FB: Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[d-train]

The one thing in emma's proposal that many seem to have a problem with is the historical angle. I don't believe this year's team is last year's team etc, but there are PROGRAMS that have a history of producing quality teams over the years. ( emma now feels that UWW is in this group, but 10 years ago or previous, I doubt that he would make this argument ;-) ) I do believe that history should be at least a minor consideration. There are teams that are considered elite, just because they are from a certain school. I'll use Linfield as an example. UMU is also in that group. This should be a tie breaker type of factor. Things change from year to year, but I think some teams must be considered until it's proven that they no longer belong. Just as a team usually has to prove they are worthy, if the history has shown otherwise.

I'd wager that the previous year is used as a tie-breaker type of factor. In people's regional rankings, in determining the higher bracket and overall seeding, in selecting those last few at-large bids, etc. 

[wally_wabash]

I'd wager that the previous year is used as a tie-breaker type of factor. In people's regional rankings, in determining the higher bracket and overall seeding, in selecting those last few at-large bids, etc.

The previous year's performance in the football championship may be used when determining seeding, but only amongst undefeated teams and only if/when the primary criteria don't adequately separate teams.  So, carrying a loss, Whitewater won't get home field preference if they do advance to the tournament this year. 

But other than that, committees should not be looking at prior years' results when ranking, selecting, or seeding teams per the selection/seeding guidelines.   

[d-train]

But other than that, committees should not be looking at prior years' results when ranking, selecting, or seeding teams per the selection/seeding guidelines.   

I'm not 100% convinced that shouldn't always equals don't -- but thanks for the clarification of the guidelines.

[emma17]

The one thing in emma's proposal that many seem to have a problem with is the historical angle. I don't believe this year's team is last year's team etc, but there are PROGRAMS that have a history of producing quality teams over the years. ( emma now feels that UWW is in this group, but 10 years ago or previous, I doubt that he would make this argument ;-) ) I do believe that history should be at least a minor consideration. There are teams that are considered elite, just because they are from a certain school. I'll use Linfield as an example. UMU is also in that group. This should be a tie breaker type of factor. Things change from year to year, but I think some teams must be considered until it's proven that they no longer belong. Just as a team usually has to prove they are worthy, if the history has shown otherwise. I do believe that, again, using UWW as an example, they had to prove themselves before they got their due respect. Now they have to prove they are not worthy - at least to me.

El wrongo.  I think you're teasing but this is an important point to all this.
I would not push for UWW if I didn't think they were worthy, period.  I respect what the players on other teams have sacrificed to reach success.  And before anybody suggests I'm disrespecting kids from a MIAA runner up, think first about the kids on the 8-2 team that played a much tougher schedule- should they be passed over for the MIAA runner up? Respect (aka fairness, goes both ways).       

I'm a huge believer in Programs and Tradition.  IMO, they absolutely have an impact on current teams.  Take a look around Perkins stadium- what do you see?  Powered by Tradition. 
Do people really think players on this year's team (any team) don't draw confidence from things they may have accomplished last year?  Do people really think a return starter that played against strong competition the previous year isn't an advantage to this year's team?  Do people really believe that a coaching staff that's been in place for a long time and has consistently shown an ability to get their team to play competitively against the best competition, year in and year out, isn't an advantage to this year's team? 
Of course these are advantages.  That's why teams (actually programs) are given the benefit of the doubt in rankings, because they have proved it historically.
 

[emma17]

Instead of your endless dissertations on why something like what I presented won't work, how about offering a suggestion?

First, I would close the book on the previous season and any season that happened prior to the current one.  This point is a lynchpin of your "better" way to do this and I find it the most offensive point.  I'll echo exactly what jk said on this as he hit the nail on the head there. 

Next, I think a major problem with the current selection process is a lack of useable information.  There is useful information out there, but the committees aren't allowed to use it.  To that end, I would do the following:
- re-instate the "once ranked, always ranked" provision when determining which teams count as regionally ranked opposition
- add one more week of rankings: published after weeks 8, 9, and 10.  Then the secret ranking after week 11, which I would like to see not be secret, but that isn't critical.  The main point is that we do a better job of giving credit to teams that won important games against good teams. 
- split the RRO criteria as follows: make "wins vs. RROs" a primary criteria and "results vs. RROs" a secondary criteria.  I want to know who you beat.  I know your team can lose, that's why you're in the at-large lane to begin with.  I want to know who you beat. 
- Give credit to teams who have won a game against a team that is already qualified for the field.  Did you beat a conference champion this year?  If so, that needs to count for something. 
- I think we're mainly doing this already, but make sure to count all of the games, not just regional games for records and SOS purposes.  Also count games vs. provisional teams or reclassifying teams.  We really shouldn't be throwing any divisional information out. 

So that's some criteria changes that I think would be really useful.  As far as the selection process itself goes, I would take the regional rankings, scrub them of the AQs and their regional ranking enumeration and place the Pool B eligible teams on a list to be voted on/ranked by the national selection committee.  Committee votes, selects the Pool B team and moves on to Pool C. 

Similarly, from all of the regional rankings, list the teams and their criteria all in one big pot (ranking enumeration redacted) and vote/rank them based on the criteria and without being tethered to one team from one region at a time.

So for instance, if we look at last year (and I'm using the final mock selection here) we would take the regional rankings and get rid of the Pool As.  Then we'd take out the Pool B teams- any Pool B eligible team that is in the rankings:
Chicago
Wesley
TLU
Centre
Rhodes

Now the selection committee looks at all of those teams, compares and debates the criteria, and orders them 1-5.  Top vote getter gets Pool B #1.  Repeat the process with the remaining four teams to get the second Pool B.  Toss the leftovers here into Pool C. 

Now we do the same with the Pool C eligible teams that are listed in the rankings:
Delaware Valley
SJF
St. Lawrence
John Carroll
Wabash
Heidelberg
Muhlenberg
Thomas More
Louisiana College
UW-Oshkosh
Bethel
St. Thomas
Redlands
UW-Platteville
plus the leftover Pool Bs

Now, the committee debates and discusses and ranks these teams.  You might have to pare this down some and first rank a top 10, then re-rank those 10 to get a top 6-7, then vote on those top 6-7 through the same kind of iterative process that we use currently, but instead of adding a team from a certain region, you'd just add in the next team on the top 10 that was made initially.   I hope I'm explaining that properly.  I think the process alleviates some of the regional queuing pressure that I think a lot of people aren't comfortable with (self included, despite the kinds of interesting drama that can crop up during the selection process).  It also gives the national committee the ability to fairly review all of the eligible teams without undermining the work the RACs do.  Win-win I think.

Wally, I need to digest some of this.  But I do want to thank you for posting this.
I like what you do with the Pool B ranking and I like the Pool C ranking, especially getting rid of the revolving Pez Dispenser method of regional team selection. 
I'm not entirely certain how the regional rankings are determined- is SOS still a part of it?  If so, that's my stumbling block.

[wally_wabash]

Wally, I need to digest some of this.  But I do want to thank you for posting this.
I like what you do with the Pool B ranking and I like the Pool C ranking, especially getting rid of the revolving Pez Dispenser method of regional team selection. 
I'm not entirely certain how the regional rankings are determined- is SOS still a part of it?  If so, that's my stumbling block.

My thinking at the moment is to keep the criteria as they are, with the modifications that I mentioned above.  SOS is something that I've been struggling with for a few years now.  I like the idea that teams should get credit for playing more difficult schedules.  I don't think it's a good metric as currently computed.  But I haven't figured out how to do it better just yet.  I do think, however, that many of the other criteria in place account for games against quality opponents (RRO results, mainly).  And as more and more leagues grow to 9-10 teams and play full round robins, all of the SOS numbers gravitate toward .500 with negligible differences on either side of that number.  So, increasingly, the SOS doesn't really identify teams that play strong schedules as much as it identifies teams that have the opportunity to play more than one elective game.  Truthfully, I'd be fine with removing it entirely, but I don't think that's an idea that would ever happen.  More likely is a tweak to the formula that gives it more substance than just counting wins and losses in a vacuum. 

[emma17]

Does anybody know yet if the #1 QB's will play for both UWO and UWP for the upcoming game?

[Pat Coleman]

Kelly played last week. Did he get hurt again?

[emma17]

Kelly played last week. Did he get hurt again?

That's right, I forgot he played. I sure hope he's healthy.  Any news on Kasper?

[Gregory Sager]

I've mostly stayed out of this conversation. But I'd personally support a small change to the AQ's. If an AQ conference champion has 3 or 4 D-3 losses - that bid converts to an at-large for that year.  The champion joins the pool of teams eligible for that bid, but it essentially becomes an extra Pool C and they'd have to compare favorably to possible 9-1/8-2 teams. 

There probably wouldn't be support for that at the 3-loss level...and the 4-loss scenario is quite rare (only a team/bid every 4 years or so)...but still.  Example: Benedictine made the field last year with a 6-4 record.  Congrats on winning your conference, but I think we've seen what you can do against D-3 competition overall.  There were solid 8-2 candidates for an 'extra' Pool C bid.     

Interesting.  Here's a thing that could happen.  Wheaton, North Central, and Illinois Wesleyan could all beat one another and wind up tied for the league lead at 6-1.  They do a funky point differential thing in the CCIW to break this tie and North Central might well win that.  But they'd have 3 losses at that point.  So would you be in favor of taking that bid away from the CCIW? 

In this hypothetical of a hypothetical, surely the CCIW would not award its AQ to someone essentially ineligible to receive it.

You're probably right, but holy cow, North Central would probably be mighty salty about winning that league and having the league give the auto bid to IWU, who they would have beaten h2h.  That's going to be a hard bylaw to pass...both in the CCIW (or any league) and by the NCAA D3 football folks.  Can't imagine any presidents or ADs are in a big rush to forfeit their tournament access.  Outside of the NESCAC, obviously.

Wally, you're injecting far too much realism into this discussion.

Seriously, while I enjoy the repeated excursions into Pool C discussions in this room, some of the suggestions that have been made are clearly well beyond the bounds of anything that the administrators of D3 schools who make the rules for D3 football would ever countenance. Sure, I understand that it's fun to talk about stuff that could never happen, and this is certainly the place for it. But, heck, if you're going to make suggestions that have no hope of ever being adopted by D3's poobahs, why not just dispense with the discussion altogether by all agreeing to the ultimate unrealistic thought experiment -- an increase in the size of the D3 playoff field to 48 or 64 teams? That would solve all of these problems of who should or shouldn't get Pool C berths quite nicely, n'est-ce pas?

I know, I know. Don't bother saying it ...

[Pat Coleman]

I don't know what administrators might consider, and I don't know when it will be "necessary" for people to act. However, d-train isn't proposing anything we haven't discussed before. This is very similar to the Division II policy of "earned access" and I have proposed that D-III consider it for football as well since, as you point out, the tournament is locked in size.

[Gregory Sager]

I dunno, Pat. I'm with Wally on this one. I have a very hard time believing that D3 administrators would dispense with the unrestricted automatic bid for football. They show a strong tendency to have all D3 sports move in lockstep in terms of the rules (e.g., the final regional ranking being kept hidden from public view), and the automatic bid is one of the cornerstones of D3 policy across all sports. Plus, as d-train alluded by using Benedictine as his example, this certainly seems to be a rule that would be widely interpreted as being aimed at the less-powerful leagues whose champions tend to accumulate non-conference losses (e.g., the NACC, the MWC, the ECFC, etc.) -- and I can't picture the administrators who represent the schools in those leagues being willing to, in effect, sell out their own football programs by voting to change the rule in such a way that it would leave their teams vulnerable to being left out of the playoffs if they happen to go 7-3 or 6-4 while winning the league.

[ExTartanPlayer]

The problem with that idea (3+ losses = no AQ) is that it's counter to one of the other arguments floating around this whole discussion.  One of the chief complaints in the general "Fix The Playoffs" discussion is that the current system hurts a team that plays tough nonconference games.  Poor North Central, they scheduled good teams and lost, and now they won't get to go to the prom this year.  emma's been arguing for changes that reward teams who are willing to play tough nonconference games and/or have shown that they can compete against "recognized strong" teams.

A three-loss-no-AQ rule would be counter to that.  It would discourage teams at both ends of the conference spectrum from scheduling tough non-league games.  Teams from lesser conferences would want to stay as far away from the tough non-league games as possible, for obvious reasons (a 7-3 league champion from the MIAA who went 6-0 in the league stays home; no way they're going to step out of their comfort zone and play WIAC or CCIW schools if their AQ is taken away).  Teams from stronger conferences would also want to stay away from potential non-league losses because of the North Central scenario playing out right now.  The great thing about the AQ's as currently set up, which I've said many times by now, is that it does allow for people to schedule the toughest non-league games they want; you can put Mount, Whitewater, and Ohio State on the schedule to start the season, and still have a chance to win your league.  People only look at the current system's Pool C when they say the current system hurts teams who play tough non-league games.  I think the current system actually does a fabulous job protecting teams who play tough non-league games by giving them the parachute of winning their way in through Pool A.  Adding a loss limit for the Pool A bid would absolutely get rid of any desire to schedule fun cross-conference matchups like NCC vs. UWP and Wesley, or even Franklin's willingness to take on Mount and Whitewater the last couple of years.

[wally_wabash]

I need to read more about the earned access model.  I don't think it's as discriminatory as saying you got beat by a million by Mount Union so you're not welcome back to the tournament pretty much ever again (which I realize isn't exactly what's been said, but that's the end result of what has been proposed).  If a conference is "earning access" by way of having a team  be regionally ranked at some point during a season, maybe that's a workable scenario.  I'm not sure...I need to chew on that some more. 

[Andy Jamison - Walla Walla Wildcat]

"Earned Access" +1k

If I am reading Wally and others correctly they argue that we need to award Pool C bids based purely on results from this year.  We shouldn't take into consideration results from prior years as those were just that.. prior years.  All 9-1 and 8-2 teams should be viewed the same no matter who they played.

A 9-1 Wittenberg should be viewed just the same as a 9-1 St Johns or UWP even though both St Johns and UWP played a much more difficult schedule (I know.. I know... data bias and all the fancy terms for getting around rankings... )

At some point score differentials in playoff results have to factor into how we view relative strengths of conferences.  If the UMAC keeps getting beat by wide margins in games against the MIAC then at some point we have to be able to say that the MIAC is a much tougher conference than the UMAC.  Especially if the UMAC champion is rolling thru their conference.

A 9-1 UMAC 2nd place team wouldn't deserve a Pool C bid over an 8-2 MIAC team that lost to the conference champion and a tough non-conference opponent.  But from what it sounds like many of you want to argue that they would....

It is bad enough that conferences get AQs.  Pool C's should be reserved for teams that have been very good that year AND come from historically good conferences.  They have earned that respect.