Pays for travel out of basketball profits.PizzaSnake wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 3:38 pm How about eliminate the NCAA and start from there? Does it still serve any useful purpose?
How about we also eliminate the NCAA tournament, and just have regular seasons only? That would get us closer to the true spirit of sport, would it not?
OK. Touche. I get it. I understand where you are coming from and don't want to argue with a fellow Cornell fan and I did not mean to be snarky.
When the lacrosse playoffs start generating the kind of revenue that the NFL playoffs do, or even the kind of revenue that the NCAA basketball playoffs do, then I'm sure the NCAA will be more than happy to expand the tourney and non-Big10/ACC schools will have a reasonable chance of getting an at-large (though not really, because if it started to generate those kind of revenues, the SEC, the ACC, the Big10 etc would all jump on board all-in, and the Ivies at least would be left in the dust within half a decade).
I think this is a year where that should have been the case in the Ivy, with multiple high profile out of conference wins by Cornell, Penn, and Yale. I think the underrated issue with RPI is that this schedule gaming only works for the ACC (and to a lesser extent the Big Ten) because they are smaller conferences that don't come with an inherent penalty of having to take up a schedule spot playing the 7th place team. I don't have all of the records in a database to calculate the full extent of the impact exactly, but every other Ivy League teams took a hit to their RPI when they played Dartmouth, despite winning the game. A similar logic applies to Brown though they did beat Princeton. I wonder how the RPI calculations might differ if, say, intraconference wins that would lower a team's RPI are excluded or had some sort of floor. All of this applies even more so for other larger leagues. I don't think having to play Dartmouth (or Brown this year) should have any bearing on how good we perceive Cornell, Penn, and Yale to be, yet given the compounding nature of the RPI and everyone being forced to play them, it turns the 3rd best lacrosse conference into a 1-bid league.ICGrad wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 12:36 pm To me the real issue is the continued (and baffling) over-reliance on RPI. Penn had a better resume than Penn State, and deserved the last at-large. Unconscionable that the committee didn't look past the simplistic (and moronic) RPI and give them the bid. A strong case could be made for Virginia being left out, too.
Unfortunately, a handful of teams enter every season with an enormous advantage due to their strength of schedule.
Every year lacrosse fans want to expand the tournament. In many cases it's because a few teams were left out.
They may consider it, if it made money like the NCAA tournament. That isnt going to happen any time soonBrownlax wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 3:47 pmEvery year lacrosse fans want to expand the tournament. In many cases it's because a few teams were left out.
To put it into perspective - baseball and basketball have over 300 D1 teams. 64 of them make the tournament. Rough math puts that ratio around 5:1.
Lacrosse has 76 D1 teams and 16 make the tournament - 4.75:1
I don't see the NCAA expending the tournament with ratios like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipsPgNEmAXICU77 wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 2:30 pm I have a very simple solution:
Declare that the conference tournaments are actually first rounds of the NCAA tournament (and count the ACC as a conference).
Voila! The field is now expanded to ~50 teams. And the conference tournaments (= NCAA first rounds) are now much more meaningful.
Same!
I wasn't comparing the NFL to D1 lacrosse. I was pointing out the potential inequities of using the post season conference lax tournaments as the sole means of getting a bid by drawing an analogy to the way such tournaments could be used in the NFL to hurt the better teams. I wasn't advocating for the NFL to use a post season division tournament to pick playoff teams nor was I saying that lacrosse should use a system where 40% of teams make the playoffs.ICGrad wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 12:36 pmWhen the lacrosse playoffs start generating the kind of revenue that the NFL playoffs do, or even the kind of revenue that the NCAA basketball playoffs do, then I'm sure the NCAA will be more than happy to expand the tourney and non-Big10/ACC schools will have a reasonable chance of getting an at-large (though not really, because if it started to generate those kind of revenues, the SEC, the ACC, the Big10 etc would all jump on board all-in, and the Ivies at least would be left in the dust within half a decade).
I can see your overall point here, but in the case of the Ivy League at least getting into the ILT is no gimme (and ergo, the regular season does still matter), and with the regular season champ getting home field that should allow for a nice bonus for the regular season champ.
To me the real issue is the continued (and baffling) over-reliance on RPI. Penn had a better resume than Penn State, and deserved the last at-large. Unconscionable that the committee didn't look past the simplistic (and moronic) RPI and give them the bid. A strong case could be made for Virginia being left out, too.
Unfortunately, a handful of teams enter every season with an enormous advantage due to their strength of schedule.
I understand and sympathize with that. The major reason the Ivy League put the tournament in place, from what I recall, was to try to offset the RPI/SOS advantage the ACC had with their post season tournament (which did not produce an AQ) and was put in place in 1988). The ACC teams and some independents were almost guaranteed a bid in the 90s and 00s before the season started because of their SOS. The goal was to give the top Ivies 1 or 2 more games vs top opponents.CU77 wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 5:33 pmSame!
But let me calmly defend the conf tourneys.
Shortly after the ILT got started, I recall Yale coach Andy Shay saying that he was a big supporter of it, because it gave his team a chance. Back then Yale regularly opened against Cornell and Princeton, would often lose both games, and then have little chance of winning the IL reg season title, demoralizing his team before the season was 1/3 over. The tourneys give a team a chance to develop. And they give the athletes something to play for. Now, if Yale lost the first 2, they still had a shot at making the ILT and thus a shot at the Ivy AQ (which they actually took advantage of a number of times).
So I think it's good for the players on multiple teams to have an achievable goal: make the conf tourney, and then try your best to win it.
And then there's the fact that single-game elimination tournaments (both conf and NCAA) are never going to consistently crown the "correct" champion, no matter how they're selected and organized, so we have to live with upsets and bid steals no matter what, if we have tournaments at all.
But the choice of tourney or reg season is with the conferences and ergo colleges who oversee conferences. Ivy could crown reg season and still have a conference tourney to boost epi would just be a lot more transparent/nakedly shameful to do so. They lock it this way bc it blends in with everyone elseCU77 wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 5:33 pmSame!
But let me calmly defend the conf tourneys.
Shortly after the ILT got started, I recall Yale coach Andy Shay saying that he was a big supporter of it, because it gave his team a chance. Back then Yale regularly opened against Cornell and Princeton, would often lose both games, and then have little chance of winning the IL reg season title, demoralizing his team before the season was 1/3 over. The tourneys give a team a chance to develop. And they give the athletes something to play for. Now, if Yale lost the first 2, they still had a shot at making the ILT and thus a shot at the Ivy AQ (which they actually took advantage of a number of times).
So I think it's good for the players on multiple teams to have an achievable goal: make the conf tourney, and then try your best to win it.
And then there's the fact that single-game elimination tournaments (both conf and NCAA) are never going to consistently crown the "correct" champion, no matter how they're selected and organized, so we have to live with upsets and bid steals no matter what, if we have tournaments at all.
