Saturday, January 24, 2009
Conference Plan: Conference Composition
What are your thoughts, ideas and concerns about the composition of the conferences? What do you like or not like about the idea of conferences as described in the plan (size, team composition, etc.)? What factors should take precedent in terms of assigning teams to conferences? What level of flexibility would make sense in terms of new teams being added to conferences or existing teams being able to change conferences from year to year?
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In some rough order of importance, here are the factors I think you have to consider:
ReplyDelete1) Competition - how good are the teams?
2) (Major conference only) Willingness/ability to travel to multiple national-level events and do all the things a Tier 1 team has to do - preregistration, etc.
3) Historic rivalries - when in doubt, try to stick to distributions like natural geographic rivalries (like Delaware-Penn) or rivalries created by NCAA Conferences.
4) Geographical proximity
5) Diversity - fun to mix up private schools and public, ecumenical and secular, etc.
I think each region should have exactly one major conference; although that might be a squeeze in a few regions, it would make for a very fun conference championship tournament!
At the beginning, there needs to be lots of flexibility in moving teams around, because mistakes will be made. But after 4 or 5 years, it should be pretty static. But teams grow and improve and get worse over time, so I think that there should be 3 ways for a team to change conferences: First, they request the move themselves. Second, they are voted out by a super-majority (all?) of the other teams in their conference. Third, the UPA does it for competitive purposes.
I agree, I think we really need to be open to switching up the conferences for the first few years until we get it right. It is not gonna be without flaws the first few years.
ReplyDeleteFor sure, there will be some structure to petition the UPA to change conferences.
ReplyDeleteLooking at other college sports, conferences are fluid as teams get stronger and weaker. They're fairly static, but not completely static.
Moreover, as the sport grows we will have to rearrange the conferences to accommodate the addition of new teams. We won't just assign each year's new teams to a new conference - it will involve shuffling teams around.
Geographic-based conferences may be best for college Ultimate in the long run. As noted above there are traditional rivalries that would not be played in a conference based upon NCAA conferences. Pitt, Penn State, Penn and Delaware should be in the same conference. With the ACC's you did not get a Boston College team. Competition may improve within a region over time with a regular conference season.
ReplyDeleteHow conference play would effect the cost of playing Ultimate is also to be considered for the long run. Less flying and more driving, less money spent on hotels and more crashing at friends homes and less time away from school could all be positives for the students playing Ultimate.
If a conference system is adopted the weather will have to be considered for what are the ME, NE and CN regions. Nationals could be held in the first or second weak of June?
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ReplyDeleteI disagree with the notion of each region having only one major conference.
ReplyDeleteWhile it makes the conference championship more exciting, assuming this grouping is done based off of prior success this conference is likely to lock down the top spots at regionals and provide for several games of no consequence (John Blatz also brought up the same concern).
This is perhaps less of an issue if you can work around the issues Tarr brought up under Conference Bid Allocation.