FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[NescacOutsider]

Oh, and I forgot COTY - whatever happens in the last two weeks, EJ Mills has to be the guy.  For a team with mediocre expectations to be 7-0, with five games that went down to the wire and could have gone either way but where Amherst made all the big plays down the stretch, is super impressive.  No one would say Amherst has more talent than Trinity or Wesleyan ...

Mills, like him or not, has been the best coach in this league for many years.

Congrats to Coach Mills on the lifetime achievement award. I think some might argue that Coach Devanney, and perhaps Coach Dicenzo, have been at/near the top over the past decade as the Mammoths are on pace for their best season since  2018 having averaged less than four wins a season since.

[lumbercat]

Oh, and I forgot COTY - whatever happens in the last two weeks, EJ Mills has to be the guy.  For a team with mediocre expectations to be 7-0, with five games that went down to the wire and could have gone either way but where Amherst made all the big plays down the stretch, is super impressive.  No one would say Amherst has more talent than Trinity or Wesleyan ...

Mills, like him or not, has been the best coach in this league for many years.

Congrats to Coach Mills on the lifetime achievement award. I think some might argue that Coach Devanney, and perhaps Coach Dicenzo, have been at/near the top over the past decade as the Mammoths are on pace for their best season since  2018 having averaged less than four wins a season since.

Give Mills the Trinity or Wesleyan personnel since 2018 along with their operating budgets and admissions officers and you would see more championships than either of those great programs.

[JEFFFAN]

What Lumbercat said ...

[Trin9-0]

I stumbled across the official NESCAC Football Tie-breaking Procedures for determining which team earns the conference's NCAA playoff bid in the event of a tie:

• Best record among tied teams, against one another (head-to-head).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 4 teams (including all teams at the 4th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 8 teams (including all teams at the 8th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against conference teams in rank order. Comparisons shall be made one team at a time starting with the highest ranked team.
• If the tie remains after comparing results against the highest ranked team, the results against the next team in rank order shall be used. This process is continued until a winner is determined.
• Coin flip or similar random action involving all tied teams (names being pulled out of a hat-the first team pulled will be the automatic qualifier).

Interesting that they will continue awarding "Co-Champion" and "Tri-Champion" status and only use the tie-breaker for the AQ bid process. Obviously, in the case of two teams finishing with the same record head-to-head is the determining factor.

The dreaded "random action" is the sixth and final option. However, in the event that three Championship teams are tied with a single round-robin style loss then literally pulling a name out of a hat is their solution to determine the Automatic Qualifier. GROSS!

Additionally, if I'm interpreting this correctly, then I also vehemently disagree with the most likely 3-way tie-breaking scenario for teams with 2 losses. For example; let's say Trinity, Wesleyan and Williams all finish 7-2.

Trinity's losses are to Williams and Middlebury (who finishes 6-3, 4th place)
Williams' losses are to Wesleyan and Amherst (who finishes 5-4, 5th place)
Wesleyan's losses are to Trinity and Bates (who finishes 2-7, 8th place)

In this scenario Wesleyan, who would have by far the worst loss of the three championship teams, would get the AQ playoff bid. Trinity who had the least egregious defeat, a loss to 4th place Middlebury, would be the first team eliminated. Then Williams would be eliminated due to their head-to-head loss to Wes.

Is it me or is this completely backwards? Shouldn't the team with the worst loss be eliminated first?
Am I interpreting this correctly? What are everyone else's thoughts?

I realize there's not many good ways to break a three-way tie but rewarding a team for the poorest result is baffling. For what it's worth, my preference for breaking a three-way tie among championship teams with more than 1 loss is point differential among in the games played between the Championship teams.

The Amherst victory over Wesleyan got me thinking about the possibility of a three-way tie and then it hit me! I think I figured out the rationale behind the NESCAC's absurd tie-breaker rules. As you can see above, essentially the team with the worst loss gets the automatic bid... therefore I think the league is trying to maximize the possibility of getting an at large bid by awarding the automatic berth to the team which would theoretically have the lowest NPI.

The problem is this would only take place in the event of a 3-way tie where each team has at least two losses and it's unlikely that any 2-loss NESCAC team would even qualify for an at large bid so if my theory is correct then the league would actually be doing itself a disservice.

Also, keep in mind that in the event of a 3-way tie where each team's only loss is to one of the other 1 loss teams they literally pull a name out of a hat! I'm sure we'll all handle that very well if Wes wins out and Trinity beats Midd & Amherst and the Mammoths beat Tufts & Williams.

Do other leagues have similar tie-breaking rules? Will the pulling of a name out of a hat be livestreamed? Will Nescacman pull the name? So many questions!

As a follow up to this; I reached out to Logan Hansen to ask what the numbers would show in a scenario where Trinity, Wesleyan, and Amherst all finish the season at 8-1. His response:

They would be very likely to get all three in. Here are each teams' odds under that scenario (odds aren't all the same because of each team's number of home games & who they played home/away):
Trinity: 97.2%
Wesleyan: 99.9%
Amherst: 93.7%

[Nescacman]

So it's officially time to discuss the nightmare NESCAC scenario...the 3-way tie with Hartford State, the Lord Mammoths and Wes all ending the season with identical 8-1 records assuming HS beats the LMs this Saturday, Wes wins out, and the Lord Mammoths lose to HS but beat the Ephs in Week 9.

We ran through the permutations and combinations (including running it through ChatGPT) and this is what we came up with:

The NESCAC automatic qualifying bid would be determined by a coin flip or random drawing among Wesleyan, Hartford State, and Amherst.

Under this scenario, all three schools finish 8–1, and none wins the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Step 1: Head-to-head records

Team                 vs. Wesleyan             vs. Hartford State           vs. Amherst           Record
Wesleyan                 —                                   Win                                 Loss                                  1–1
Hartford State        Loss                                 —                                  Win                                  1–1
Amherst                  Win                               Loss                                  —                                    1–1

Step 2: Results against the top four teams

All three teams would have identical records against the top four:
- Wesleyan: 2–1
- Hartford State: 2–1
- Amherst: 2–1

Each would have beaten every other NESCAC opponent, so the fourth-place team's identity would not change the comparison.

Step 3: Results against the top eight teams

Again, the three teams would have identical records: 6–1.

Steps 4 and 5: Compare results against teams in standings order

No separation is possible. All three teams would have the same 8–1 record, with their only losses coming against one another.

Step 6: Random drawing

The official NESCAC procedure specifies a random action when the preceding criteria cannot separate tied teams. It also explicitly provides for a three-team drawing in which the teams are ordered by the sequence in which their names are drawn.
nescac.com

FINAL RESULT UNDER THIS SCENARIO
Three-way tie at 8–1
Wesleyan · Hartford State · Amherst

Random draw

All three schools would be recognized as NESCAC co-champions. The school selected first in the random drawing would receive the conference's automatic NCAA Division III playoff bid.

#sucks

[Nescacman]

By the way, in running through the calculation, in the 3-way tie scenario, we believe you will end up with a coin flip 100% of the time.

Nice job NESCAC. Hs7-2, you did say this earlier in the season and at the time, it was lost on us. There are definitely better ways to do this.

Stupid NESCAC. Some of the top academic schools in the country and you can't come up with a better system. Go to the Tufts Math Department and ask one of their Professors to design a tie breaking system for a 3-way tie. Duh.

[Patrick Coleman]

Reiterating.

There are no good ways to break a three-way tie in football when everyone has one loss and has split with the other two.

[Nescacman]

Reiterating.

There are no good ways to break a three-way tie in football when everyone has one loss and has split with the other two.

Patrick, not sure we 100% agree. There may be no good way but there are CERTAINLY better ways than the method that the wizards in NESCAC HQ selected to break a 3-way tie. Let's "hope" it doesn't come down to that. ANYTHING is better than picking the Team out of a hat.   

[AmherstStudent05]

I tend to agree with Pat on this one. Sure, one could think of all sorts of ways that are not random to break a three way tie between 1 loss teams who have all beaten one another. Point differential, turnovers, rushing yards allowed, fewest penalties, etc.  While none of these are "random", I'm not sure any of them are at all any more satisfying than a random hat draw.

The only consideration I can think of that might be marginally more satisfying is a tie breaking criteria that rewards road wins among the tied cohort (this could also end in a tie of course and this year would harm my beloved Amherst).

But the bottom line is there just isn't a satisfying way to break such a tie. Therefore, I'm sure everyone will join me in rooting Amherst on this week so they can clinch the NESCAC title now before we even enter the final week of Conference play.

[ccd494]

Point differential among tied teams generally punishes teams that win defensive slugfests.

Point differential in all games just rewards whoever runs it up the most against Bates.

The point of playing the games is to win the games. Once you start delving into the minutiae of HOW did teams win those games to break a tie you start making value judgments about the right or better way to win games that is going to create bigger inequities. Is it better to win with defense?  Is it better to not win games by 50 and get your reserves some time?  Is it better to control time of possession?

The hat is the fairest method once you get to that point.

[Owl90]

Hammer is officially out at Bowdoin. A national search for a new head coach will begin soon.

[BrownBagBowdoin]

Hammer is officially out at Bowdoin. A national search for a new head coach will begin soon.

The day, the music... died.

[Trin9-0]

Welcome to the party Nescacman and I fully agree that the 3-way tie among round robin style 1-loss teams that results in a random draw is utterly unsatisfying. The only bright side, which I posted yesterday, is that it won't really matter in terms of playoff qualification as it seems overwhelmingly likely that all three NESCAC teams would receive a postseason bid if they finish the regular season at 8-1. I'm sure the league would be thrilled with that outcome despite our grumblings.

A quick search shows that many conferences (MWC, PAC, SAA, etc.) use NPI ranking as their last attempt at breaking a 3-way tie, which would essentially look like AmherstStudent05's suggestion as it rewards road wins over home wins. Many conferences have other criteria that are used first, based largely on schedule strength, but that's a particularly thorny issue in the NESCAC because, as we all know, there are not out of conference games.

I disagree with ccd494 that a random draw is more fair than point differential among the tied teams. A random draw is just that; random. It's not "fair" at all. Point differential uses what happens in the actual games played by the tied teams. It won't matter who runs up the scores in Maine. How did you play in the games against the other contenders? That's what should matter.

Even if the NESCAC used the very rudimentary NPI to break the tie, I would prefer it to a random draw.

Given Trinity's injury situation on offense with no Nolan O'Brien, no Patrick McCaffrey, no Nick Behrens, no Tate Hoffmeister. I'm just oping the defense can find a way to limit Amherst to 14 or less and the offense can muster enough scoring drives to keep the tie-breaking storyline alive for another week.

[AmherstStudent05]

Trin,

A couple of points in response to your thoughtful post.

First "random" and "fair" are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, we often find that "random" activities are the most "fair" way to decide things, which is why coin flips are so prevalent. It obviously depends on whether there are more satisfying ways to break a tie.

This leads to the second point. I am a huge football fan but I just don't believe that relative margins of victory are either reliable indicators of relative team success or a worthy objective for coaches and teams to play for. You play to win the game. You shouldn't play to win by 27 instead of 20 or to lose by 6 instead of 9.

I also think there could be competitive balance issues with points as a tiebreaker. Let's say such a system were in place this season. Let's then say that Trinity (miraculously!) beats Amherst by 9 points. Trinity goes into the final week of the season knowing that as long as they lose to Wes by a TD or less they are the NESCAC champs. This is a terrible incentive to have and is also an unfair advantage for playing relevant games last.

Again I can at least see an argument for road wins. That is outside of any team's control and I do think most people accept that it's harder to win on the road than at home. Otherwise it seems to me that a coin flip is about as "fair" as we can get.

[Trin9-0]

I can't fathom a scenario where any team would be content with losing by a certain number of points just so they can claim a share of a title and a .333 chance at an automatic playoff bid. I will concede there is a benefit to playing your potential tie-breaking game last but with schedules fixed before the season begins is that any more or less random than a coinflip?

Reasonable people can disagree. I'm willing to err on the side of imperfect, yet relevant than fully submit to randomness.


For what it's worth, the last time there was a 3-way tie was when Amherst, Middlebury, and Wesleyan split the title in 2013. However, that wasn't a round-robin scenario as Middlebury and Wesleyan didn't even play each other! The Cards lost to Trin while the Panthers lost to Amherst who in turn lost to Wesleyan. Under the current rules Wesleyan would have received the automatic bid that season despite their loss coming against a 6-2 Trinity team.

The better examples (although not perfect due to the 8 game schedule) were in 1997 between Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams and in 2000 when Amherst, Colby, and Middlebury shared the title with each of their losses coming against the other. In both instances Amherst had the best point differential in games played between championship teams (+20 in '97 and +6 in '00). I would argue the then Lord Jeffs should have gotten the theoretical automatic bid... or they could have picked a name out of a hat.