New Men"s Volleyball Play-In Match Is Just the First Step
The good news is that collegiate men’s volleyball is growing. The bad news is that sometimes growth is painful.
Last month the NCAA announced a change in the playoff format for men’s volleyball. Everyone knew this was coming and some were even looking forward to it because it signifies a step forward for the sport. But in the short term, the new format may actually make life more difficult for some teams that will now have to jump through an extra (and rather expensive) hoop in the post-season.
With many schools discontinuing their men’s volleyball programs in the last 20 years, there have been very few opportunities at the collegiate level for boys to strive for, which makes growth of men’s volleyball at the grass roots level a difficult proposition. So when Conference Carolinas in the South region of the country decided to join the party, it was a welcome sign of interest in the sport.
Conference Carolinas met all the requirements of the NCAA, adding enough teams and existing for two years before being eligible to be included in the NCAA post-season. This year, they applied to the NCAA for inclusion and they were accepted, which meant that the NCAA men’s volleyball committee would have to find a way to expand the playoffs.
“It is good for the sport for the NCAA to see that there is interest and that schools are willing to invest in the sport going forward,” said Brian Santiago, the chair of the NCAA men’s volleyball committee. “That certainly provides on paper or a perfect scenario for bracket expansion.”
According to Santiago, bracket expansion is the ultimate goal and adding a fourth conference, which takes the men’s volleyball field from 29 teams to 37 teams is the first step in that process. But the changes have led to new problems that the committee now has to solve.
In the past, the men’s Final Four has consisted of three automatic qualifiers, which are the champions of the three conferences – MPSF, MIVA and EIVA. The fourth team is an at-large selection that is chosen by the committee based on performance.
In order to be considered an NCAA championship, a sport has to have 50% at-large selections. Because of the small size of the men’s volleyball field, the NCAA has granted the sport a waiver. It gets a championship despite the fact that it has only 25% at-large selections.
The goal is to expand the men’s volleyball playoff bracket to eight teams eventually, possibly with four automatic berths and four at-large selections, which would give it the NCAA’s required 50%.
The addition of Conference Carolinas helps move the sport toward that goal, but for now there is a hitch. With a fourth conference in the mix, the NCAA has added a play-in match. Basically, the top two ranked conferences will get the usual automatic berth to the Final Four. The third spot will go to the winner of a match between the two lowest ranked conferences and the fourth spot will go to the at-large selection.
While this makes sense on paper, the problem is the way in which the conferences are ranked. The NCAA has just one approved method for ranking conferences and that is RPI or Rating Percentage Index. It is widely used in NCAA athletics but it doesn’t quite work for men’s volleyball because of the small number of teams and the relative lack of out of conference play. In men’s volleyball, the AVCA Coaches Poll would be a much more accurate judge of team rankings, but it is not used in the RPI calculation and is not approved by the NCAA so using it is not an option at this time. In men’s basketball, the RPI is a much more accurate predictor, but men’s basketball is an entirely different animal than men’s volleyball.
“The reason the RPI seems more accurate in men's basketball is that you have 400 institutions all playing each other across the country and you have all of these comparables,” says Santiago. “In men's volleyball right now we're trying to figure out an equation or a weighted RPI that would more accurately reflect the strength of the conference and the strength of the teams.”
One only has to look at the outcome of the conference rankings by RPI in 2013 to see that something is amiss. Traditionally, the MPSF has been the strongest conference in men’s volleyball. However, according to RPI, the MPSF ranks 2nd behind MIVA. That leaves EIVA and Conference Carolinas to fight for a spot in the Final Four via the play-in match for 2014.
Somehow, the new and untested Conference Carolinas came out ahead of the established EIVA, which means the EIVA champion will have to travel to the South for the play-in match. The kicker is that this extra match is unfunded by the NCAA and could cost the traveling institution an extra $20,000 that they had not budgeted for.
While a university like Penn State, the EIVA winner 15 years running and two-time NCAA champion, is well-equipped to absorb the cost, schools like Harvard and Princeton might struggle to find that funding should they win the conference.
Because of the NCAA’s strict rules, there is no other approved way to calculate the RPI, which ties the hands of the NCAA men’s volleyball committee.
“There's no flexibility to just randomly go in and say the EIVA is better than Conference Carolinas so we're going switch it and have Conference Carolinas just travel to Penn State or to the EIVA champion,” said Santiago. “And we can’t say hey we all know that the MPSF is better than MIVA, so let's just switch that as well. We can't just sit in a room and decide that. The only tool that's available to us is the RPI because that is the only method approved by the NCAA.”
The committee says it is working to rectify this problem, but anything they change has to go through an approval process and will not take effect until the next NCAA budget cycle, which begins in 2016.
The goal is to figure out a new way to calculate RPI that produces a more accurate result for men’s volleyball. They hope that weighting the RPI in different ways will be more reflective of the actual strength of the teams vying for the championship.
Until then, men’s volleyball teams, coaches and fans are going to have to live with this solution for at least the next two years.
Men’s volleyball fans have been craving growth for a long time. Now they finally have it and in the big picture it is a good thing. Even if it hurts a little at first.
Last month the NCAA announced a change in the playoff format for men’s volleyball. Everyone knew this was coming and some were even looking forward to it because it signifies a step forward for the sport. But in the short term, the new format may actually make life more difficult for some teams that will now have to jump through an extra (and rather expensive) hoop in the post-season.
With many schools discontinuing their men’s volleyball programs in the last 20 years, there have been very few opportunities at the collegiate level for boys to strive for, which makes growth of men’s volleyball at the grass roots level a difficult proposition. So when Conference Carolinas in the South region of the country decided to join the party, it was a welcome sign of interest in the sport.
Conference Carolinas met all the requirements of the NCAA, adding enough teams and existing for two years before being eligible to be included in the NCAA post-season. This year, they applied to the NCAA for inclusion and they were accepted, which meant that the NCAA men’s volleyball committee would have to find a way to expand the playoffs.
“It is good for the sport for the NCAA to see that there is interest and that schools are willing to invest in the sport going forward,” said Brian Santiago, the chair of the NCAA men’s volleyball committee. “That certainly provides on paper or a perfect scenario for bracket expansion.”
According to Santiago, bracket expansion is the ultimate goal and adding a fourth conference, which takes the men’s volleyball field from 29 teams to 37 teams is the first step in that process. But the changes have led to new problems that the committee now has to solve.
In the past, the men’s Final Four has consisted of three automatic qualifiers, which are the champions of the three conferences – MPSF, MIVA and EIVA. The fourth team is an at-large selection that is chosen by the committee based on performance.
In order to be considered an NCAA championship, a sport has to have 50% at-large selections. Because of the small size of the men’s volleyball field, the NCAA has granted the sport a waiver. It gets a championship despite the fact that it has only 25% at-large selections.
The goal is to expand the men’s volleyball playoff bracket to eight teams eventually, possibly with four automatic berths and four at-large selections, which would give it the NCAA’s required 50%.
The addition of Conference Carolinas helps move the sport toward that goal, but for now there is a hitch. With a fourth conference in the mix, the NCAA has added a play-in match. Basically, the top two ranked conferences will get the usual automatic berth to the Final Four. The third spot will go to the winner of a match between the two lowest ranked conferences and the fourth spot will go to the at-large selection.
While this makes sense on paper, the problem is the way in which the conferences are ranked. The NCAA has just one approved method for ranking conferences and that is RPI or Rating Percentage Index. It is widely used in NCAA athletics but it doesn’t quite work for men’s volleyball because of the small number of teams and the relative lack of out of conference play. In men’s volleyball, the AVCA Coaches Poll would be a much more accurate judge of team rankings, but it is not used in the RPI calculation and is not approved by the NCAA so using it is not an option at this time. In men’s basketball, the RPI is a much more accurate predictor, but men’s basketball is an entirely different animal than men’s volleyball.
“The reason the RPI seems more accurate in men's basketball is that you have 400 institutions all playing each other across the country and you have all of these comparables,” says Santiago. “In men's volleyball right now we're trying to figure out an equation or a weighted RPI that would more accurately reflect the strength of the conference and the strength of the teams.”
One only has to look at the outcome of the conference rankings by RPI in 2013 to see that something is amiss. Traditionally, the MPSF has been the strongest conference in men’s volleyball. However, according to RPI, the MPSF ranks 2nd behind MIVA. That leaves EIVA and Conference Carolinas to fight for a spot in the Final Four via the play-in match for 2014.
Somehow, the new and untested Conference Carolinas came out ahead of the established EIVA, which means the EIVA champion will have to travel to the South for the play-in match. The kicker is that this extra match is unfunded by the NCAA and could cost the traveling institution an extra $20,000 that they had not budgeted for.
While a university like Penn State, the EIVA winner 15 years running and two-time NCAA champion, is well-equipped to absorb the cost, schools like Harvard and Princeton might struggle to find that funding should they win the conference.
Because of the NCAA’s strict rules, there is no other approved way to calculate the RPI, which ties the hands of the NCAA men’s volleyball committee.
“There's no flexibility to just randomly go in and say the EIVA is better than Conference Carolinas so we're going switch it and have Conference Carolinas just travel to Penn State or to the EIVA champion,” said Santiago. “And we can’t say hey we all know that the MPSF is better than MIVA, so let's just switch that as well. We can't just sit in a room and decide that. The only tool that's available to us is the RPI because that is the only method approved by the NCAA.”
The committee says it is working to rectify this problem, but anything they change has to go through an approval process and will not take effect until the next NCAA budget cycle, which begins in 2016.
The goal is to figure out a new way to calculate RPI that produces a more accurate result for men’s volleyball. They hope that weighting the RPI in different ways will be more reflective of the actual strength of the teams vying for the championship.
Until then, men’s volleyball teams, coaches and fans are going to have to live with this solution for at least the next two years.
Men’s volleyball fans have been craving growth for a long time. Now they finally have it and in the big picture it is a good thing. Even if it hurts a little at first.
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