Saturday, January 24, 2009
Common Elements: Early Roster Deadline
Both plans propose an early roster deadline which teams would have to meet in order to play in events where game results have an impact on post-season bids. In both plans teams could still register at a later deadline (similar to the current deadline for sectionals) to participate in the post-season, but teams that miss the early deadline will not be considered part of the official regular season and might not be permitted to play in official current season events. What are your thoughts, ideas and concerns about this element of both plans? What is the earliest approximate date that your team would be able to register for the "regular season" events? Will teams be willing to submit rosters and go through the eligibility proces in January, and be limited to this roster for the regular season?
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I would like to see the roster checks happen at the beginning of January so that the conference plan "Kickoff Event" can be held early enough to plan the rest of a season. Personally we make our decisions before Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteOther eligibility concerns - would rosters (with numbers and heights) be posted early enough so that teams could do a pre-game roster check to make sure only eligible players are used? There are not enough UPA/tournament officials to go around and do thorough checks during a tournament, and other teams captains/injured players could confirm against a roster. It doesn't prevent teams from giving someone's jersey to an ineligible player, but hopefully heights are accurate enough to tell if something is fishy.
The Pulse--
ReplyDeleteWhile teams might decide their final roster earlier, it would likely be quite difficult to be able to verify the eligibility of those players before the end of January. Checking players' eligibility would need to involve the school registrars, a process that takes time and could be limited by the start of winter quarter/spring semester. Obviously, the current eligibility rules would have to be tweaked to accommodate the earlier deadline, but I'm worried that many teams would still have problems registering by the end of January.
Having rosters be public so other teams can verify their opponents are playing with legitimate players is a good idea (I think some Coordinators have already started this practice during the Series). Some other tournaments (where there is a per-player fee) also conduct ID-checks of players as part of the registration process. The UPA verification of player eligibility at a tournament might involve both of these processes.
I vaguely remember reading something about this on my first browsing through the plans, but can't find it now, so I may be making up my memory, but it seems important to allow for continuing flexibility in rosters during the winter/spring. Teams are in flux for various reasons - maybe a top player was injured, and you call someone up from the B team. Maybe the B team folds due to lack of interest. Maybe a player whose eligibility is in doubt is later found to be eligible.
ReplyDeleteFor these reasons, I think you have to allow for continuing modification of rosters up until the 'pre-postseason' check, in March, at which point rosters should be locked.
Also, speaking as a former member of the Eligibility Committee, it would be very difficult to process every questionable case in the time frame of even late January, so that's another reason to need flexibility.
Combining the ideals of this process (make sure that regular season results that apply towards post-season seeding and advancement only happen with eligible players), maybe it would be possible to come up with a modified system, wherein a team registers, but doesn't necessarily file a roster. Instead, they submit a new roster, along with heights and jersey numbers (a la The Pulse's comment) for each UPA-affiliated tourney they attend. In March, those rosters are checked against their final roster to make sure that they only used eligible players during the regular season. If so, their results can count and they can be advanced directly to Super-Regionals. If not, they are retroactively "relegated" to a Tier II team. That way, teams don't have to make official decisions, and retain roster flexibility up until the start of the postseason, but we keep the ability to make sure that only 'fair' regular season results are counted by the advancement committee.
Agreed on all points, David (OD?). Neither plan explicitly lays out the penalty of an invalid "pre-roster", but I think you have the idea right. (In the conference plan, the relegation would be to "tier 3".)
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