Directors Cup

[Bombers798891]

A national system which includes sports that most schools do not offer is grossly unfair to those who cannot afford them.  Many d3 schools don't even HAVE 9 sports per gender; those who can afford 16-18 have a HUGE advantage, since any 'oops' teams are dropped.

I don't entirely disagree with this point, but, instead of weighting championships, why not use a factor to weight athletic programs?  Some sort of system to account for the notion that a 16-sport program with 10 NCAA qualifying teams and three National Champions would seem to be more "top-heavy successful" (that's essentially what the Director's Cup is measuring, since all teams who miss the NCAA Tournament are treated as equal) than a 24-sport program with 12 qualifying teams and four champions.

Co-sign. Why should we put every school, all of which have different challenges and advantages, and all of which prioritize athletics differently, in the same boat?

Your post got me thinking. Take your "16-sport program with 10 NCAA qualifying teams and three National Champions" athletic program in Year 1. Then suppose they added five new teams the next season (this is all hypothetical, so let's suppose they can immediately compete for appearances in the NCAA's.)

If those original 16 teams finished in the exact same spot in Year 2, the school would earn the same number of Director's Cup points as they did the year before. But if those five new teams all went winless that season, obviously, the athletic program isn't as strong in Year 2. Those winless teams are irrelevant to the Director's Cup point totals, but they're not irrelevant to the athletic department

Now let's go to Year 3. The original 16 teams do the same "10 NCAA qualifying teams and three National Champions" routine (hey, they're consistent like that.) But the five winless teams suddenly improve to the point where they're each one of the last four teams left out of the NCAA's.

Again, there's no change in the point value the team got from Year 2 to Year 3. But again, the athletic program has changed significantly, this time for the better (You could even argue they improved from Year 1 to Year 3)

Three seasons, each with a drastically different athletic department, each viewed the exact same way by the standings.

For an athletic department, while you'd want to do well in the DC standings, you're probably best served identifying a handful of schools that are similar to you in terms of offerings, budgets, overall profile, and saying "How do we compare to them?" Or just comparing your point totals year in year out (provided you keep the number of offerings roughly the same)

[Gregory Sager]

The Directors' Cup is interesting (what else do we have to talk about in mid-June ), but it is a totally flawed formula which guarantees a NESCAC winner (and, this year, a UAA runner-up).  The rest of us can aspire to a top ten finish in a really exceptional year.

While the Cup winner does invariably seem to come from the NESCAC, it's not the only league that's disproportionally successful in the Cup standings. The WIAC had five schools among the top 31 this year, and four among the top 14 two years ago.

Considering that the WIAC is the traditional d3boards.com whipping boy in terms of D3 athletics inequities, this would seem to buttress the argument that the Cup criteria are inherently unfair. But, in fact, it doesn't. The WIAC schools don't participate in a lot of minor sports (which for Cup purposes I'd define as sports that have fewer than 200 participating schools at the D3 level). Five schools participate in men's ice hockey, which the WIAC sponsors as an official conference sport, and four schools have women's ice hockey teams, although the WIAC doesn't sponsor that sport. Both men's and women's ice hockey have fewer than 100 participating schools at the D3 level. There's also four WIAC schools that have women's gymnastics teams, but that sport is so rare among D3 schools that the division doesn't even offer a tournament for it -- so it therefore doesn't count in the Cup standings.

WIAC participation rates are therefore not particularly high:

school	men's	women's	total
UWEC	10	12	22
UWL	9	10	19
UWO	10	11	21
UWP	8	8	16
UWRF	7	11	18
UWSP	9	11	20
UWSt	8	11	19
UWSup	7	8	15
UWW	10	12	22

There are D3 leagues in which member schools all hover at or slightly above the six-sport minimum per gender, and which therefore don't come close to the WIAC's participation rate. But the WIAC's average participation rate is well below that of it's rival to the south, the CCIW, and of course it's dramatically lower than the NESCAC's.

The WIAC doesn't succeed in the Cup standings because it has lots of minor-sport teams that can pick up cheap points. It succeeds because it's so dominant in the sports in which it does participate -- which takes us back to the old inequities argument, which I see no point in rehashing for the umpteenth time, especially since that argument is not germane to the subject of the Cup's criteria flaws.

[Ralph Turner]

I don't see a PR adjustment as demeaning a 'sport'; just recognizing the reality that beating out 400 other schools is considerably more impressive than beating out 40 other schools.

Is it always?  You're making statistical assumptions here, but the world doesn't always reflect statistics.  While you can certainly make the argument that beating 400 will always be better than 40, what about 350 v. 200?  Isn't the only number that matters (if you're assessing degree of difficulty) the number of truly excellent teams? True contenders if you will?  Do the bottom 280 out of that 350 even have a prayer of truly competing for the national championship?  There are more women's basketball teams than men's, but the prevailing opinion would be that the men's tournament is usually more wide open (arguable) and that the women have more bottom-feeding teams (less arguable). If we're going to try to judge what the harder accomplishment is, couldn't the case be made that winning the men's title is the harder accomplishment?  What about sports like track and swimming where there are only a handful of teams who even have a real mathematical chance of winning the title because they have larger numbers of individual national qualifiers?  Aren't those fields trimmed way, way down - realistically - before the season ever starts?  I bring up these points not to slight women's basketball or track or swimming, but to point out the slippery slope of trying to determine which championship is the better accomplishment.

I don't think, from what I've read, that "better" is the right word here. More "challenging", perhaps would be a better qualifier. RIT, the women's hockey champion had to win three playoff games to win the title. The women's basketball winner had to win six. More teams qualify for the playoffs in women's basketball than there are in women's ice hockey, or rowing, or field hockey. There's just more competition.

It's sort of the problem I have with wrestling. By the time you get to the national championships, there's maybe five teams who can win the thing because they've got seven, eight, nine guys wrestling for points, and other teams only have two or three.

I think the central question becomes, "What are we trying to measure with these standings?" Which athletic departments achieved the most success? Even if we adjusted the point totals for certain sports, there are still issues. Not all non-playoff teams are created equal, even though they're all given zero points. An 0-10 football team is not the same as an 8-2 one. An 18-9 basketball team is not the same as a 3-22 one. So even forgetting the whole "which championships are tougher?" argument, the system is flawed because it only gives value to playoff teams. (I'm fully aware that assigning every single team in a sport points is a practical impossibility, so I'm not advocating for it, mind you)

Please correct me, but did RIT earn a conference AQ or did they get a Pool B bid?

In Women's basketball, teams that are not in the UAA or Pool B must win 2 or 3 conference tournament games to get the Pool A bid, and then 6 to win the National Championship.  8-9 games versus 3 games is much more indicative of the challenge.

[Bombers798891]

I don't see a PR adjustment as demeaning a 'sport'; just recognizing the reality that beating out 400 other schools is considerably more impressive than beating out 40 other schools.

Is it always?  You're making statistical assumptions here, but the world doesn't always reflect statistics.  While you can certainly make the argument that beating 400 will always be better than 40, what about 350 v. 200?  Isn't the only number that matters (if you're assessing degree of difficulty) the number of truly excellent teams? True contenders if you will?  Do the bottom 280 out of that 350 even have a prayer of truly competing for the national championship?  There are more women's basketball teams than men's, but the prevailing opinion would be that the men's tournament is usually more wide open (arguable) and that the women have more bottom-feeding teams (less arguable). If we're going to try to judge what the harder accomplishment is, couldn't the case be made that winning the men's title is the harder accomplishment?  What about sports like track and swimming where there are only a handful of teams who even have a real mathematical chance of winning the title because they have larger numbers of individual national qualifiers?  Aren't those fields trimmed way, way down - realistically - before the season ever starts?  I bring up these points not to slight women's basketball or track or swimming, but to point out the slippery slope of trying to determine which championship is the better accomplishment.

I don't think, from what I've read, that "better" is the right word here. More "challenging", perhaps would be a better qualifier. RIT, the women's hockey champion had to win three playoff games to win the title. The women's basketball winner had to win six. More teams qualify for the playoffs in women's basketball than there are in women's ice hockey, or rowing, or field hockey. There's just more competition.

It's sort of the problem I have with wrestling. By the time you get to the national championships, there's maybe five teams who can win the thing because they've got seven, eight, nine guys wrestling for points, and other teams only have two or three.

I think the central question becomes, "What are we trying to measure with these standings?" Which athletic departments achieved the most success? Even if we adjusted the point totals for certain sports, there are still issues. Not all non-playoff teams are created equal, even though they're all given zero points. An 0-10 football team is not the same as an 8-2 one. An 18-9 basketball team is not the same as a 3-22 one. So even forgetting the whole "which championships are tougher?" argument, the system is flawed because it only gives value to playoff teams. (I'm fully aware that assigning every single team in a sport points is a practical impossibility, so I'm not advocating for it, mind you)

Please correct me, but did RIT earn a conference AQ or did they get a Pool B bid?

In Women's basketball, teams that are not in the UAA or Pool B must win 2 or 3 conference tournament games to get the Pool A bid, and then 6 to win the National Championship.  8-9 games versus 3 games is much more indicative of the challenge.

Thanks for the correction. I figured I might be wrong, but yes, the general point stands (although since you don't have to win your conference tournament to win the national title, I think 8-9 wins might be overselling it a tad.)

[Bombers798891]

I just want to point out, in case it isn't inherently clear, that nothing I say about the Director's Cup should be construed as me being critical of the teams who win/do well in it. Colleges should put on whatever sports they can support, and they don't control the point system. As they say, "don't hate the player, hate the game."

[Ralph Turner]

In the stronger conferences, there may be a Pool C team that loses in one of the 2-3 games in the conference tourney and gets a do-over, but we are talking at least a tough conference championship game and the last 5 games in the NCAA's as being tough.  (You always gotta be careful for that first round knock-out, too.)

[Bombers798891]

In the stronger conferences, there may be a Pool C team that loses in one of the 2-3 games in the conference tourney and gets a do-over, but we are talking at least a tough conference championship game and the last 5 games in the NCAA's as being tough.  (You always gotta be careful for that first round knock-out, too.)

I agree. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying it happens

[sunny]

In the stronger conferences, there may be a Pool C team that loses in one of the 2-3 games in the conference tourney and gets a do-over, but we are talking at least a tough conference championship game and the last 5 games in the NCAA's as being tough.  (You always gotta be careful for that first round knock-out, too.)

But the conference tournament argument is a moot point.  A few conferences don't have tournaments in some sports ... and then .. some let eight teams in .. some four, some six ... and the "minor" sports may also have conference tournaments to determine their AQ - so those additional games regardless of whether it's basketball or field hockey.  If you're going to try to make that argument, you can extrapolate that further and say that programs who come from conferences where you have to finish in the top four or five or six just to MAKE the conference tournament have a tougher road than a team from an eight-school conference with an eight-team conference tournament.  In theory (though obviously incredibly unlikely), that team could go winless in the regular season, win three straight conference tournament games and BOOM, Director's Cup points. Meanwhile, teams that have to qualify for their conference tournaments (or, shoot, those who don't have a conference tournament), are playing games all season that effect their access to the AQ.

[Gregory Sager]

In the stronger conferences, there may be a Pool C team that loses in one of the 2-3 games in the conference tourney and gets a do-over, but we are talking at least a tough conference championship game and the last 5 games in the NCAA's as being tough.  (You always gotta be careful for that first round knock-out, too.)

But the conference tournament argument is a moot point.  A few conferences don't have tournaments in some sports ... and then .. some let eight teams in .. some four, some six ... and the "minor" sports may also have conference tournaments to determine their AQ

The minor sports are less likely to have conference tournaments than the major sports, because oftentimes they don't represent the full membership of the league.

[sunny]

In the stronger conferences, there may be a Pool C team that loses in one of the 2-3 games in the conference tourney and gets a do-over, but we are talking at least a tough conference championship game and the last 5 games in the NCAA's as being tough.  (You always gotta be careful for that first round knock-out, too.)

But the conference tournament argument is a moot point.  A few conferences don't have tournaments in some sports ... and then .. some let eight teams in .. some four, some six ... and the "minor" sports may also have conference tournaments to determine their AQ

The minor sports are less likely to have conference tournaments than the major sports, because oftentimes they don't represent the full membership of the league.

But then we are talking Pool B ... a whole different animal.  I'm simply talking about Pool A qualifiers.  And there are a good number of Pool A minor-sport qualifiers in the conference generating a lot of this discussion (NESCAC).

[frank uible]

The Directors Cup is merely a "paper" championship in that it conducts no athletic events but merely keeps score by its own system with respect to certain NCAA sponsored events. None of us are prevented from establishing our own championship, say the XYZ Cup, which uses our own different scoring system, whether or not based, at our discretion, on NCAA events.

[Pat Coleman]

The Directors Cup is merely a "paper" championship in that it conducts no athletic events but merely keeps score by its own system with respect to certain NCAA sponsored events. None of us are prevented from establishing our own championship, say the XYZ Cup, which uses our own different scoring system, whether or not based, at our discretion, on NCAA events.

Could the room come to a consensus on a methodology and run this year's results?

[Gregory Sager]

I vote for Ralph's participation ratio.

[Ralph Turner]

The Directors Cup is merely a "paper" championship in that it conducts no athletic events but merely keeps score by its own system with respect to certain NCAA sponsored events. None of us are prevented from establishing our own championship, say the XYZ Cup, which uses our own different scoring system, whether or not based, at our discretion, on NCAA events.

Could the room come to a consensus on a methodology and run this year's results?

If I didn't have a day job, I would love to run the Directors' Cup with the Participant Ratio (PR), which I think is the simplest modification.

(How does one load the tables found on the Learfield pdf into Excel and then apply the  PR calculation?  I think that the WIAC would look even stronger.)

[Ralph Turner]

I vote for Ralph's participation ratio.

Thanks Gregory.  (I wonder how IWU would fare with the PR.    )