Bryant: Beach volleyball seeding rule is dumb

BEIJING • Beach volleyball has to have the dumbest rule of dumb rules.

If a team from the host country is ranked in the top five on the qualification list then simply because it is the host country, simply because the matches will be played on its sand, it's granted the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament.

The American combo of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh has dominated beach volleyball like few others. They've won 18 consecutive tournaments. That's not matches, not games, but tournaments.

After Sunday's easy victory over Japan's Mika Teru Saiki and Chiaki Kusuhara, 21-12, 21-15, May-Treanor and Walsh pushed their consecutive-matches-won streak to 102.

They own 6,440 qualification points from eight total events. That puts them atop the Olympic rankings. China's Tian Jia and Wang Jie boast 5,500 points after as many events - good for second in the rankings. That 940 difference between first and second is 20 points shy of being as big as the gap between second and fifth.

Yet Tian and Wang are the top seed at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"We were given a heads-up," Walsh said. "Those are just the Olympic rules. In Athens it wasn't an issue. It's new to us this year. But you've got to beat everybody at the Olympics regardless if you're seeded one, two or whatever you are. You've got to beat the best teams. That's what we plan to do regardless of seed."

OK, she can be politically correct.

I won't.

It's stupid, amazingly stupid.

Why even keep score if the score doesn't matter in the end?
There was a reason for the qualifying points - presumably to figure out who were the best teams, to figure out who deserved to be a part of the Olympic family and in what capacity they'd be a part of the family.

May-Treanor and Walsh earned a No. 1 spot only to be told they're No. 2. The Chinese team didn't earn the spot it's in. But it's there nonetheless.

It's a big deal based on principle. You work to get the top seed so you can play the lowest seed. You earn that. It's much like the NCAA Tournament rewarding you with less challenging competition. It makes the regular season mean something.

But this is giving competitive advantage to a home team simply because its country is paying to host the event.

"It's different," May-Treanor said about the seeding. "It makes you think at times why they put points on it. But in the whole scheme of things, you have to beat everybody. We have to knock down every team that we come up against.

"Yeah, it's a shock to your system. But those are the rules. We can only control what happens out there."

Still, it has to be irritating, something that might give the world's best team a little something to chew on.

May-Treanor smiled a nice sardonic smile, leaned forward, took a breath, "a little bit," she said, smiling even more.

May-Treanor and Walsh won't breeze through the Olympics the way they walked through Saiki and Kusuhara.

But odds are good the duo will play well enough long enough to show the Federation International de Volleyball, how dumb it can be, especially during its biggest and brightest show.