in the eliminator — the final obstacle course — make it to the semi-final round.
That doesn’t make any sense to me, because now we have a situation where some of the people who did not actually win their matchup have better eliminator times than those that did win their matchup.
So in theory, we have people who are stronger competitors, and more deserving of a spot in the finals, being bumped because they did not officially “win.”
If they want to make it solely time-based — top four times go on to the semi-finals — then do that. If they want to make it solely elimination based — the six winners go on — then do that. But this combo of winners/best times is leaving out some of the good people who happened to be matched up with an even stronger person, while advancing some of the weaker people who just happened to be matched up with another weak person.
I think the show’s producers have some serious thinking to do on this issue.
In other news, I did not make it to the next round of voting at the Canadian Blog Awards — not surprising and I’m not upset or anything. But I will add that I think it is not fair, nor in keeping with the awards’ stated goal of increasing exposure for a wide variety of blogs in Canada, that their wide-open nomination process has allowed several blogs to be nominated in upwards of 7 or 8 categories, and advanced to the final round (top 5 in each category) in all of those categories. Shouldn’t a blog be classified under one grouping? If a variety of topics are covered, isn’t that what the “Best Personal Blog” category is for? Doesn’t it seem rather ridiculous to have 25+ categories, if the awards are just going to be divided between two or three sites anyway?
I think the award creators have some serious thinking to do on this issue.
TurtleHead 
Serious thinking.
This is in fact an issue in any pyramid arrangement. Unless every team plays every other team in each round, there’s always the chance that a team advances even though a better team is eliminated. However, the best team will still win in the end (this assumes that the outcome between two teams is deterministic). I think it’s a good pragmatic solution to the problem which would otherwise require too many matchups.
Bummer about not advancing. I did vote for you, by the way!