FB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

Started by admin, August 16, 2005, 05:13:40 AM

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hscathletics

It's a fine line to play. I doubt coaches actually want to be telling like 50+ freshmen every year they all will make the team unless you have some sort of large minimum roster mandate, but it would be unwise from an admission standpoint to flat out tell the kid they have no shot of ever making the team. I would think most schools would ask coaches to tell the kids they are welcome to try out for the team but there is no guarantee they will make the team.

If the kid still decides to come to the school and tryout then so be it, but give them the opportunity instead of completely dismissing the school from consideration all together. At the end of the day, beds need to be filled rather the kid is a football team member or not. If you have a kid that is directly reaching out that is a much more cost effective bed to fill than admissions staff having to go out in the field and recruiting them from scratch.

CMR

#19771
Quote from: hscathletics on August 16, 2016, 10:46:39 PM
It's a fine line to play. I doubt coaches actually want to be telling like 50+ freshmen every year they all will make the team unless you have some sort of large minimum roster mandate, but it would be unwise from an admission standpoint to flat out tell the kid they have no shot of ever making the team. I would think most schools would ask coaches to tell the kids they are welcome to try out for the team but there is no guarantee they will make the team.

If the kid still decides to come to the school and tryout then so be it, but give them the opportunity instead of completely dismissing the school from consideration all together. At the end of the day, beds need to be filled rather the kid is a football team member or not. If you have a kid that is directly reaching out that is a much more cost effective bed to fill than admissions staff having to go out in the field and recruiting them from scratch.
Agreed, my point was that some schools, ie WLU, HSC and RMC, aren't as desperate as others in needing to fill beds.

Obviously two schools of thought, vetting kids on the front end and bringing in 30 or so kids that fit your program, or bringing in 80+ and vet them after they come to campus.  I just think the former is better and more fair for the programs and the players.  That should be a football decision, not a financial one in filling beds.  For those schools that have the luxury of keeping it a football decision, the better for them.  But, if you're a school that needs to fill beds via football, then you have to do what you have to do.

Scots13

Quote from: CMR on August 17, 2016, 10:56:38 AM
Quote from: hscathletics on August 16, 2016, 10:46:39 PM
It's a fine line to play. I doubt coaches actually want to be telling like 50+ freshmen every year they all will make the team unless you have some sort of large minimum roster mandate, but it would be unwise from an admission standpoint to flat out tell the kid they have no shot of ever making the team. I would think most schools would ask coaches to tell the kids they are welcome to try out for the team but there is no guarantee they will make the team.

If the kid still decides to come to the school and tryout then so be it, but give them the opportunity instead of completely dismissing the school from consideration all together. At the end of the day, beds need to be filled rather the kid is a football team member or not. If you have a kid that is directly reaching out that is a much more cost effective bed to fill than admissions staff having to go out in the field and recruiting them from scratch.
Agreed, my point was that some schools, ie WLU, HSC and RMC, aren't as desperate as others in needing to fill beds.

Obviously two schools of thought, vetting kids on the front end and bringing in 30 or so kids that fit your program, or bringing in 80+ and vet them after they come to campus.  I just think the former is better and more fair for the programs and the players.  That should be a football decision, not a financial one in filling beds.  For those schools that have the luxury of keeping it a football decision, the better for them.  But, if you're a school that needs to fill beds via football, then you have to do what you have to do.

To add to that point and my earlier post a little, I came across Maryville bicentennial plan for 2019. One of the plans is to have enrollment up to 1300 students. As of the fall semester of 2015, there were 1,213 students. With that being said, I don't think MC has a problem filling beds, they just want more beds filled. (Which is creating a big problem of where to put the beds as MC's dorm space is filling up.)
Where Chilhowee's lofty mountains pierce the southern blue, proudly stands our Alma Mater
NOBLE, GRAND, and TRUE.
TO THE HILL!

jknezek

Filling beds for schools with 50 or 60% acceptance rate isn't usually a problem. The issue is you don't really want that rate to drop. So you have to get 2 applicants for every one more you are willing to accept. Ideally one of those two new applicants fills your current minimum requirements so you don't slip in the quality of your student body. But yeah, for schools that have a modicum of rejections, it's not hard to fill beds if you have to in any given year.

The problem is when you have to do it year after year you start to slip. Then the ratings slide, the quality of applicants slide, you start admitting 75-90% of applicants. All of a sudden you are entering the "if they can breath, spell their name right on the application, mommy or daddy can cut a check, and the rap sheet isn't too long, you're in" area. That's when you start struggling to fill beds. 

So growth really needs to be managed very carefully or you can easily find yourself in a bad spiral.

tigerFanAlso2

JK

Growth !!!

Let the interest rates increase to 6% and these small, liberal arts schools are going to play hell to just maintain current levels/admission standards. Not many are blessed with a large endowment to offset very high tuition/board/meal/other fees.
When the rates go up we will see institutions really struggle. Don't know when this happens, but it will.

jknezek

It's a discussion for a different board. I 100% agree and I simply don't care. We hand out way to many college degrees in this country. And way too many of them come from schools that simply have to admit kids and churn out degrees that have very little value other than a necessary piece of paper. It's become more a right of passage, money, and perseverance than learning and achievement. And jobs that 10 or 20 years ago wouldn't have required a college degree now do, because there are so many floating around looking to get hired. And good jobs that would have required a college degree now require a masters because a simple bachelors degree doesn't mean what it used to.

tigerFanAlso2

agreed and I don't really care either other than I might be working longer to pay for my kids post grad work. back  to football when a worthy topic shows to discuss

HansenRatings

Don't think I've posted my model's preseason conference predictions (without adjusting for returning starters; Kickoff can't come soon enough) for the ODAC yet:


Team   W-L   Conf W-L   Pool A Probability   
Guilford   7.3-2.7   4.7-2.3   27.54%   
Wash & Lee   6.1-3.9   4.4-2.6   20.44%   
Hampden-Sydney   6.6-3.4   4.3-2.7   17.04%   
Randolph-Macon   6.4-3.6   4.1-2.9   15.94%   
Emory & Henry   5.4-3.6   3.9-3.1   12.37%   
Bridgewater   3.3-5.7   2.9-4.1   4.23%   
Shenandoah   4.1-5.9   2.2-4.8   1.68%   
Catholic   3.3-6.7   1.6-5.4   0.76%   

Source: https://loghan.shinyapps.io/Season_Projections/

With less than one game separating the projected first-place team from the projected fifth place team, I suppose we should expect another fun (frustrating?) season in the ODAC.

Follow me on Twitter. I post fun graphs sometimes. @LogHanRatings

jknezek

Until you have the returning starter info I just don't see the point.

tigerFanAlso2

Let me understand; W&L ran the table in 2015/return 18 starters and are picked to finish 2nd in the odac ? Not sure I'm understanding, but there again, I could give a S+++ about preseason predictions anyway.

jknezek

Quote from: tigerFanAlso2 on August 18, 2016, 08:52:00 AM
Let me understand; W&L ran the table in 2015/return 18 starters and are picked to finish 2nd in the odac ? Not sure I'm understanding, but there again, I could give a S+++ about preseason predictions anyway.

Well, it's a mathematical model that isn't including returning starters. Given W&L just pipped Guilford at home last year, and Guilford ran the rest of the table, a math model that doesn't include things like returning starters could very easily give Guilford an edge playing at home this year depending on what factors are included. It's just fairly useless to do those kinds of predictions without including returning starters, hence my previous comment. That being said, predicting a tight ODAC is probably as correct as anyone else will be. It's not like W&L was a trendy pick to run the table last year. I think I had them 4th in my preseason thoughts, and I believe Kickoff might have even had them lower.

HansenRatings

jknezek is correct on some points, but I wouldn't say models that don't incorporate returning starters are "useless." I don't have any returning starter info for teams prior to 2013, and my preseason predictions for those years still predicted the correct game outcomes for over 75% of games. As far as preseason predictions/rankings in general go, there's been some smart analysis done by other people that shows preseason rankings in DI football and basketball tend to have more predictive power than in-season rankings:
http://kenpom.com/blog/the-preseason-ap-poll-is-great/
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/eye-on-college-basketball/24378831/you-think-preseason-rankings-are-worthless-think-again
http://thepowerrank.com/guide-cfb-rankings/

To the model, which incorporates home-field advantage (average of 3 points nationwide), a 3 point win at home is the same thing as a tie at a neutral site. For preseason predictions, it also factors in teams' long-term trends. W&L went 2-8 two years ago and finished 2014 rated sixth in the ODAC in my system, while Guilford was rated first. Seventy-five percent of this year's preseason rating is based on last year's finish, with the remaining 25% being a combination of the previous three seasons. If they're on a real upward trend, the model definitely underestimates them, but history shows teams tend to regress towards their own long-term trends.

Each returning starter above/below average (on average, teams return 6.75 starters per unit) is worth 1.5 points/game in my model. Essentially, every 4 points converts to one extra win. If W&L has 3 more returning starters on O & D than Guilford, they will likely be projected to finish higher.
Follow me on Twitter. I post fun graphs sometimes. @LogHanRatings

jknezek

Quote from: HansenRatings on August 18, 2016, 10:15:11 AM
jknezek is correct on some points, but I wouldn't say models that don't incorporate returning starters are "useless." I don't have any returning starter info for teams prior to 2013, and my preseason predictions for those years still predicted the correct game outcomes for over 75% of games.

75% of games is a relatively low bar. Considering over a large enough sample you can get 50% right by randomly picking, and you can do significantly better than that by excluding the Purple Powers and other conference dominators and picking them not to lose, DIII just doesn't have that many surprises or toss-up games in any given week. There's too much consistency in who is good and who isn't. 

So useless might have been strong, but not particularly inaccurate when just picking winners or losers. 75% against a spread? That's a different animal.

HansenRatings

Quote from: jknezek on August 18, 2016, 11:11:03 AM
Quote from: HansenRatings on August 18, 2016, 10:15:11 AM
jknezek is correct on some points, but I wouldn't say models that don't incorporate returning starters are "useless." I don't have any returning starter info for teams prior to 2013, and my preseason predictions for those years still predicted the correct game outcomes for over 75% of games.

75% of games is a relatively low bar. Considering over a large enough sample you can get 50% right by randomly picking, and you can do significantly better than that by excluding the Purple Powers and other conference dominators and picking them not to lose, DIII just doesn't have that many surprises or toss-up games in any given week. There's too much consistency in who is good and who isn't. 

So useless might have been strong, but not particularly inaccurate when just picking winners or losers. 75% against a spread? That's a different animal.

The absolute best DI college football modelling systems barely break the 78% barrier with their in-season predictions (http://www.thepredictiontracker.com/ncaaresults.php?orderby=wpct%20desc&type=1&year=15), and none can consistenly beat the spread by over 55%.  I feel like 75% for a preseason prediction is pretty impressive. Yes, DIII is different because there are generally fewer tossup games, but we also have a much larger division with less interconference play, making comparisons more difficult.

As a point of reference, last year in the ODAC pick-'em challenge, you got 153 points over 11 weeks. With 12 games per week, 28 ODAC games, 24 ODAC non-con games, that leaves 80 out-of-conference games. At 3 points per ODAC game, 2 points per non-con game, and 1 point for the rest, that's 212 points. 153 / 212 = 72%, which is pretty good considering most of the games you're picking are going to be competitive, but I think you may have a skewed perception about the nature of predictions.
Follow me on Twitter. I post fun graphs sometimes. @LogHanRatings

jknezek

Quote from: HansenRatings on August 18, 2016, 11:35:22 AM
Quote from: jknezek on August 18, 2016, 11:11:03 AM
Quote from: HansenRatings on August 18, 2016, 10:15:11 AM
jknezek is correct on some points, but I wouldn't say models that don't incorporate returning starters are "useless." I don't have any returning starter info for teams prior to 2013, and my preseason predictions for those years still predicted the correct game outcomes for over 75% of games.

75% of games is a relatively low bar. Considering over a large enough sample you can get 50% right by randomly picking, and you can do significantly better than that by excluding the Purple Powers and other conference dominators and picking them not to lose, DIII just doesn't have that many surprises or toss-up games in any given week. There's too much consistency in who is good and who isn't. 

So useless might have been strong, but not particularly inaccurate when just picking winners or losers. 75% against a spread? That's a different animal.

The absolute best DI college football modelling systems barely break the 78% barrier with their in-season predictions (http://www.thepredictiontracker.com/ncaaresults.php?orderby=wpct%20desc&type=1&year=15), and none can consistenly beat the spread by over 55%.  I feel like 75% for a preseason prediction is pretty impressive. Yes, DIII is different because there are generally fewer tossup games, but we also have a much larger division with less interconference play, making comparisons more difficult.

As a point of reference, last year in the ODAC pick-'em challenge, you got 153 points over 11 weeks. With 12 games per week, 28 ODAC games, 24 ODAC non-con games, that leaves 80 out-of-conference games. At 3 points per ODAC game, 2 points per non-con game, and 1 point for the rest, that's 212 points. 153 / 212 = 72%, which is pretty good considering most of the games you're picking are going to be competitive, but I think you may have a skewed perception about the nature of predictions.

We're just going to agree to disagree. Those ODAC pick'ems don't carry the gimme games the rest of the division provides... at least once we get past the typically sad OOC schedule. The ODAC pick'em is designed to find the 5 hardest to pick non-ODAC games every week during the regular season, and HSCTiger74 does a good job of doing just that. Throw in the ODAC is one of the harder conferences to pick, with teams rarely going 6/7-0 or 0-6/7 in conference, and a year where W&L happened to come from little expectations, and it was much harder to do 70% in the pick'em last year than 75% in all of D3 in my opinion.