Pool C -- 2015

[Pat Coleman]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

[emma17]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that there was some desire for upsets as the playoffs would be more exciting - as opposed to chalk and cheese.
If upsets would make the playoffs more exciting, I disagree with Pat and Smed that a change to Pool C wouldn't help accomplish that.
I can list several teams that would have elevated the possibility of an upset.

[wally_wabash]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that there was some desire for upsets as the playoffs would be more exciting - as opposed to chalk and cheese.
If upsets would make the playoffs more exciting, I disagree with Pat and Smed that a change to Pool C wouldn't help accomplish that.
I can list several teams that would have elevated the possibility of an upset.

I don't believe that there is one team that was left out of this tournament that would have impacted the way this tournament has played out through two rounds. 

I don't think it needs to be anybody's prerogative to make the tournament more exciting.  If people are dissatisfied with the scores of games, it's on everybody else to get better and not get steamrolled by the top teams in the division.  The scores aren't a failure of the system- they're a testament to the level of excellence of the top programs in the division. 

[emma17]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that there was some desire for upsets as the playoffs would be more exciting - as opposed to chalk and cheese.
If upsets would make the playoffs more exciting, I disagree with Pat and Smed that a change to Pool C wouldn't help accomplish that.
I can list several teams that would have elevated the possibility of an upset.

I don't believe that there is one team that was left out of this tournament that would have impacted the way this tournament has played out through two rounds. 

I don't think it needs to be anybody's prerogative to make the tournament more exciting.  If people are dissatisfied with the scores of games, it's on everybody else to get better and not get steamrolled by the top teams in the division.  The scores aren't a failure of the system- they're a testament to the level of excellence of the top programs in the division.

I don't want to give the impression that I think there is a team left out of the tourney that had a legitimate shot at the championship.  That would require the left out team to play and beat multiple top tier teams.  However, I believe it's absolutely possible that two or three left out teams would have had a much better chance of beating one of the top tier teams- and that would be an upset and that would impact the tournament.   

As for prerogative to make the tourney more exciting, I think your wording clouds the issue a bit.  I do think it should be the committee's prerogative to use Pool C to make the tourney as competitive as possible.  In doing so, they will make the tourney more exciting.     

[wally_wabash]

I don't want to give the impression that I think there is a team left out of the tourney that had a legitimate shot at the championship.  That would require the left out team to play and beat multiple top tier teams.  However, I believe it's absolutely possible that two or three left out teams would have had a much better chance of beating one of the top tier teams- and that would be an upset and that would impact the tournament.   

As for prerogative to make the tourney more exciting, I think your wording clouds the issue a bit.  I do think it should be the committee's prerogative to use Pool C to make the tourney as competitive as possible.  In doing so, they will make the tourney more exciting.     

I think we can be specific here.  If I'm looking at what we did in the mock selection, we had Guilford and Platteville in the tournament instead of Whitworth and ONU.  Neither of those teams were going to do anything other than maybe win a game and then get squashed depending on the draw. 

If you want to include North Central, we can.  Same outcome, IMO.  North Central could have won a game depending on the draw and then they were going to play a team that was just better.  There was nowhere to hide in that second round. 

As for the other Cs- UWW, Wesley, SJU, and UMHB; three of them are still alive and I don't think anybody believes St. John's hadn't earned a spot in the field (and they got squashed). 

[Pat Coleman]

The only thing that would make a difference is changing Pool A, not Pool C, and significantly changing Pool A is basically completely contrary to the tenets of the division.

[SaintsFAN]

Tale of two games from Saturday:
Team A leads Team B 29-23 with 11 minutes left and 36-23 with 5 minutes left. Turns out to be a blowout, 43-23.
Team C leads Team D 27-16 with 11 minutes left. Team D goes on to win in overtime.

Guess it's just a matter of when you choose to write off games. Just looking at a final score is a little oversimplified.

Knowing the teams in D-3 changes your perception and expectations too.

Wow!  Team B is not rolling over and dying!  Is this the character building experience for this school to bring on a dynasty.  Lots of quality ball players who are too small and too slow in thatm football-hungry state.  (And the high school senior who gets passed over by SEC colleges says, "Hey, maybe I can continue to play football in college and have my parents see the games"!)

Why can Team A put them away? This should not be this close!

C'mon Team C!  You cannot let them (Team D) hang around.  They are known for their tenacity.

Team D fans are recalling all of the storied football games in the school's illustrious history.  The ghosts of legends past are rooting them on! Team D ties, going to OT, and then thinks, "Good! We have Team C right where we want them!"

Stop it.

[SaintsFAN]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that there was some desire for upsets as the playoffs would be more exciting - as opposed to chalk and cheese.
If upsets would make the playoffs more exciting, I disagree with Pat and Smed that a change to Pool C wouldn't help accomplish that.
I can list several teams that would have elevated the possibility of an upset.

Thomas More wasn't on your original list and I'd hope they would be on the next one.  Point is, sometimes you don't know who has the Jimmys and Joes to be competitive - they've given few reasons to be included on such a list before this season.

[pg04]

I'm in the camp of wanting more upsets but I also think the way the teams are selected is the best way to go about selection, given equal access and all that. It is a conundrum. I saw the mention of how tiered D3 is, we really need the 2nd tier to move closer to tier 1 rather than tier 1 drop in strength to tier 2. How that happens, I'm not sure. It's really difficult within the parameters of what teams can do to get better.

[Ralph Turner]

We have 2 dynamics occurring D-3. The Conferences have gotten stronger in the last 15 years of the Pool System. Winning the conference is a big thing to all but about 10 schools who really are a "tier" above.  There may be another 20 schools who see the top tier from where they are now.

I can live with that.  Are we not the true amateur division of the NCAA?

[smedindy]

There will always be some shenanigans in the first round because of geography, whether it's Husson, Texas, California or the Pacific Northwest, you're not going to have a true 1-8 seeding.

Round 2, for the most part, separates the wheat from the chaff. There's absolutely no way to skate past that, as Wally implied. The NCAA has now shown that it doesn't really care where you are, they'll shove you to Linfield without a care in the world...

[ExTartanPlayer]

I'm in the camp of wanting more upsets but I also think the way the teams are selected is the best way to go about selection, given equal access and all that. It is a conundrum. I saw the mention of how tiered D3 is, we really need the 2nd tier to move closer to tier 1 rather than tier 1 drop in strength to tier 2. How that happens, I'm not sure. It's really difficult within the parameters of what teams can do to get better.

Bombers has discussed this before, very eloquently, on the East boards (and maybe on some of the national boards as well).  Ralph Turner just gave a very nice condensed answer.  What follows is basically an amalgamation of their viewpoints.  How do we "move Tier 2 closer to Tier 1" ?

I think this is related to the comments by Johns Hopkins coach Jim Margraff, highlighted by Keith & Pat during the podcast, after their loss to Wesley this week.  Johns Hopkins, with four straight 10-win seasons and five of the last six (but "only" four total playoff wins and one quarterfinal appearance in that time) is an absolutely perfect example of the "second tier" program that everyone wants to see become good enough to challenge Mount and UWW, or even merely to reach a level where they can play with the Linfield, UMHB, UST, Wesley level programs (they've been very competitive with Wesley several times, but they have not gotten over the hump and scored a W, much as Wesley has been competitive with Mount a handful of times but not gotten over the hump). 

For JHU, the conference championship is the prize, and the playoffs are just an extra measuring stick.  What it would take to make that "second tier" program good enough to compete with the "first tier" programs is an institutional commitment that is unlikely to happen (and probably undesirable for the University as a whole) because the University would have to start to compromise things that should not be compromised.  We're football fans here; we like football, talk football, think football.  But if the Johns Hopkins administration called a meeting and collectively decided "We're going to make it a school priority to get our football program to compete with Mount Union and Wisconsin-Whitewater for the national title" would that be a net positive for the University?  Probably not.  The school doesn't need the enrollment and/or application boost from having a national-title-winning football program - its academic profile is high enough that they're already flooded with quality applicants, and the football team is already plenty good enough to drive a good chunk of male enrollment.  The school should not start bending admissions standards to admit more football players; it should not give special financial-aid packages to football players (as Ralph said, we are the true amateur division of the NCAA, what separates D3 from D1 is athletes are supposed to be a representation of the student body that does NOT receive special treatment for being athletes); the school should not discourage their players from academically challenging majors that require occasionally missing practice.  No school should do that, really, and I'm not saying that any of the other programs do so.  But what else would anyone suggest that JHU do if they call this hypothetical meeting where they decide "We want to win a D3 football national championship" ?  Devoting more money to facilities is, again, probably an undesirable outcome (when I visited JHU a dozen years ago, their facilities seemed on par with any D3 school; really spacious and quality weight room, fine stadium, etc).  A coaching change would be absurd.  Who wants to go to the Johns Hopkins president and make the case to him that the football program needs an overhaul to compete with the nation's best?  He'll either laugh in your face, or he'll say "We win the league every year, what the heck more do you want?"

Maybe I'm really, really old-school but I think keeping the focus on winning a conference championship, against your peer institutions, is awesome and really ought to be the focus of D3 football.  The fact that we even have national playoffs to let those conference champions play one another and show where they stack up is a bonus.

I'd also like to point something else out, and I realize that this occurred in a slightly different Playoff era, but in the six-year periuod (1999-2004) before UWW launched what would become a decade-long string of WIAC dominance in the playoffs, the WIAC had won one playoff game, and in 2004 the WIAC champ (UW-La Crosse) was on the wrong end of a 52-14 loss to Linfield, in 2003 UW-La Crosse won in round 1 but then was on the wrong end of a 39-14 loss to Mount Union, in 2002 UW-La Crosse was eliminated in round 1 by Coe (who lost 45-14 to St. John's), in 2001 UWSP lost in round 1 to St. John's (who eventually lost 35-14 to Mount Union).  Basically, the WIAC used to be just like the Johns Hopkins / Wesley tier.  Produced a quality champ, but couldn't get over the hump against really good teams, often ended up on the wrong end of a blowout against the nation's best (or losing to a team that eventually ended up on the wrong side of a blowout).  That list of scores reads a lot like the list of scores emma has previously used to make up his tiers of Pool C candidates.  Blowout losses were used as evidence they could not compete with "recognized strong teams" in the national picture.  The WIAC would have been on the **** list prior to UWW's incredible rise, one of the leagues knocked as not holding up its end of the bargain in the playoffs.  You never know when this stuff is going to change.

[jknezek]

Maybe I'm really, really old-school but I think keeping the focus on winning a conference championship, against your peer institutions, is awesome and really ought to be the focus of D3 football.  The fact that we even have national playoffs to let those conference champions play one another and show where they stack up is a bonus.

I think this is the point I try to make the most. Was I disappointed that things went bad from the get-go for W&L at TMC and it wasn't a competitive game? Yes. Was I disappointed that a 10-0 W&L team didn't get a home game? Yes I was. Was I disappointed for Guilford's seniors, who came into a program as freshman that was non-competitive and suffering a long string of bad seasons, that they got it completely turned around but never got a shot in the playoffs? Yes I was.

But really I was very proud that W&L rebounded from two tough, injury riddled seasons, to become conference champions. I  would love to see them get a home, winnable playoff game someday just to add it to the school's history. But do I realistically envision W&L ever being a national player in DIII football? No. They don't need to be, and given the struggle just to get 80 football players into the school at any one time it simply isn't realistic that the 70 or so young men that make up the roster are going to be of a quality to compete at that level.

I love seeing them play in the ODAC. I love their quirky offense. And I love watching them win those conference battles. That will simply need to be enough.

DIII isn't built to promote parity. As an event, the playoffs aren't consistently compelling to watch until the late stages. I'm ok with that too I guess. It's a shame for those of us that really do share an interest, but DIII isn't for the fans, so compelling viewing just isn't a requirement.

[emma17]

I don't want to give the impression that I think there is a team left out of the tourney that had a legitimate shot at the championship.  That would require the left out team to play and beat multiple top tier teams.  However, I believe it's absolutely possible that two or three left out teams would have had a much better chance of beating one of the top tier teams- and that would be an upset and that would impact the tournament.   

As for prerogative to make the tourney more exciting, I think your wording clouds the issue a bit.  I do think it should be the committee's prerogative to use Pool C to make the tourney as competitive as possible.  In doing so, they will make the tourney more exciting.     

I think we can be specific here.  If I'm looking at what we did in the mock selection, we had Guilford and Platteville in the tournament instead of Whitworth and ONU.  Neither of those teams were going to do anything other than maybe win a game and then get squashed depending on the draw. 

If you want to include North Central, we can.  Same outcome, IMO.  North Central could have won a game depending on the draw and then they were going to play a team that was just better.  There was nowhere to hide in that second round. 

As for the other Cs- UWW, Wesley, SJU, and UMHB; three of them are still alive and I don't think anybody believes St. John's hadn't earned a spot in the field (and they got squashed).

The bold is where we differ, and I differ with Pat.  I simply cannot accept the thinking that we know UWP or NCC or TLU wasn't capable of pulling off one upset.  Each of these three teams have proved an ability to play competitively against top tier teams.  If a team can compete with the best, then logic states there is a greater chance for an upset.
I'm not sure if you're asking me to slot the left out teams into the bracket so the whole travel thing makes sense.  If you are, I really don't want to get into that.  My point simply is that there absolutely are teams (and I'm not just talking this year) that get left out of Pool C that have a shot at upsetting a top 8 team. 

To be honest, I don't get how anybody can argue that point.  Wesley is in the final 8.  They slipped by NCC on an extra point.  UWP beat NCC.  TLU lost by a touchdown to Hardin Simmons.  Granted, Hardin-Simmons got knocked out, but most on these boards attribute that to unfortunate bracketing. 
These teams all have a much greater chance of upsetting a top seed than Whitworth had. 

[emma17]

No one said more upsets were the desire. Changing "C" won't help that anyway.

Agreed.

Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that there was some desire for upsets as the playoffs would be more exciting - as opposed to chalk and cheese.
If upsets would make the playoffs more exciting, I disagree with Pat and Smed that a change to Pool C wouldn't help accomplish that.
I can list several teams that would have elevated the possibility of an upset.

Thomas More wasn't on your original list and I'd hope they would be on the next one.  Point is, sometimes you don't know who has the Jimmys and Joes to be competitive - they've given few reasons to be included on such a list before this season.

As I hope we can agree, Thomas More's strength will be solidified once we see Wabash at St. Thomas.  For Thomas More's sake, it would be great if Wabash plays a competitive game against St. Thomas.  This is exactly how the process should work.  Thomas More is earning status as a team that can compete with the best. In the event Thomas More is a Pool C candidate next year, there is reason for the committee to select them.