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Commentary by Matt Hickman
Lost in the biannual rigmarole over conference and region realignment is the way power point rankings are determined.
There are two realistic options. 1) Use the AIA established 50-plus-five system that has been in place for two years, or, 2) use the Calpreps formula, developed by Californian Ned Freeman, which is superior but too complex to fully comprehend.
East Valley athletic director Steve Hogen, who was most instrumental in bringing the Freeman rankings to Arizona sports five years ago, would like to see them return, but doesn’t expect to anytime soon.
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“I definitely like Calpreps, they have extremely accurate ratings,” Hogen said. “But the AIA came up with their own system and that’s what was voted in by the conferences — the conferences can use what they want.”
The AIA system is very simple, 50 points for each win, plus five for every opponents’ win, give or take a fraction here and there for playing outside of one’s conference.
The Freeman system is an intensely complicated mathematical process that Hogen said many of the state’s top high school mathletes have tried to tackle but have never tackled.
However, simpler is not always better — in fact, it usually isn’t.
The AIA’s power points system does not reward teams for playing tougher schedules.
This is an indisputable fact.
Say you are a middle-of-the-pack football team. If you schedule a top-notch opponent and lose, which you almost certainly will, that opponent would have to run the table, go a perfect 10-0 for you to get 50 opponents points — the same number of points you would get for bowling over some doormat, cupcake, pushover, et al.
“I don’t think the lower teams want to play the top teams and the top teams want to play the lower ones,” Hogen said. “They say, just give me the 50 points and let’s get on with it.”
The perfect case against the AIA system and in favor of the Freeman ratings could be made by Bisbee High.
Last season the Pumas made it to the state playoffs as a No. 15 seed and upset No. 2 Scottsdale Christian, an upset that drew the attention of the Arizona Cardinals, who declared the Pumas their “team of the week,” but in reality, it wasn’t that great of an upset.
It was just the inability of the AIA system to weigh strength of schedule that made it seem so monumental.
This season, the Pumas have the same schedule and heading into their final regular season game Friday night at Tombstone, they must win and get help just to get into the state playoffs a third straight season.
Class 2A Bisbee’s schedule includes Class 4A Douglas and Class 3A Show Low and Empire. Bisbee lost all three of those games, and as a result of playing above their heads, got only two additional cumulative points, or one-fifth of an overall power point for all their trouble, suffering and injury.
In the AIA power points standings, Bisbee (4-5) currently sits 19th and needs a win over Tombstone, plus losses by Arizona Lutheran (which they beat), San Manuel, Tuba City Greyhills and Morenci (which they beat) to creep into the top 16.
However, on Hogen’s mesasports.org Web site, he shows what the power rankings would be under the Freeman system. There, Bisbee comes in 12th having all but clinched a state playoff berth.
Even Tombstone, which is 2-6 on the season and ranked 25th in the AIA system, gets in under the gun at 15th, ahead of Morenci, which it routed 35-0. Losses to 2A powers Scottsdale Christian and Valley Christian as well as Class 4A Gilbert Perry, make the difference for the Yellowjackets.
Unlike the AIA system, which treats all wins and all opponents wins as though they were the same, the Freeman system takes into account opponents’ wins and opponents-opponents’ wins and so on until it creates a double-helix of logorithyms that multiply their way into the stratosphere.
Unlike the AIA system which discounts all tournament games — where some of the best and most diverse competition takes place — the Freeman system accounts for tournaments.
And in football, where the AIA system unfairly rewards teams with fewer counting games (5 points for an opponent’s win is worth .50 index points to a team with 10 games and .54 to those with nine counting games), the Freeman system accounts for all as though they were the same.
On Nov. 13, the Class 5A basketball coaches will be meeting to vote on, among other things, whether to implement Freeman rankings for the 2009-10 season.
It was Class 5A basketball that first brought in Freeman ratings six years ago, and perhaps the coaches will vote to blaze a trail again.
Hogen isn’t holding his breath, even though, he said, the cost for the service is negligible and could even be waived.
“I’m not too optimistic,” Hogen said. “I think they like to be able to do the math themselves. They think, if we can beat A, B and C we’ll get this number of points. They like that. They can figure it out.”
Herald/Review sports editor Matt Hickman can be reached at 515-4612 or by e-mail at sports@svherald.com.
strength of schedule wrote on Oct 29, 2008 12:39 PM: