- December 1st, 2008, 12:53 pm
#213912
an article from The CAA Today:
http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews. ... &tb=1&pb=1
http://www.championshipsubdivisionnews. ... &tb=1&pb=1
Complaint #1, The 16th Team
One of the biggest complaints was the sixteenth team in, a fifth CAA team, Maine. I asked Mr. McCutcheon how long the committee convened on Saturday and Sunday and here was his response; “We went from 6:00 Saturday evening until almost 11:00 and then reconvened at 8:00 Sunday morning and went another couple of hours Sunday morning. The thing that really took a long time is that we got it down to that last spot of the field and there were really five teams in contention for that sixteenth spot. And that one issue alone took us about two hours on Saturday night and another hour on Sunday morning. So it was not an easy decision.”
John went on to explain that they eventually got it down to three teams and then eventually Maine had the most support but he also made sure he let me know that it was NOT unanimous. He did identify the five teams for me which were Elon, Liberty, William & Mary, Maine, and Jacksonville State. He declined to identify which three teams it was narrowed down to. He went on to emphasize that you could make a case for any one of these teams to get in. He went on to say that; “When you considered strength of schedule, quality wins, bad losses and some other factors Maine emerged out of the group.”
Pressing further I asked if there was one thing that might have put Maine over the hump. To which he replied; “They had eight wins, they didn’t have any bad losses and they won six out of their last seven games. I think that worked in their favor. They had two wins against teams that had winning records [Monmouth and Massachusetts]. That worked in their favor as well.”
The eight win comment above bothered me a little so I reminded him that I had asked a follow up question last week specifically about that situation and his response led us to believe that they wouldn’t penalize a team that only played 11 games instead of 12 games and as a result may have had one less win or one more loss. His response this week was a little different; ‘Well it depends on how you interpret that. They don’t put it up on the board and say this team played 11 games and this team played 12 games. What they do though is look at the number of wins you have . . . what that [11 game schedule] does is reduce your opportunity to have more Division I wins. If a team chose to play 11 games this year did it hurt them? No, other than if they had won all those 11 games it wouldn’t have made a difference . . . but what it does is it takes away one more opportunity for you. I’m not making sense here.” Clearly he wasn’t so I decided to help him and rephrase it and asked that if what he was saying was that 11 or 12 games schedules by themselves doesn’t make a difference only in that a team now has less of a chance to win more games and a key factor is number of D-I wins. To which he replied; “Correct. Number of wins DEFINTELY is a factor. So however you want to put together your schedule to position yourself to have the greatest number of Division I wins, that is what the key is.”
Summary; this puts a whole new slant on things and a different answer than we had last week. I also feel this is a little unfair. My understanding of the rules is a minimum of seven D-I wins, not who has the most wins, although that can be considered. In comparing William & Mary for example who had just seven wins in an 11 game season. How can you say Maine’s eight wins was stronger in a 12 game season when for example, one of those wins was against Iona. There is no Iona on the Tribe’s schedule and if there was it would be an instant win. That is a bad interpretation on the committee’s part and I don’t agree with that reasoning.
Was Maine the right pick? One thing that John was right about was you could make a case for each of those five teams that were on the bubble for the last spot. Actually if you were going to allow a fifth CAA team in, I think a better case could be made for William & Mary, except for that stupid 11 game schedule thing. This last decision comes down to opinion and for example, I got just as many emails saying Liberty should have gotten in as William and Mary and as Elon. So the choice was definitely a tough one. Now, this is going to surprise you, especially coming from the “All-time CAA-Homer” and at the risk of alienating many of my CAA readers, my pick would have been Liberty.
Where’s the blame here? Is it the system or is it the committee? In this case it is a little of both. I do not agree with the committee on this one and I certainly think the system should have been clearer on the 11 or 12 game season so that a situation like an extra game against a team like Iona doesn’t end up making a difference.
