Welcome to the UPA's College Restructuring Blog. This blog is intended for UPA members to provide feedback to the UPA on the two proposed structures for the future of UPA intercollegiate Ultimate.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Conference Plan: Open Forum
What are your thoughts, ideas and concerns about the Conference Plan? Here you can post about any element of the Conference Plan, but please be sure to follow the ground rules listed on the left hand navigation bar.
Since I was one of the people who helped come up with this plan, let me briefly state what I consider to be its greatest assets:
1) It serves both the elite teams, and newer teams/small school teams well, WITHOUT really compromising between the two. The rearrangement of the traditional sectionals/regionals/nationals structure allows us to give all teams meaningful games throughout the season, without excluding any team from any championship they are eligible for.
2) It is exceptionally scalable. Because we can simply add more conferences and adjust their composition as the number of teams expand and teams improve, we can adapt to additional growth and advancement in the sport without any significant reorganization of the structure.
I think I like where this plan is going. I like that teams have the choice of whether or not to play in a UPA run regular season. I like that they all still have an equal opportunity to compete in their respective conference championships. I also really like the idea of having those conference championships determining eligibility for each of the National events.
I feel a little iffy about how each the tier 1 and tier 2 teams compete for bids for their conferences to the national events. There may be some very good teams that opt out of the UPA sanctioned regular season. This could lead to a stronger conference getting less bids to the national events than a weaker team. At the same time I can't think of a better way to do it, and as this system becomes more and more established, teams that are good enough will feel more and more pressure to compete at the tier 1 and tier 2 level.
In their regular season, tier 1 teams should be playing for a little more than just bids for their conferences. As they are likely among the best teams in their conferences, it will not be as important to them to get as many bids as possible for their conferences as it would be for weaker teams. I think they need a little more incentive, similar to that of the Tier 2 teams (trying to make it to Regionals).
I would also really like to see a lot more inter-conference play during the regular season. To me, it doesn't seem like this proposed system really promotes that.
Finally, I like that this plan will promote some rivalries to spring up within conferences. It should add a little spark to the competition, bring in more fans, and would help in furthering the sport of Ultimate.
You seem to fear that tier 1 regular season play may provide relatively little incentive to the absolute best of the best, top 2 or 3 teams, as they will feel secure they will make nationals. However, even those teams sweat it a bit when they are fighting for a single nationals spot. Ask (eventual runner-up) Wisconsin how secure they felt in 2006 going into a win-or-eliminated regional final against Carleton. Or better yet, ask 2003 Stanford (most people's favorite to win) what it was like to miss nationals that year (upset by eventual runner-up Oregon in a 1-bid regional final).
Since 1-bid conferences are a very real possibility, even the top teams will want to play hard to secure as many D1 bids for their region as possible. More bids = more of a safety net come conference championship time.
Moreover, most of the tier 1 teams are teams that are fighting for a nationals spot, and not "sure things" for nationals, so they will have every incentive to play hard to get more bids. And of course, teams already play hard at Centex and Stanford invite. In conclusion, I don't think tier 1 motivation is a serious issue.
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Do you mean INTRA-conference play? There's plenty of inter-conference play built into tier 1/2 play and regionals. You're right (if it's what you meant) that there's no special effort to get teams playing other teams in their own conferences before conference championships. This could happen naturally through tier 2 play, though.
I like the conference idea as well. But, with more regular season events UPA run, will this cost more money to students? Or, will the UPA need more people to volunteer?
Since, strength bids have to be determined during the regular season, will this also cost more?
The plan is for the regular season "tier 1" events to still be run by third parties. They will require some sort of UPA "affiliation", which essentially means that the rosters of the teams will be verified.
So, the only real extra cost we are talking about is the UPA overhead of having a preliminary roster verification system early in the year. Strength bids are not going to cost any money to calculate.
This roster verification is a common element of both the plans, and any further discussion of it should probably go in the "Common Elements: Early Roster Deadline" thread.
This plan is FAR superior to the super regionals one. It seems like a really cool system that will benefit just about all teams. It helps save on travel expenses for lesser established teams, and provides teams with LOTS of competition among other teams of similar stature. This may be one of the few flaws actually is that i know for some younger, less experiences/established/talented teams, playing one of the best teams in the nation can be a big stepping stone for them. However, I think this is a small flaw in a good system.
The other things that I am concerned with is the subjectivity that could happen. It seems still pretty unclear as to HOW the bids would be allocated to regions. This needs to be hammered down before I would give it my 2 thumbs up. It has to have some clear way/system so there is little debate about it. It's also uncler to me as to which "tier 2" teams would get to play at regionals. Is there a guarantee that all conferences have a rep? How many teams can be at regionals? How will the other teams be decided that are not tier 1?
Though these few questions do stand out, I reall do like this system and I think it could work out GREAT after the details are ironed out.
As far as invites to D1 regionals, there wouldn't automatically be a rep from every conference. Some "small school" conferences will contain only teams that don't make regionals in the current system, so forcing a bid for every team would dilute the pool quite a bit.
If you want to get into D1 regionals, all you have to do is register your team, and be successful at some tier 2 regular season events. The top teams by power rank will get the (remaining, non-tier 1) invites to D1 regionals.
As far as allocation of D1 nationals bids to the regions, again it would be based on the power rankings. Every region gets 2 bids automatically, and the extra bids are done based on which region has the strongest borderline teams.
This plan is unusual in that is has a smaller (in terms of number of teams eligible to enter) event, the conference championships, occur after a larger event, regionals. This makes regionals of dubious importance and interest, since individual teams don't really *need* to perform well there to advance. It's also probably impossible to run fairly (see my post about intra-conference games at regionals in the conference bid allocation section, among others), and it's hard to explain to the teams exactly what they're competing for at regionals.
I understand that the UPA wants to promote the conference tournament as a high-stakes, marquee event matching teams that are of roughly equal skill level, but I don't see why that goal is inconsistent with having the conference championships first.
Why not just hold conference championships first, letting the winners skip regionals and advance directly to nationals? Major conference champions would go to D-I nats, mid-major to D-II, and minor to D-III. The non-conference champions could then go to regionals as before, where the remaining nationals bids would be assigned. If a mid-major conference champion managed to earn a D-I bid at regionals, you could assign its D-II bid to the next highest-placing team from its conference championships.
This way, you'd get to keep the chief benefit of the conference system -- two high-quality, competitive pre-nationals post-season events -- without undermining the importance of regionals, and avoiding the awkwardness of having teams compete on behalf of their conference rather than directly for themselves.
Forgive me if this suggestion differs too radically from the current plan; I understand that there are only so many options that you can consider, and I'm sure that this or something similar came up at some point in the drafting of this plan; I'd just be curious to know why you settled on the order you did.
I agree with Perry-David that I would like to see more inter-conference play during the regular season. I think teams learn a great deal from each other and if there is less or no inter-conference play there will be less opportunity for improvement and mixing for the lower tier teams. Mixing in the regular season encourages friendships and connections for off-season and club teams.
I'm the president of the Brockport Chupacabras from the College at Brockport in New York. As a smaller school with a co-ed team, I have some concerns. I was unable to watch the videos, so I'm going off what I gathered from reading the overviews. I talked to the captain of SUNY Fredonia last week and here's our concerns: 1. With the restructuring, if we get put into a conference with teams like Cornell, Syracuse, Queen's etc... our small school team will struggle to match-up to teams with such large talent pools. We may play well against them, but we just don't have the numbers to come up with a team of 6' plus guys that can throw. I understand that we may be able to compete in Division III, but the suggested school size requirement (under 6000) would make us ineligible for that. I'd like to see a conference of the medium size schools that we play in the tournaments we attend. 2. Many of the tournaments we attend are not UPA-sanctioned because we don't have the money to travel far to many of the bigger tournaments. With the regular season format, how will that affect teams that are unable to attend UPA-sanctioned tournaments? Please understand that most of the teams we play are not UPA members for one reason or another. 3. I heard some rumors that Open is being phased out and turned into Men's. Our team has always been co-ed and our school would be unable to field a women's team because of numbers. Taking out the Open division would make our team unable to participate in most UPA activities, and we're really trying to get more involved with UPA so that would be detrimental.
I hope that these concerns are relevant. I like where the plans are going in many cases, but am just afraid that up and coming teams like my school's may get lost in the shuffle.
I agree with Brockport. It seems that the dedication that UPA shows to coed divisions in high school and club is being left out at the college level. There are a lot of coed teams out there that can't field separate programs for mens and womens. Open is going to essentially be a mens division if you want to be competitive in these formats. I think that separate coed conferences and a coed championship would be something that would help these schools. Even if larger coed schools have to play with smaller ones, at least they will be able to play that style because most of the schools that play coed do it out of necessity.
Since I was one of the people who helped come up with this plan, let me briefly state what I consider to be its greatest assets:
ReplyDelete1) It serves both the elite teams, and newer teams/small school teams well, WITHOUT really compromising between the two. The rearrangement of the traditional sectionals/regionals/nationals structure allows us to give all teams meaningful games throughout the season, without excluding any team from any championship they are eligible for.
2) It is exceptionally scalable. Because we can simply add more conferences and adjust their composition as the number of teams expand and teams improve, we can adapt to additional growth and advancement in the sport without any significant reorganization of the structure.
I think I like where this plan is going. I like that teams have the choice of whether or not to play in a UPA run regular season. I like that they all still have an equal opportunity to compete in their respective conference championships. I also really like the idea of having those conference championships determining eligibility for each of the National events.
ReplyDeleteI feel a little iffy about how each the tier 1 and tier 2 teams compete for bids for their conferences to the national events. There may be some very good teams that opt out of the UPA sanctioned regular season. This could lead to a stronger conference getting less bids to the national events than a weaker team. At the same time I can't think of a better way to do it, and as this system becomes more and more established, teams that are good enough will feel more and more pressure to compete at the tier 1 and tier 2 level.
In their regular season, tier 1 teams should be playing for a little more than just bids for their conferences. As they are likely among the best teams in their conferences, it will not be as important to them to get as many bids as possible for their conferences as it would be for weaker teams. I think they need a little more incentive, similar to that of the Tier 2 teams (trying to make it to Regionals).
I would also really like to see a lot more inter-conference play during the regular season. To me, it doesn't seem like this proposed system really promotes that.
Finally, I like that this plan will promote some rivalries to spring up within conferences. It should add a little spark to the competition, bring in more fans, and would help in furthering the sport of Ultimate.
PDvD,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to fear that tier 1 regular season play may provide relatively little incentive to the absolute best of the best, top 2 or 3 teams, as they will feel secure they will make nationals. However, even those teams sweat it a bit when they are fighting for a single nationals spot. Ask (eventual runner-up) Wisconsin how secure they felt in 2006 going into a win-or-eliminated regional final against Carleton. Or better yet, ask 2003 Stanford (most people's favorite to win) what it was like to miss nationals that year (upset by eventual runner-up Oregon in a 1-bid regional final).
Since 1-bid conferences are a very real possibility, even the top teams will want to play hard to secure as many D1 bids for their region as possible. More bids = more of a safety net come conference championship time.
Moreover, most of the tier 1 teams are teams that are fighting for a nationals spot, and not "sure things" for nationals, so they will have every incentive to play hard to get more bids. And of course, teams already play hard at Centex and Stanford invite. In conclusion, I don't think tier 1 motivation is a serious issue.
---
Do you mean INTRA-conference play? There's plenty of inter-conference play built into tier 1/2 play and regionals. You're right (if it's what you meant) that there's no special effort to get teams playing other teams in their own conferences before conference championships. This could happen naturally through tier 2 play, though.
I like the conference idea as well. But, with more regular season events UPA run, will this cost more money to students? Or, will the UPA need more people to volunteer?
ReplyDeleteSince, strength bids have to be determined during the regular season, will this also cost more?
The plan is for the regular season "tier 1" events to still be run by third parties. They will require some sort of UPA "affiliation", which essentially means that the rosters of the teams will be verified.
ReplyDeleteSo, the only real extra cost we are talking about is the UPA overhead of having a preliminary roster verification system early in the year. Strength bids are not going to cost any money to calculate.
This roster verification is a common element of both the plans, and any further discussion of it should probably go in the "Common Elements: Early Roster Deadline" thread.
This plan is FAR superior to the super regionals one. It seems like a really cool system that will benefit just about all teams. It helps save on travel expenses for lesser established teams, and provides teams with LOTS of competition among other teams of similar stature. This may be one of the few flaws actually is that i know for some younger, less experiences/established/talented teams, playing one of the best teams in the nation can be a big stepping stone for them. However, I think this is a small flaw in a good system.
ReplyDeleteThe other things that I am concerned with is the subjectivity that could happen. It seems still pretty unclear as to HOW the bids would be allocated to regions. This needs to be hammered down before I would give it my 2 thumbs up. It has to have some clear way/system so there is little debate about it. It's also uncler to me as to which "tier 2" teams would get to play at regionals. Is there a guarantee that all conferences have a rep? How many teams can be at regionals? How will the other teams be decided that are not tier 1?
Though these few questions do stand out, I reall do like this system and I think it could work out GREAT after the details are ironed out.
As far as invites to D1 regionals, there wouldn't automatically be a rep from every conference. Some "small school" conferences will contain only teams that don't make regionals in the current system, so forcing a bid for every team would dilute the pool quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to get into D1 regionals, all you have to do is register your team, and be successful at some tier 2 regular season events. The top teams by power rank will get the (remaining, non-tier 1) invites to D1 regionals.
As far as allocation of D1 nationals bids to the regions, again it would be based on the power rankings. Every region gets 2 bids automatically, and the extra bids are done based on which region has the strongest borderline teams.
This plan is unusual in that is has a smaller (in terms of number of teams eligible to enter) event, the conference championships, occur after a larger event, regionals. This makes regionals of dubious importance and interest, since individual teams don't really *need* to perform well there to advance. It's also probably impossible to run fairly (see my post about intra-conference games at regionals in the conference bid allocation section, among others), and it's hard to explain to the teams exactly what they're competing for at regionals.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the UPA wants to promote the conference tournament as a high-stakes, marquee event matching teams that are of roughly equal skill level, but I don't see why that goal is inconsistent with having the conference championships first.
Why not just hold conference championships first, letting the winners skip regionals and advance directly to nationals? Major conference champions would go to D-I nats, mid-major to D-II, and minor to D-III. The non-conference champions could then go to regionals as before, where the remaining nationals bids would be assigned. If a mid-major conference champion managed to earn a D-I bid at regionals, you could assign its D-II bid to the next highest-placing team from its conference championships.
This way, you'd get to keep the chief benefit of the conference system -- two high-quality, competitive pre-nationals post-season events -- without undermining the importance of regionals, and avoiding the awkwardness of having teams compete on behalf of their conference rather than directly for themselves.
Forgive me if this suggestion differs too radically from the current plan; I understand that there are only so many options that you can consider, and I'm sure that this or something similar came up at some point in the drafting of this plan; I'd just be curious to know why you settled on the order you did.
I agree with Perry-David that I would like to see more inter-conference play during the regular season. I think teams learn a great deal from each other and if there is less or no inter-conference play there will be less opportunity for improvement and mixing for the lower tier teams. Mixing in the regular season encourages friendships and connections for off-season and club teams.
ReplyDeleteI'm the president of the Brockport Chupacabras from the College at Brockport in New York. As a smaller school with a co-ed team, I have some concerns. I was unable to watch the videos, so I'm going off what I gathered from reading the overviews. I talked to the captain of SUNY Fredonia last week and here's our concerns:
ReplyDelete1. With the restructuring, if we get put into a conference with teams like Cornell, Syracuse, Queen's etc... our small school team will struggle to match-up to teams with such large talent pools. We may play well against them, but we just don't have the numbers to come up with a team of 6' plus guys that can throw. I understand that we may be able to compete in Division III, but the suggested school size requirement (under 6000) would make us ineligible for that. I'd like to see a conference of the medium size schools that we play in the tournaments we attend.
2. Many of the tournaments we attend are not UPA-sanctioned because we don't have the money to travel far to many of the bigger tournaments. With the regular season format, how will that affect teams that are unable to attend UPA-sanctioned tournaments? Please understand that most of the teams we play are not UPA members for one reason or another.
3. I heard some rumors that Open is being phased out and turned into Men's. Our team has always been co-ed and our school would be unable to field a women's team because of numbers. Taking out the Open division would make our team unable to participate in most UPA activities, and we're really trying to get more involved with UPA so that would be detrimental.
I hope that these concerns are relevant. I like where the plans are going in many cases, but am just afraid that up and coming teams like my school's may get lost in the shuffle.
I agree with Brockport. It seems that the dedication that UPA shows to coed divisions in high school and club is being left out at the college level. There are a lot of coed teams out there that can't field separate programs for mens and womens. Open is going to essentially be a mens division if you want to be competitive in these formats. I think that separate coed conferences and a coed championship would be something that would help these schools. Even if larger coed schools have to play with smaller ones, at least they will be able to play that style because most of the schools that play coed do it out of necessity.
ReplyDelete