When I look at this contest and the Morning News ToB that inspired it, there are several more specific great things that can come out of the tournaments.
-They encourage both readers and judges to read books that they wouldn’t ordinarily have picked up. That’s something that people repeatedly state as one of the best outcomes of the contest. That has nothing to do with the judges’ decisions, but it’s worth mentioning.
-They provoke discussions about the books; often by putting two seemingly unlikely pairings next to each other, it can spark new insights about them. A good judges’ decision can do that beautifully (and it doesn’t even have to get into flaws). It can also provoke interesting discussions about the books in the comments, too. Bringing up flaws can really spark that discussion, in part because they give some friction to rub up against. A lot of hand-wringing and praise leaves little room for more than “my bracket’s still intact” or “boring decision.”
That said, the commenting crowd in the BoB is oddly reluctant to engage each other. There seemed to be a lot of people itching to talk about TFiOS and the reasons they disliked it, but that conversation never took off- nobody was engaging each other. (Compare that to the comments on the ToB, which can be really great discussions). Good decisions may help with that, but it may never happen (crowd’s too small and people drop a comment and never come back? The mock award blogs scratch that discussion itch and people don’t need the BoB to provide that space?).
-For me, one of the most interesting things that the decisions can do is to contribute to a conversation about what standards we use to judge books. As I understand it the ToB was founded as a way of mocking awards by pointing out the arbitrary nature of such judgements. But articulating a reason or a standard by which to measure to very different books is a really fascinating conversation, whether you agree with the standards or not. For this, judges aren’t bounded by the criteria of the ALA awards- they can set whatever standards they want and explain to us why they matter. That’s what makes coin-flipping so annoying to me- you’re refusing to engage in what can be the most interesting part of the exercise.

This is just my view from the peanut gallery, but it seems to me that if we want this to be more than just a bit of fun (even if it is also a lot of fun, which it absolutely is), having a sense of what you want it to be and communicating that to the judges might help get the kinds of decisions you seem to want.

“apples and oranges”
“comparisons are odious”
“so hard”
“lyrical”
“flip a coin”
“bribe”
“task”
“impossible”
[expression of regret at taking this assignment]
“bribery”
“how can i”
“holy man”

and on the positive tip, for every mention of something you didn’t like about a given book (gasp), you get a lovely dauber and a compost cookie from momofuku milk bar.

Perkins v. Boyce v. Patterson coming up later today.