Monthly Archives: October 2005

On regional rankings

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I see plenty of angst around the message boards and in my e-mail about the regional rankings the NCAA published today (a day late, by the way — if the NCAA is going to fine schools for reporting scores late then perhaps the NCAA should pay $50 to every ranked school to which it reported a day late).

Remember one thing — regional rankings are not like the national rankings. They do not consider all games. Any win is better than any loss.

We have a lot of info about the playoffs and how teams are ranked by the NCAA in our FAQ. But let’s run through them quickly and take a look at what the salient numbers are.

Almost always these run heavily on regional winning percentage and QOW, the Quality of Wins index. We calculate this for you each week. You can find a link to it on the menu rail of any news page.

I’ve listed regional record, regional winning percentage, and QOW.

East Region
1. Rowan 4-0, 1.000, 12.000
2. Hobart 5-0, 1.000, 11.600
3. Delaware Valley 7-0, 1.000, 10.857
4. Union 5-0, 1.000, 10.800
5. Alfred 5-0, 1.000, 10.600
6. Ithaca 6-1, .857, 10.286
7. RPI 5-1, .833, 10.000
8. St. John Fisher 7-1, .875, 9.875
9. Cortland State 5-2, .714, 9.143
10. Wilkes 5-2, 8.857

Every unbeaten team is by default better than every team with a loss. The rankings are just basically a rehash of the QOW, with the exception of Fitchburg State (6-1, .857, 11.000), the only nod to actual team strength. Also left out, Buffalo State, which has a QOW of 10.500 but only a 2-4 overall record, 1-1 in region.

North Region
1. North Central 5-0, 1.000, 13.500
2. Wabash 6-0, 1.000, 11.333
3. Ohio Northern 5-1, .833, 10.571
4. Mount Union 5-1, .833, 11.500
5. Augustana 5-1, .833, 10.333
6. John Carroll 6-1, .857, 9.857
7. Mount St. Joseph 6-1 , .857, 9.571
8. Carthage 5-2, .714, 10.286
9. Otterbein 5-2, .714, 10.000
10. Capital 5-2 , .714, 9.143

Ohio Northern is out of order in terms of QOW but has the head-to-head win against Mount Union. Similarly John Carroll is somewhat out of order but has a win against Ohio Northern. Left out? Alma, 4-1, .800, 10.400 But there won’t be five OAC teams in this ranking forever.

South Region
1. Trinity (Texas) 5-0, 1.000, 12.400
2. Ferrum 7-0, 1.000, 10.333
3. Mary Hardin-Baylor 4-1, .800, 10.000
4. Thiel 7-0, 1.000, 11.429
5. Bridgewater (Va.) 4-1, .800, 9.000
6. Hardin-Simmons 5-1, .833, 10.333
7. Johns Hopkins 6-0, 1.000, 11.167
8. Salisbury 2-0, 1.000, 13.500
9. Washington and Jefferson 5-1, .833, 8.833
10. Wesley 4-0, 1.000, 12.500

Looks for all the world like Thiel should be above Ferrum, as should Johns Hopkins. Not sure what’s going on there. And our QOW number doesn’t include Ferrum’s game against Chowan — which it shouldn’t, really. Chowan has scholarship players now. If you include the Chowan game, it lowers Ferrum’s QOW even more. No teams left out that have a particularly good reason to be in according to the criteria.

West Region
1. Linfield 4-0, 1.000, 10.250
2. UW-Whitewater 6-0, 1.000, 12.000
3. St. John’s 7-0, 1.000, 10.571
4. Occidental 6-0, 1.000, 11.167
5. St. Olaf 7-0, 1.000, 9.857
6. Coe 5-1, .833, 11.000
7. Monmouth 7-0, 1.000, 10.714
8. Concordia-Moorhead 5-1, 9.167
9. Whitworth 4-1, .800, 9.800
10. Central 6-1, .857, 11.143

Well, Linfield doesn’t have the highest QOW but they hold the Walnut and Bronze. That usually counts for quite a lot. Coe is higher on the head-to-head win against Central, and St. John’s because of beating Concordia-Moorhead.

Regional rankings don’t measure the games that make national rankings most accurate — games between regions. They don’t see the difference between a one-point win and a blowout. All of these things get measured in a national poll.

Everyone vote Brett Elliott for Heisman

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It’s one of those times where we need to mobilize the power of Division III fans behind one of its own. The online public voting for the Heisman Trophy is now available, and we’ve managed to get Linfield quarterback Brett Elliott added to the ballot (thanks to correspondent Ron Boerger, who got the process started).

The top three vote-getters in the online voting receive the equivalent of a first-place, second-place and third-place vote in the official ballot tally. Now, we’re coming to this late in the game, so we need to get cracking.

Click here to vote

You can vote from a particular e-mail address once per week. Each vote must be confirmed — they send you a link via e-mail to click on to confirm your vote before it will be counted.

Elliott trails by 12,642 votes and has just 12, but if each person who visits D3football.com on a typical Wednesday votes for him, we will catch up. Let’s show yet another national site the power of Division III, like we did to ESPN.com with the Wabash/DePauw rivalry over the summer.

And if you doubt Division III in the Heisman race, don’t forget Plymouth State running back Joe Dudek finished ninth in the balloting in 1985. Some guy named Bo Jackson won the thing that year.

Insider: Midwest milieu

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Game day for the Augustana football team started off with a 7:00 a.m. breakfast on campus this past Saturday. Following our traditional pre-game breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham from the cafeteria we loaded the buses and set out for Decatur, Illinois to take on Millikin University. The ride that usually offers nothing but corn and farm houses took a turn for the better with the shifting of seasons as all the leaves were in the midst of changing colors.

For any sports fanatic, fall has to be the best time of the year. The cool air simply smells like football and throughout most of the week some sort of game can been seen. Let’s not forget the excitement that surrounds the baseball playoffs and World Series that comes hand in hand with fall. Speaking of which, though the odds of me jumping on the White Sox bandwagon are about the same as me starting over Reggie Bush this Saturday for USC, I must tip my hat to Ozzie Guillen’s squad and their success as of yet. You have to admire how hard they play and how they feed off of each other’s energy.

They have captured the essence of sports which derives from the chilling atmosphere fall creates. There is nothing that compares to the feeling you get while stepping onto the field under the blue skies of fall while smelling barbeque from distant tailgaters. That is all I could think of while we traveled to take on the Big Blue and as we arrived in Decatur at 11:15, kickoff could not have come soon enough.

Things got rolling early as we jumped out to a 17-0 halftime lead thanks to a stingy defense and a grinding offense. Walking off the field after the first half we found a shaded area right outside the stadium and stayed there for halftime rather than piling into the crowded locker room. It was quite an interesting experience, one a division I football player would never even come close to experiencing as fans of both teams passed close by the entire time. The game ended with us coming out on top by a score of 23-0 as we improved to 6-1 overall.

After the game I was able to hang out with a few players from the Millikin team because my good friend Max Warner plays for them. It was a great experience talking CCIW football with guys I had just lined up against. It was a unique experience hearing them talk about the same things my teammates and I talk about, just from a different perspective.

This Saturday we play host to Elmhurst College who just came off of a tough seven point defeat from North Central College (12th in the nation). As conference play comes to a close we realize that from week to week, it is a one game season. No game is more important than the one in front of us as we take on the Bluejays this Saturday. One slip up could cost us our season and we take that into consideration as we walk out to practice every day.