FB: Presidents' Athletic Conference

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks for the laugh that was funny.  I agree the PAC is no where close to WIAC, but it does seem like different rules are being applied.

Yes. Because the WIAC track record is based on more than just a postseason game or two from a single year.

[mikefln]

Thanks for the laugh that was funny.  I agree the PAC is no where close to WIAC, but it does seem like different rules are being applied.

Yes. Because the WIAC track record is based on more than just a postseason game or two from a single year.

Wow stupid me. I thought yearly rankings are supposed to be based on, I don't know, maybe just that year's results?  Silly me. I didn't realize how important the accomplishments a conference did 2+ years ago mattered on a yearly ranking.   I also thought the same standard was to be equitable to all. I did not know the selection person/committee got to cherry pick what data they used to justify between multiple entities.  Thank you for setting me straight.   

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks for the laugh that was funny.  I agree the PAC is no where close to WIAC, but it does seem like different rules are being applied.

Yes. Because the WIAC track record is based on more than just a postseason game or two from a single year.

Wow stupid me. I thought yearly rankings are supposed to be based on, I don't know, maybe just that year's results?  Silly me. I didn't realize how important the accomplishments a conference did 2+ years ago mattered on a yearly ranking.   I also thought the same standard was to be equitable to all. I did not know the selection person/committee got to cherry pick what data they used to justify between multiple entities.  Thank you for setting me straight.   

Yes. Not only recent postseason success, but this year's non-conference games, and yes, the recent historical trends.

Keith McMillan put it really well in a recent comment:

"And perhaps in no sport ever has there been a run like the where you could guess the Stagg Bowl participants at the beginning of the season and you would have been correct 9 out of 10 years.

"History has been fairly reliable in D3, and so voters aren't going to treat four UMAC wins like they treat four WIAC wins, nor should they."

History is often considered in D-III football rankings because history repeats itself.

[E.115]

Allegheny certainly gave W&J enough of a scare!   Caught most of the 4th qtr, and the Gators wouldn't go away.  Impressive sack at the end by W&J to shut down any small remaining chance.

[WashJeff68]

My sons and I were at the game. First half was all W&J and we were thinking about when we should leave to attend an annual Fraternity get together. Then the weather vane rotated and it was a game. Allegheny dominated  most of the second half, but W&J closed the game out with a strong running attack, clock management, and the sack mentioned above to secure the game. Be interesting to see how the season plays out for the Gators. They could be ready to rise in the PAC hierarchy.

[mikefln]

]

Yes. Not only recent postseason success, but this year's non-conference games, and yes, the recent historical trends.

Keith McMillan put it really well in a recent comment:

"And perhaps in no sport ever has there been a run like the where you could guess the Stagg Bowl participants at the beginning of the season and you would have been correct 9 out of 10 years.

"History has been fairly reliable in D3, and so voters aren't going to treat four UMAC wins like they treat four WIAC wins, nor should they."

History is often considered in D-III football rankings because history repeats itself.

So what is in 4-1 Endicott history or CCC History that has them ranked ahead of 5-0 Alma, 5-0 Mulhenberg, and 6-0 Grove City?

[Pat Coleman]

I never said history was the only thing, just a thing.

In this season, Endicott played non-conference games against Ithaca (a loss) and Hardin-Simmons (a win).

[mikefln]

Wow, that really is not that impressive.   If they won both it would have been impressive. 

[unionpalooza]

Wow, that really is not that impressive.   If they won both it would have been impressive.

If dominating the #20 team in the country and narrowly losing to the #15 is not impressive, than Alma, Muhlenberg and Grove City are really unimpressive. None have beaten a ranked team; the best effort is Grove's squeaker over CMU, who is getting votes (effectively #28).  Not clear how dismissing Endicott helps your car here. 

[mikefln]

Endicott lost.  Period. Pat has gone on record that they look at history.  Endicott nor the CCC has ever done anything, so it is not like they can lay claim to their tradition either.  Plus CMU was ranked I believe #22 when GCC beat them. I am just looking to see the logic and some consistency here.

[Pat Coleman]

Endicott lost.  Period. Pat has gone on record that they look at history.  Endicott nor the CCC has ever done anything, so it is not like they can lay claim to their tradition either.  Plus CMU was ranked I believe #22 when GCC beat them. I am just looking to see the logic and some consistency here.

You are seeming to say that we look only at history. I assure you that's not the case and I'm not sure why you are harping on this as if we are only to consider the history of Endicott and the CCC.

Endicott, narrow loss to No. 15 Ithaca, win against No. 20 Hardin-Simmons, is really perfectly placed right between them, and I'm not sure why that is "not that impressive" to you. I assure you, it's impressive to a lot of people.

[HSCTiger74]

Endicott lost.  Period. Pat has gone on record that they look at history.  Endicott nor the CCC has ever done anything, so it is not like they can lay claim to their tradition either.  Plus CMU was ranked I believe #22 when GCC beat them. I am just looking to see the logic and some consistency here.

   If you are looking for logic and consistency why are you looking at polls, whether D3 or any others? They're voted on by people, who as we all know (or should) will be pretty inconsistent in their personal interpretation of the available data.

[ExTartanPlayer]

As once famously uttered in a movie ... "This bickering is pointless"

Mike, I happen to agree with Endicott's current placement in the polls relative to Grove City, though I do think Pat's charming reply to my first post was a little bit uncharitable to the PAC as a whole.  But, almost everyone on these boards usually seems to think their own conference is underrated (in part because so few of us actually see much of D3 outside our own area, in part because "styles make fights" and you can get some weird results in the limited OOC play we do get to see, etc).  It's not hard to find past posts from the OAC and WIAC where folks claim that like 6 teams from their own league would make the semifinals if they were all allowed into the playoffs.

First, whether you personally agree with this or not, I believe that it's necessary to consider some element of history when making rankings in a sport like Division III football, especially in the first half of the season.  There is just not that much regular-season play between conferences to evaluate teams.  I don't think results from a prior year should override things like head to head results from this year, but if you're trying to peg Endicott and Grove City against one another, it's almost impossible to know how to value a win over Hardin-Simmons vs. a win over Carnegie Mellon without some historical knowledge of how strong the conferences have been and how they have fared in playoff games or big out-of-conference games (even moreso this year with no non-conference games for PAC teams).

Now, it's fair to say that Endicott itself does not have much history on its side, but some of the teams they played this year definitely do (and also are accumulating data for this year that speaks in their favor).  Scoring a win over any of the division's "big dogs" gets you some immediate cred; one of the funnier examples in retrospect being 2012 Buffalo State's shocking upset of #1 UW-Whitewater, vaulting Buffalo State to #19 in the following week's poll despite having a loss to an at-the-time-unremarkable Brockport team the week before upsetting UWW.  Buffalo State promptly lost their next three games, and we would also learn that particular UWW team was not up to the standard of the teams that came before or after.  But any time you beat one of the teams that has graced the top 10 or made deep playoff run in recent memory, that's (understandably) automatically going to put you on the radar of some voters.

Endicott absolutely stomped Hardin-Simmons.  Just pummeled them.  It was 37-3 at one point!  Hardin-Simmons is otherwise 4-0 and (most importantly) has a win over UW-La Crosse, who just beat UW-Whitewater and is top-10 as of the latest poll.  They were ranked #5 at the time Endicott beat them.

(I have a bit of a separate axe to grind / hypothesis here, which is that I think that #5 ranking was potentially unwarranted; IMO no team benefits more in terms of their national reputation than Hardin-Simmons in the "hypotheticals" department - every year, "well gee they would surely make a deep playoff run if only the Texas teams didn't have to play each other in the first round" - I have a pretty good falsification example for this, IMO, but that's beside the point for now)

Endicott has a massive blowout win against a team that was ranked #5 at the time, owners of a win ranked #6 in this week's poll, who just beat the team ranked #7 in this week's poll (who also has wins over #8, 14, and 22 in this week's poll).  That's a huge win.  It's honestly one of the best single results any team in the country has right now.  Their loss is a close one vs. #15 Ithaca, whose sole loss is to #10 JHU.  At some point, yeah, it is hard to know how much of this is just "we think these teams are good and that's why they're ranked high" but the fact is that it's usually because those teams have recent playoff success.

Grove City has had a very good first month and IMO is very much a threat to win a couple of games in the playoffs.  I think Pat's prior post is a little uncharitable to the PAC, and I think there's enough data from recent memory (some decent non-league wins and playoff results) that supports the idea that the PAC #1 is probably a top-15-ish team in most seasons.  But I'm not gonna get all in a twist that they're currently ranked a few spots behind Endicott.

[Pat Coleman]

For what it's worth, I think the voters know that Hardin-Simmons' national rep is based solely on close losses to a national power. Since the NCAA won't pay for travel appropriate to HSU's seed in the playoffs, HSU has rarely gotten the opportunity to play anyone outside of Texas in the postseason (and when not Texas, there's always a chance to travel to Linfield).

HSU has also had difficulty finding teams willing to play them. They perhaps have been the most vocal team publicly looking for non-conference opponents. In addition, as you noted, they do generally do well outside of Texas -- last year going to Platteville and absolutely waxing the Pioneers (T3 WIAC), and this year winning at La Crosse.

And indeed, the context I provided in my post was not charitable to the PAC, but I don't believe any of it was inaccurate. I'd certainly rather have this conversation than griping from a team's assistant coaches on Twitter using an apples-and-oranges comparison to allege a lack of respect in a preseason ranking.

[ExTartanPlayer]

For what it's worth, I think the voters know that Hardin-Simmons' national rep is based solely on close losses to a national power. Since the NCAA won't pay for travel appropriate to HSU's seed in the playoffs, HSU has rarely gotten the opportunity to play anyone outside of Texas in the postseason (and when not Texas, there's always a chance to travel to Linfield).

HSU has also had difficulty finding teams willing to play them. They perhaps have been the most vocal team publicly looking for non-conference opponents. In addition, as you noted, they do generally do well outside of Texas -- last year going to Platteville and absolutely waxing the Pioneers (T3 WIAC), and this year winning at La Crosse.

And indeed, the context I provided in my post was not charitable to the PAC, but I don't believe any of it was inaccurate. I'd certainly rather have this conversation than griping from a team's assistant coaches on Twitter using an apples-and-oranges comparison to allege a lack of respect in a preseason ranking.

Well, I agree with you that assistant coaches should not argue rankings with pundits on Twitter, lol.  Just a bad look.  As an (Ex)TartanPlayer, I am now free from such shackles and can express my opinions without fear, especially since Coach Lackner is no longer coaching CMU.

I do have sympathy for HSU about the difficulty getting non-conference opponents.  Since they've been feasting on those weaklings in the WIAC, perhaps they can try some more games against a real conference like the CCC...

(For posterity, one of those Linfield losses came at home, but who's counting)

As a semi-serious point...my "falsification example" is John Carroll.  It's not a perfect fit, but pretty close.  For a solid decade, they have played Mount Union reasonably "tough" almost every year, very close four times, and actually beat them once.  Send JCU and Mount to Texas, give JCU a roadie vs. Mount in the playoffs every year and I think JCU would be looked at about the same way HSU is now.  Oh, surely they're a top-10 program, they just have the misfortune to be stuck on an island playing the Big Brother in their own backyard every year!  Give'em a chance against someone else in the first few rounds and surely they're heading for the semis.

John Carroll, 2013-2022:

2013: 9-1 regular season, 42-34 loss to Mount Union; lost first round to St. John Fisher (at home!)
2014: 9-1 regular season, 31-24 loss to Mount Union; 2 playoff wins (including at Wheaton), lost in quarters to Mount Union
2015: 8-2 regular season, 36-3 loss to Mount Union; missed playoffs (other loss to Ohio Northern, who squeaked into Pool C at 8-2 and won a first-rounder against Franklin before bowing out at UW-Oshkosh)
2016: 9-1 regular season, 31-28 win over Mount Union; 3 playoff wins, lost to UW-Oshkosh in semifinals (won at Mount and UWW in the same season, a rare feat indeed these past 20 years)
2017: 6-4 regular season (close losses to several good teams, yeah, but clearly not championship material)
2018: 9-1 regular season, 23-10 loss to Mount Union; lost first round to Randolph-Macon (at home!)
2019: 9-1 regular season, 37-14 loss to Mount Union, missed playoffs
2020: NA
2021: lost to W&J in non-league play, finished 7-3 and missed playoffs
2022: lost to W&J in non-league play, finished 8-2 and missed playoffs

If JCU played zero non-league games and played Mount Union in the first round of the playoffs every year, they'd look a lot like HSU, right?  They almost never lose to anybody in their conference except Mount Union, and if they had to play UMU in the first round of the playoffs every year we'd probably hear all the same arguments for them that we hear for HSU.  But, lucky for us, we do have some other data on JCU.  They've lost twice at home as a presumptive favorite in seasons where they went 9-1 with close losses to Mount Union.  The last two years (both of which also featured tough, fairly competitive losses to Mount Union) they did us the favor of losing to W&J (who couldn't win this pedestrian old conference either time!) in a non-conference game, sparing us the debate of whether they belonged in the playoffs.  Maybe we need to see Mount Union move into the PAC for a real challenge since the OAC clearly isn't up for the job

We'll never know, but my best bet?  Put HSU in the playoffs against a mid-tier conference champ (like the PAC champ) every year and you're getting something like JCU's record, but maybe a little better.  I seriously doubt they're just steamrolling their way past everyone who's not UMHB if they actually had to play these games on the field instead of in everyone's imagination.  I do have a personal opinion that games against your conference rivals are a little different and some of the teams we might assume are really good because they've played their (powerhouse) conference rival close a lot are not just automatically going to have the same level of dominance that their powerhouse conference rival has had if you swap them into the same playoff bracket.  We tend to assume "HSU almost beat UMHB so they're basically going to do the same thing UMHB did against everyone else" and I just don't think that actually happens, which is why JCU has had multiple seasons going "9-1 with a close loss to Mount Union" that ended with a first-round playoff loss at home to a plain-old-"good" team like St. John Fisher or Randolph-Macon.

This probably sounds like I'm dumping on JCU and HSU.  I'm not!  I'm just saying that I think it's probably fallacious to assume because they share a conference with one of the powerhouses and usually play that powerhouse really close, that means they would automatically beat everyone else that powerhouse beats if they had the same playoff slate.