<p>So if you ban yourself from playing the postseason, you have no one to blame but yourself. Am I missing something??</p>
<p>
[quote]
Interestingly, when Harvard topped the Ivy Leage in 2004 they finished ahead of Stanford in the USA Today consolidated rankings, based on record and strength of schedule - not that that is saying a helluva lot!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Only people like you who don't watch college football would believe that Harvard's ranking or believe Harvard has a better football team. LOL! By the way, you don't need to be Harvard's graduate to know there's no such thing as strength of schedule for Ivies as they don't play with other D-1 teams. The points that Harvard got was merely some "default" points awarded to the champion of Ivy League.</p>
<p>
[quote]
there's no such thing as strength of schedule for Ivies as they don't play with other D-1 teams. The points that Harvard got was merely some "default" points awarded to the champion of Ivy League.
[/quote]
In fairness, computer rankings of Ivy football have a bit more to go on than that. The Ivies do play non-Ivy teams; otherwise their football season would be limited to just seven games. In 2004, for example, Harvard beat 1-AA Holy Cross, Northeastern, and Lafayette; Lafayette was a I-AA playoff team. So the Ivies are not "disconnected" from other NCAA football teams, and computers can rank them.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, the only truly "disconnected" NCAA football teams are the ten Division III NESCAC schools (Middlebury, Williams, Bowdoin, etc.). They only play each other, and are therefore impossible to rank by computer relative to the rest of the NCAA.</p>
<p>So it is possible to calculate "strength of schedule" for the Ivies, although the results aren't usually very high. In 2004, for example, Jeff Sagarin (who is responsible for the USA Today rankings) rated Stanford's "schedule difficulty" at #10 nationwide, and Harvard's at #167.</p>
<p>Incidentally, Sagarin himself probably would have picked Stanford over Harvard in 2004. He actually compiles two separate football ratings: his "ELO-CHESS" rating only considers winning and losing, while his "PREDICTOR" rating also factors in score margins. The ELO-CHESS rating gets more press, because it is the one used by the Bowl Championship Series. However, the lesser-known PREDICTOR rating is supposed to be the most accurate. In 2004, his PREDICTOR rating put Stanford at #30 and Harvard at #40. Details [url=<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt04.htm%5Dhere%5B/url">http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt04.htm]here[/url</a>].</p>
<p>The NACDA Director's Cup has come under some heavy criticism in this thread as being unfair to Ivy League schools. Specifically, it has been noted that (1) the rankings devalue or disregard certain sports that the Ivies are traditionally strong at, and (2) the rankings grant no points for Ivy football championships, since Ivy teams are barred from posteason play.</p>
<p>These handicaps are not unique to the Ivies -- they also affect the NESCAC schools in Division III. NESCAC teams are also barred from the NCAA football playoffs, and their strength in sports like squash (perhaps the only college sport where a Division III school reigns as national champion over Division I opponents) is disregarded.</p>
<p>Yet schools like Middlebury, Amherst, and especially Williams have done very well in the NACDA Director's Cup standings, despite these handicaps. Williams has managed to win 9 of the 10 Division III Cups awarded to date, even though they are guaranteed to go pointless in football every year. Congrats to the NESCAC schools for winning instead of whining.</p>
<p>The "Sears Cup" rankings honchos could avoid much highly justified criticism by simply avoided all the chronic political gamesmanship for which they are famous. </p>
<p>Why not count ALL NCAA sanctioned sports, and also ALL sports in which there is significant intercollegiate competition, whether or not the NCAA owns (ie, "sanctions") it, and seriously reconsider the constant fiddling around about which sports get how many "points" in the rankings.</p>
<p>In these days when computers are capable of moderate number crunching, there is absolutely no excuse for picking and choosing a minor fraction of intercollegiate sports for ranking purposes, except to benefit some schools at the expense of others.</p>
<p>Thanks for looking into the Sagarin's "ELO-CHESS" and "PREDICTOR" ratings. I was aware of the fact Ivies play other D-1AA teams (not D-1A teams though). When I said "there's no such thing as strength of schedule for Harvard", I really meant Harvard had a extremely weak schedule, in constrast of what Byerly tried to imply. Thanks for your UNbiased description.</p>
<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>
[quote]
...picking and choosing a MINOR fraction...
[/quote]
Can you tell us what sports that have "significant intercollegiate competition" but are not counted. I can only think of a couple but you are saying a "major fraction" is not counted.</p>
<p>Byerly "implied" no such thing. Don't be silly. </p>
<p>All he pointed out was that in the final regular season rankings for 2004, Harvard finished higher than Stanford despite the millions in "athletics scholarships" etc lavished on the Stanford football program.</p>
<p>Harvard was the national champion last year in both rowing and sailing - both larger and more substantial than many sports owned (ie, "sanctioned") by the NCAA.</p>
<p>Ironically, the NCAA DOES "sanction" women's rowing, and the top team got 100 "Sears Cup" points. The men's national champion got nada.</p>
<p>So you gave me only 2 sports (sailing and rowing). The Sears Cup includes 10 sports. Using words like "extremely narrow" or "minor fraction" to describe the Sears Cup is pretty misleading.</p>
<p>I doubt sailing is "larger and more substantial" than most others.</p>
[quote]
Divisional sports that have a participation percentage of 25 percent or less will receive 50 percent of the points allocated for that bracket.
[/quote]
There's no raising points. You made it sound like they were adding points in certain ones while shaving points in few others deliberately. Most sports receive maximum of 100 points. Only those that are participated by fewer than 25% of all schools receive the maximum of 50. Water polo is one of those with 50 points max and it's participated by only 30 or so schools; the dispartiy is huge and Pac-10 schools has dominated that sport every year. It totally makes sense to give it less weight than sports like basketball where the competition is a lot more intense.</p>
<p>Seriously, you really shouldn't be coming here to post false information and mislead or fool others.</p>
[quote]
This is a very extensive list. What you said about Sears Cup being "extremely narrow" is completely false. As far as Harvard's sports go, the only ones that are not included are men's rowing, sailing, and m&w squash. 33 out of 37 are included! It's NOT "minor fraction" like you claimed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The list is extensive but not all are included in all divisions ...</p>
<p>and from one of the links
[quote]
Sports Included In Division I, there will be 20 sports counted in the standings - the top 10 men's and the top 20 women's;
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Cornell has 17 men's varsity sports while traditional sports powers like LSU and Ohio State have 10 or less men's varsity sports. The weighting system for division I focuses on the traditional big time sports ... most big time sports programs have all their sports included in the mix while schools with broader offers have many left out. I am not claiming this is good or bad ... but it is.</p>
<p>I think the sentence was confusing. When I first read it, I thought it meant only 10 sports for men and 10 for women were counted. But what it really means, if I am not mistaken, is each school can have maximum of 10 sports counted. If Cornell has 17 sports and they all get points, they will count the 10 highest scores and total them. So if Cornell is really good in every one of them, then 7 sports will be left out. But that's not really the case for Cornell. That's nothing unfair to schools like Cornell. Actually, if anything, it affects only a few and one of them would be Stanford as it probably does have more than 10 sports scoring points in each sex but the lower ones would not be counted toward the totals. Last year, 23 teams scored points for Stanford and the lowest 3 scores were left out.</p>
<p>The NCAA officially sanctions 19 mens sports and 20 womens sports, for a total of 39. In fact, all of them are represented in the Directors Cup standings, although the less popular sports get fewer points.</p>
<p>The NCAA also recognizes seven emerging sports for women. These are not included in the Cup standings, but this seems reasonable given the very low number (typically less than 10) of participating NCAA teams.</p>
<p>The scoring system rewards schools that sponsor many NCAA sports (such as the Ivies). Harvard, for example, sponsors 34 of the 39 sports that are ranked in the Cup (I previously indicated that Harvard had 35 NCAA sports, but womens squash is considered emerging). For comparison, USC only offers 21 ranked sports. Harvard obviously has more opportunities to earn points.</p>
<p>However, the scoring system also rewards schools that do well in major sports, and this is where the Ivies fall short. The fundamental problem for the Ivies and this is no secret is that is impossible to compete effectively in major NCAA Division I sports while maintaining very high academic standards and rejecting athletic scholarships. </p>
<p>Realistically, the Ivies should not be ranked against NCAA Division IA schools. In theory, they could be ranked at a lower IAA level, as in football. If the Cup rankings considered IAA schools separately, then the Ivies would kick butt, just as the NESCACs (or Little Ivies) do in Division III. </p>
<p>For 2004-2005, for example, the Ivies would have claimed the top four spots in a hypothetical IAA Directors Cup ranking, and five spots in the top 10 (based on my cursory review of the standings). And this is even without points for football, since the Ivies dont participate in the IAA football playoffs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But what it really means, if I am not mistaken, is each school can have maximum of 10 sports counted. If Cornell has 17 sports and they all get points, they will count the 10 highest scores and total them
[/quote]
I read it as 10 men's sports were used ... the 10- most popular ... the same 10 for every school ... but I could be wrong; it was far from obvious what exactly was meant.</p>
<p>According to last year's final scores, TX had 1074 but if you add all the points they got, it should really be 1208; that's because they had more than 20 sports that scored and had to drop few of the lowest ones. The same thing goes with Stanford--their total would have been over 1400 instead of 1238. Most other schools, however, don't reach the limit of 20 sports.</p>
<p>As far as Cornell goes, they got points from m. lax, fencing, m. ice-hockey, and m. wrestling. Most sports, not just big time ones, are counted.</p>
<p>
[quote]
look at last year's results, and count the number of columns on those tables:
Fall - 9 sports
Winter - 15 sports
Spring - 13 sports
[/quote]
This totals 37 sports. However, the Winter table actually includes 18 (not 15) sports: the "Fencing", "Skiing", and "Rifle" columns include results for both Men's and Women's teams (that's why these columns have a separate subcolumn marked "Gnd"). Moreover, the Fall table actually includes 8 sports (not 9), because Football gets two separate columns (for 1A and 1AA points).</p>
<p>If you make these adjustments, the total is 39 sports, which is the total number of "official" NCAA sports as noted earlier.</p>
<p>I would conclude that, contrary to some of the protestations above, the Director's Cup system is not inherently unfair to Ivy schools. The Ivies don't do particularly well in the standings, but this is not because of "politics". Instead, it is for the same reason that the Ivies don't do well in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, or the Bowl Championship Series, or the Baseball America poll. The bottom line is simply that the Ivies can't compete effectively in major sports against Division I-A athletic powers, because the Ivies -- unlike most I-A schools -- have high academic standards and reject athletic scholarships. </p>
<p>This is nothing to be ashamed of. Personally, I admire Ivy athletic ideals; the Ivies deserve the same kind of recognition that Stanford or Williams have received for combining academics and athletics. But it's not going to happen through the Director's Cup system, because of the way that the NCAA is currently organized. </p>
<p>The Ivy League would stand out in the Cup standings if they were ranked in a hypothetical NCAA Division I-AA, or in existing Divisions II or III. But realistically, they aren't going to stand out if they are ranked relative to Div. I-A athletic powerhouses.</p>