FB: Presidents' Athletic Conference

[ADL70]

Posted this earlier, but asked and answered:

PAC tiebreaker

Tiebreaker for NCAA automatic qualifier (AQ): 1) Head-to-head competition, 2) Record against the highest-ranked team in the conference not involved in the tie. In the case of a three-way tie, it would be the fourth team. In case of a four-way tie, it would be the fifth-team, etc. If the records against that team are the same, it goes to the next highest team not involved in the tie, etc., 3) strength of conference wins (conference winning percentage of teams you beat in 8 PAC games, 4) Overall record, 5) Record vs. common non-league opponent(s). Note: if one team is eliminated, the tiebreaker begins again at step #1. All teams in a 3 or more team tie must have played each other for the head-to-head tiebreaker to be applicable.  [Emphasis added]

I would think #3 would favor TMC with Case not playing W&J.

True, but I don't see a 9-1 TMC or 10-0 CWRU not making the field.

One of the two will TMC will either be heading back to Franklin or Mount Union and CWRU playing Witt or a rematch with Wabash.

These are definite possibilities.  But CWRU is in an area where a lot of teams can go play there (1st round) and they can go play at a lot of other places (later rounds).  CWRU can certainly fit into a pod with Eastern teams, so games with teams to their west aren't necessarily a given. 

Wabash needs to play better and get some help over the last six weeks here to get back into the party.

And while we are at it; though Thomas More has already played who was thought to be the strongest teams on their schedule already (by preseason prognosticators), they are hardly a shoo-in for 9-1.  They still have to win 5 more games to have a shot. 

If the season ended this past week, then they'd have the PAC Auto Berth but they are still 5 PAC games from being able to consider that.

And I wasn't counting either team's 'chickens' yet either.  Just that those are the likely records if tie breaker came into play. CWRU's remaining schedule looks much tougher than TMC's (and they have six games remaining).

[wally_wabash]

Maybe that solves your tiebreak problem, but it introduces a way bigger problem- the problem where you let some team other than the best team in the league over the course of an entire regular season represent your league in the tournament.

Why does it, by necessity, "let some team other than the best..." in the tournament?
And, how does the current "don't play everyone and hope we don't need the tie-breaker" not do the exact thing you're worried about?

Win your division, play the other division's winner, to the victor go the spoils.  To the vanquished, weeping, gnashing of teeth and a winter thinking "what if...."

Honestly, I don't see the problem with deciding who gets the NCAA AQ on the field.
No debate, no ranking/rating systems, no three degrees of separation comparitives.
One thing, one thing only:  Who won the PAC Championship Game?

It doesn't by necessity, but it opens the door to that possibility.  Sure, you'll have many seasons where you get a week 11 championship game with two 6-0 or 7-0 division winners playing in a game to "settle it on the field" but then you're going to have years where an undefeated division winner plays a multiple loss division winner...we all know who the PAC should be sending to the postseason in that scenario, but this extra game invites the opportunity for the weaker team to catch lightning in a bottle and knock out the league's best team before they even get a chance to play in the postseason and your 7-4 league "champion" is off to Alliance.  Even worse is the scenario where you get a regular season rematch (I assume there would be cross-division play as part of this arrangement)...why should the league's best team have to beat somebody twice to qualify? Or the better question is why should the team that lost earlier get to qualify simply for evening the season series? 

This divisional system does eliminate the hand wringing over tiebreaks, but it has plenty of its own drawbacks.  There's just not a clean way to do this once teams start losing and you have to deal with ties.  Or in the PAC's case, when you have too many teams to go full round robin. 

[Ralph Turner]

I remember when the PresAC was a Pool B conference...

[Bob.Gregg]

...you're going to have years where an undefeated division winner plays a multiple loss division winner...we all know who the PAC should be sending to the postseason in that scenario, but this extra game invites the opportunity for the weaker team to catch lightning in a bottle and knock out the league's best team before they even get a chance to play in the postseason and your 7-4 league "champion" is off to Alliance. 

How do we all know who PAC should send?  The unbeaten division winner ruled a dog-awful division and the multiple loss winner had to battle through the teams that have pointed to this year as THE year....How does that make the unbeaten division winner the best team, the team deserving of the AQ?
Under the current format, it does.  And, it's quite possible that that team would have been a multiple loss team had they actually played everybody in the league.

Even worse is the scenario where you get a regular season rematch (I assume there would be cross-division play as part of this arrangement)...why should the league's best team have to beat somebody twice to qualify? Or the better question is why should the team that lost earlier get to qualify simply for evening the season series? 

Why is that worse?  If the system is laid out prior to any games being played, everybody knows that if you win your division, you could play a team you've already played.  And, if you beat them, you have to beat them again.  And the answer to your "better question" is that the team that lost a crossover game earlier was good enough to win its division and now plays for the PAC title against the other division winner, whoever it is.

I've railed against this crazy setup since the day it was announced that CWRU & CMU were returning to the PAC for football only.  It's a mess and does not have to be this way.  Either you stay at a level where everybody plays everybody else, or you go to the level where you have two divisions and play a championship game. 

One day, in this mess, you'll get this (substituting any team name):  W&J will lose its 3 OOC games, run the table in its PAC games (and they don't play CWRU & TMC.  Meanwhile, TMC beats CWRU who beats Westminster who beats TMC, giving each of them at least one loss in PAC play and W&J is your multiple loss AQ team heading to Alliance, meanwhile we all know TMC or CWRU was the team that should get the PAC AQ...

[SaintsFAN]

I remember when the PresAC was a Pool B conference...

And dominated by W&J

[ADL70]

Lots of conferences (OAC and NCAC nearby) have only one OOC game and most PAC teams are currently playing a PAC team that doesn't count in standings. While I would prefer that CWRU continue to play its UAA partners after next season, a ninth PAC game would ameliorate the current situation and the one Bob described. Right now PAC has five 'haves' and six 'have-nots.' Make the top five play each other and problem solved until the balance of power changes.

Back when NCAC wasn't playing a full round robin it used some kind of 'power formula' for scheduling. One year it had a 'Kenyon problem' when the Lords didn't play either Witt or 'Bash, but with nine conference games that situation shouldn't happen.

[ADL70]

I remember when the PresAC was a Pool B conference...

And dominated by W&J

I remember when (1982) Hiram won the PAC

[wally_wabash]

Even worse is the scenario where you get a regular season rematch (I assume there would be cross-division play as part of this arrangement)...why should the league's best team have to beat somebody twice to qualify? Or the better question is why should the team that lost earlier get to qualify simply for evening the season series? 

Why is that worse?  If the system is laid out prior to any games being played, everybody knows that if you win your division, you could play a team you've already played.  And, if you beat them, you have to beat them again.  And the answer to your "better question" is that the team that lost a crossover game earlier was good enough to win its division and now plays for the PAC title against the other division winner, whoever it is.

It's worse because the door is open to have a team that has had the best season not go in.  I don't like conference tournaments in basketball for the same reason.  In D-I, these football conference championship games and basketball conference tournaments serve a purpose- $$$.  There's no such incentive to do this in D3.  There's no D-I football tournament to analogize here, but in D-1 basketball, there's plenty of spots available in the tournament for regular season league champions that get upset in the league tournaments.  The tournament isn't adversely affected (though you feel for some of the low-major conference champions who get snubbed).  In our D-3 football tournament, if you catch an upset in your conference championship game, there's no safety net.  The loser of that game is probably out.  I don't disagree that if everybody is on board with the idea of divisions and understands that they could have a great season completely derailed by this extra, completely elective game, then fine.  Everybody knows the rules and agreed to it.  But I think this divisional situation has way more opportunity for unfavorable outcomes than the occasional weird tiebreak does. 

I've railed against this crazy setup since the day it was announced that CWRU & CMU were returning to the PAC for football only.  It's a mess and does not have to be this way.  Either you stay at a level where everybody plays everybody else, or you go to the level where you have two divisions and play a championship game. 

Agree.  11 is the worst number.  I do think the problem is one too many teams rather than one too few though. 

Back when NCAC wasn't playing a full round robin it used some kind of 'power formula' for scheduling. One year it had a 'Kenyon problem' when the Lords didn't play either Witt or 'Bash, but with nine conference games that situation shouldn't happen.

Hated the power ranking system, BUT I will say that for all of the teeth gnashing that was done over said system, it more or less made sure that the legit contenders were playing one another every year.   Yes, Kenyon almost backdoored their way to a couple of shared championships (2005, 2012), but those weird instances were few and far between and less likely, IMO, to produce an out-of-place champion.  This year's PAC schedule creates the "Kenyon" problem, only it seems like this could have been avoided by making sure CWRU plays TMC and W&J as opposed to making sure that, say, Grove City plays TMC and W&J (and Westminster and CWRU).  The power ranking system also "worked" for the NCAC because there was really very little movement between tiers- the top 2-3 teams were the same every year, the bottom 2-3 teams were the same every year, and those were really the teams that the whole thing was designed to keep away from one another.  In a league like the PAC where I feel like there's a little more parity, particularly through the middle half of the league, it might not work as cleanly (relatively speaking) as it did in the NCAC. 

[jknezek]

I'm not a huge fan of conference championship games either, BUT as schools continue to add and join to football in DIII we are reaching critical mass. I get that the conference championship games exist in DI for money, but they may serve the same purpose in DIII. Not to make money, but to avoid the tournament expanding and costing more. If we want to keep a few Pool C bids around, and I believe we should have at least a few, it increasingly looks like we are going to have to raise the conference access ratio for AQs. Not to 12 obviously. But conferences with 12, who have a conference championship game, are helping stave off that possibility. With the PAC/MAC heading toward 10+ a piece, it's not even all that geographically hard to cut them into 3 conferences (traditions aside of course, which is more difficult than geography in this case).

Is this an immediate problem? No. But it creeps closer all the time as schools continue to announce new or reinstated programs.

[wally_wabash]

Raising the access ratio is an interesting thing and something that I think is probably going to happen. 

Re: the endangered species that is the Pool C bid- if we had 32 qualifying conferences, I'd be perfectly fine with the national championship tournament being strictly a tournament of champions.  I would also have to find a new hobby.   

[jknezek]

Raising the access ratio is an interesting thing and something that I think is probably going to happen. 

Re: the endangered species that is the Pool C bid- if we had 32 qualifying conferences, I'd be perfectly fine with the national championship tournament being strictly a tournament of champions.  I would also have to find a new hobby.   

I like having a bit of wiggle room, but I don't think it really needs to be more than 2 or 3 slots before it goes critical. I also think there will always be some number of independents, might even be a significant number of "B" schools if the access ratio goes up at times. So you don't really want to see 32/32. Everyone should have some kind of path. I'll just say I think it goes critical around 28/29 AQ conferences.

[SaintsFAN]

49-7 Thomas More over Grove City with 6 minutes left in the 3rd Quarter. 

Grove City has since scored but it was after Thomas More substituted their backups on defense.  I like they are getting the young guys meaningful time but there's no way Grove City scores 14 points or more on the varsity Thomas More defense. 

[E.115]

Carnegie Mellon leading 35-21 with three minutes to go in the 3rd qtr, ruining that W and J homecoming to date

http://www.sidearmstats.com/washjeff/football/

EDIT: overtime battle right now!!!

Tied 49-49 .  Going into 2nd OT

[Bob.Gregg]

Carnegie Mellon leading 35-21 with three minutes to go in the 3rd qtr, ruining that W and J homecoming to date

http://www.sidearmstats.com/washjeff/football/

EDIT: overtime battle right now!!!

Tied 49-49 .  Going into 2nd OT

W&J 55
CMU 52
2OT FINAL

Pete Coughlin throws his 7th TD pass, fourth to Jesse Zubik to win it after Bengor is stopped three times from inside the 5 and CMU kicks FG to open 2nd OT.
CMU hasn't won in Washington since 1982.

[WashJeff68]

Great win for the Presidents and I'm sure the alums enjoyed this more than the normal homecoming blowouts of most years.

Bob, to be fair there was a long stretch when the teams didn't play anywhere!

Jeff in Tennessee