Pool B

[ADL70]

Is the NCAA going to release regional rankings this year?

[K-Mack]

IMHO it has always been a meaningless distinction, only the more so now.

Agreed.

Pool B is for teams that do not have an automatic bid for conf champ?

affirmative. They tend to be leagues with less than seven members or ones who recently added the seventh and haven't completed the two-year waiting period.

Pool B is going the way of the Dodo. The NWC, PAC and even UMAC aka SLIAC have made moves to get an AQ in coming years.

[K-Mack]

I think that you have a strong chance of getting a bid, B or C, if you go undefeated.  The winning percentage is maxed; you have a higher QOWI (by at least 0.4 Index points) ... Tartan, under the new Pools system, my emotional issue is how does the NCAA tell an undefeated team that they did not do enough to earn a bid.  That is pure emotion, which is not one of the criteria.

I agree with this. As an unbeaten, I would not worry ... I think the numbers would work out in any unbeaten's favor, if not in Pool B, then definitely against one of the seven Pool B/C runner-up bids.

I'm a little lost on the number 23 though. There are 21 automatic bids for football and 11 other bids (4 Pool B, four Pool B/C).

And briefly, Pool A is conference champions, Pool B is teams who don't have an AQ to chase and Pool C is Pool A runners-up and third-place teams.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I'm confused by your "four pool B/C" comment.  As I understand it, there are B bids, then any remaining B teams go into pool C.  Hypothetically (though it would never happen) couldn't ALL the C bids be B teams?

[Ralph Turner]

IMHO it has always been a meaningless distinction, only the more so now.

Agreed.

Pool B is for teams that do not have an automatic bid for conf champ?

affirmative. They tend to be leagues with less than seven members or ones who recently added the seventh and haven't completed the two-year waiting period.

Pool B is going the way of the Dodo. The NWC, PAC and even UMAC aka SLIAC have made moves to get an AQ in coming years.

What makes no sense to me is why didn't the UAA "borrow" 3 NCAC teams as "affiliates" to make a Pool A conference so they could get a Pool A bid of their own!  A UAA team has not had a Pool B bid in the 21st Century!  The NCAC doesn't play round-robin even now.   And there will be some long-time rivalries messed up by this arrangement!  (Isn't the Allegheny /W&J rivalry jeopardized by this?)   A new NCAC and a new UAA would have 6 conference games and four non-conference games.  Surely the NCAC and UAA teams are close enough to institutional peers for football's sake!

The current UAA/NCAC scheduling arrangement looks like the proverbial horse/camel designed by committee! 

[ADL70]

IMHO your idea Ralph makes sense at first, but the problem I see is which 3 teams?  Say Kenyon, Oberlin, and Denison were loaned to the UAA.  That leaves Hiram and Earlham alone at the bottom of the pack with five very tough oponents (well at least 4).  I'm not sure they would hang around to be cannon fodder (and Earlham has chosen not to join the NCAC-UAA fold-does that portend a possible split to the HCAC?).  I can see Allegheny or Wooster or both fitting into the UAA to leave a better competetively balanced NCAC.  But unless Wabash is one of the loaned teams, Chicago and WUStL would be sort of on an island away from the mainland of the other teams with a lot of travel.  I'm not sure that Wabash would be welcomed by the UAA teams or that Wabash would want to join in this arrangement.

I think my idea of two seven-team conferences along geographic lines, which would also have competetive balance would be more likely to be adopted.  But then I think that runs afoul of the NCAA's "new conference" regulations.

Bottom line, I wonder if the playoffs are that big an issue for the UAA teams.  They have had plenty of schedule slots to schedule playoff contenders to demonstrate their worthiness.  WUStL scheduled Mt Union and Wheaton and Trinity,  CMU played Wesley, Chicago faced DePauw lately, and CWRU has had Wooster for years.  But only Wheaton, Trinity, and Mt are really powers year in year out, and basically, the UAA has gone 0-fer.  The NCAC-UAA agreement does significantly limit those opportunities

Do you foresee Pool B falling to only one spot?  If not, then doesn't the loss of the Pool B conferences except ACFC increase the UAA's chances of a playoff spot?

[ADL70]

Further insight from the Chicago Maroon on the agreement with NCAC.
"Over the last three years, conference officials have sought to address these difficulties via a football-only adjunct conference with the UAA and other local teams or a cross-scheduling consortium of three or four different leagues across the Midwest. Dennis Collins, the executive director of the NCAC, had been involved in these discussions, and after these efforts fell through approached the UAA about a formal arrangement between the two leagues last summer."

And on what teams might be considered appropriate: "The conference includes such top-tier liberal arts colleges as the College of Wooster, Kenyon, Oberlin, and Ohio Wesleyan."

[Ralph Turner]

By 2011, I have projected these Pool B teams.  I am not touching the new schools adding football.

As the rules are written now, the Pool A access ratio for the known conference configurations in 2011 will be about 1: 8.708.  I proposed this configuration of the football playing conferences last summer.  I counted 209 teams among 24 conferences.

http://www.d3sports.com/post/index.php?topic=3830.77

http://www.d3sports.com/post/index.php?topic=3830.78

http://www.d3sports.com/post/index.php?topic=3830.79

If further non-football consolidation occurs in the Mid-Atlantic states, then we may see another Pool A conference sponsor football. (?Capital Athetic Conference...they have Wesley, Gallaudet and Salisbury coming on board.  Who else is playing football at that time?  Frostburg would logically affiliate.  Do PSU-Berks or PSU-Harrisburg add football because there is a conference nearby?  We need a Capital "full member" now to make 7.) 

With 17 Pool B schools from my postulations, an access ratio of 1:8.70 yields 1.95 bids (which truncates to 1).  Then we have one Pool B bid, as you suggested.

The schools/conferences that wish to avail the AQ are the driving force in this whole matter.  The UMAC/SLIAC is a weak conference, but they wish to have an AQ and are using the guidelines to achieve that for their student-athletes.

Seventeen schools chasing one Pool B bid is optimal for the Pool A teams and their Pool C compatriots.

[K-Mack]

I'm confused by your "four pool B/C" comment.  As I understand it, there are B bids, then any remaining B teams go into pool C.  Hypothetically (though it would never happen) couldn't ALL the C bids be B teams?

Hypothetically, yes.

I meant four Pool B, seven Pool B/C.

Ralph Turner / genius = same

[K-Mack]

Further insight from the Chicago Maroon on the agreement with NCAC.
"Over the last three years, conference officials have sought to address these difficulties via a football-only adjunct conference with the UAA and other local teams or a cross-scheduling consortium of three or four different leagues across the Midwest. Dennis Collins, the executive director of the NCAC, had been involved in these discussions, and after these efforts fell through approached the UAA about a formal arrangement between the two leagues last summer."

And on what teams might be considered appropriate: "The conference includes such top-tier liberal arts colleges as the College of Wooster, Kenyon, Oberlin, and Ohio Wesleyan."

The other problem with the UAA, I would guess, is it's a perfectly fine Super-smart Conference USA in other sports. It must be the travel costs that turn one of its five football-playing members (Rochester) off ... And the rest of them don't play football (un-American, if you ask me.)

Going from Boston to St. Louis to Atlanta to Chicago with 15 basketball players and 18 field hockey players (or however many travel) doesn't seem to make much more sense, given how many games there are ... basketball for instance, don't conferences play home-and-home every year. So why can you take 15-25 people on seven or eight gigantic road trips but not 55-80 on four?

Guess I would have to have attended one of those schools to do that math.

I think it makes about as much sense as the NESCAC allowing all its other teams to play non-conference games and compete for national championships but limiting its football teams to eight games and a scrimmage. Is the cross country, swim or basketball season not demanding?

UAA Members (according to D3hoops.com, thanks Google!)

Brandeis
Waltham, MA

Carnegie Mellon
Pittsburgh, PA

Case Western Reserve
Cleveland, OH

Chicago
Chicago, IL

Emory
Atlanta, GA

New York University
New York, NY

Rochester
Rochester, NY

Washington U.
Saint Louis, MO

[ADL70]

Maybe I didn't make it clear, Keith, those hypotheses were for football only.

Playoffs were not cited in the article as a force behind the UAA search, only scheduling difficulties.

Ralph, do you think if Pool B shrank to 1 or 2 spots, the NCAA would just roll all non-AQs to one pool?

[Ralph Turner]

IMHO your idea Ralph makes sense at first, but the problem I see is which 3 teams?  Say Kenyon, Oberlin, and Denison were loaned to the UAA.  That leaves Hiram and Earlham alone at the bottom of the pack with five very tough oponents (well at least 4).

I defer to your understanding of that "neighborhood".

I'm not sure they would hang around to be cannon fodder (and Earlham has chosen not to join the NCAC-UAA fold-does that portend a possible split to the HCAC?). 

Earlham has been everywhere in their conference arrangements.  They were in the SCAC from 1964-89 when it was the Collegiate Athletic Conference.

I can see Allegheny or Wooster or both fitting into the UAA to leave a better competetively balanced NCAC.  But unless Wabash is one of the loaned teams, Chicago and WUStL would be sort of on an island away from the mainland of the other teams with a lot of travel.

But does that matter for just one road trip per year?

I'm not sure that Wabash would be welcomed by the UAA teams or that Wabash would want to join in this arrangement.

I think my idea of two seven-team conferences along geographic lines, which would also have competetive balance would be more likely to be adopted.  But then I think that runs afoul of the NCAA's "new conference" regulations.

Unless the UAA core stays together, it does run afoul.

Bottom line, I wonder if the playoffs are that big an issue for the UAA teams.  They have had plenty of schedule slots to schedule playoff contenders to demonstrate their worthiness.  WUStL scheduled Mt Union and Wheaton and Trinity,  CMU played Wesley, Chicago faced DePauw lately, and CWRU has had Wooster for years.  But only Wheaton, Trinity, and Mt are really powers year in year out, and basically, the UAA has gone 0-fer.  The NCAC-UAA agreement does significantly limit those opportunities.

Unless all 14 schools were behind this, with a like mind, it doesn't work, and that was my assumption in proposing this.

Do you foresee Pool B falling to only one spot?  If not, then doesn't the loss of the Pool B conferences except ACFC increase the UAA's chances of a playoff spot?

I have played those "what-ifs" before and asked the same question.  IMHO, two of the best examples of teams that have played the "Pool B game" are Chapman in several sports but most notably baseball, and Maryville TN, especially in men's hoops.  The UAA chance for for a Pool B bid do get better, but if there is only one bid for the first 16-17 teams in Pool B, then that is a chancy strategy.  When we have had larger Pool B allocations, it has not worked.  I think that the Presidents AC got tired of playing the Pool B game in other sports (especially not getting basketball bids), but that is not a problem in the UAA.  Their other Pool B  sports such as Emory Baseball get bids all of the time.  Golf and Tennis are heading to Pool A as well.

Thanks for the conversation.

[Ralph Turner]

Ralph, do you think if Pool B shrank to 1 or 2 spots, the NCAA would just roll all non-AQs to one pool?

No, because these are the playoff guidelines that apply to all team sports.  I don't think that they would change this for just football.  IMHO, equitable access to the playoffs is the critical theory behind this rule configuration.

[K-Mack]

Maybe I didn't make it clear, Keith, those hypotheses were for football only.

I followed you fine. What did I say to make you think I didn't?

[K-Mack]

Maybe I didn't make it clear, Keith, those hypotheses were for football only.

I followed you fine. What did I say to make you think I didn't?

What I was saying more or less is that if a UAA school can travel 1/2 the country for its conference games in every other sport, it can find a football conference if it wants to ... since distance doesn't seem to be a limitation.