I've seen discussion of increasing the D1 women's soccer tournament participation to 90 teams. Can't find that reference, but I did find a bit more information. The NCAA at it's January meetings agreed to study paths toward getting all championship tournaments in sports that have 200 or more schools playing a specific sport to bring such tournaments to 25 percent participation. In other words, the NCAA has decided that 25% of teams in that sport is a logical and fair target for a championship tournament. For Division I women's soccer, 90 teams would be 25.7% of the 350 teams currently playing. (Over the last 15 years, DI women's soccer has fallen from near the target down to 18.3 % this last season as the number of DI schools playing soccer hit 350. So it appears that adjustments in team participation will be be a high of 25% and an adjustment in participation when sliding below 19-20%... or, if you will, staying between 1/4th to 1/5th of the playing teams. There was also an agreement to study tournament travel issues including upgrading air transportation. The mechanics of seeing 90 teams in a single elimination tournament will be interesting. In addition, at least an extra week will be needed to conduct the tournament which means finishing later into December (closer to final exams) or starting the tournament earlier. ...which will mean to either shorten the season or begin a week earlier in August.
Historically, the tournament participation for non revenue sports seems to have been pegged at around 15-25% and tournament participation was adjusted upwards to meet that goal using some even multiple of 8 to set the bracket size. The Men’s 48 team men’s bracket is about a quarter of the participating teams, for example. that correlates pretty well with the top three standard deviations of a normalized bell curve, with the first standard deviation in women’s soccer representing the 1 seeds and the second standard deviation representing the pod hosts within a team or so. The top three standard deviations on a normalized curve represent 15.8% of the field. I think the pressure will increase towards shortening the season by eliminating conference tournaments, which won’t really acccomplish much anyway under the expanded tournament field. They are traditionally used to get an extra team from your conference in, and that won’t be much of a problem with 90 teams. Any ACC team with a winning record , for example, would be in an expanded tournament. The only losers would be conference tournament winners with a losing record. the number of weeks can be the same by just doubling up games on a second long weekend. The 90 team tournament also increases pressure for a split Spring-Fall competition season.
“The transformation committee’s recommendation is not an official change. Most recommendations will be determined by the individual oversight and governance groups of a particular sport. On the topic of expanding championship events, an initial review by committees will happen by June 2023, and final recommendations will take place by January ’24 for implementation in the ’24–25 championship, the report says.” https://www.si.com/.amp/college/2023/01/03/ncaa-tournament-expansion-recommendation-transformation
Yuck. Not surprising because what the NCAA really wants is to increase the number of teams in March Madness. (Which will suck. Why not just cancel the season and just have a 350-team tournament?) This could be the first step to paving the way for that.
The article I posted (there is an even better one I read in more detail before but I cannot find it right now) said that not all sports will necessarily expand. It will be up to each sports committee leadership to decide if their sport will expand. I agree that basically all you will need to do is be able to walk and chew gum at the same time and you will qualify for the NCAA tournament. The regular season will have a lot less meaning.
Well it's about money and this is America so who can blame them? Another famous non-profit is doing the same thing with the men's World Cup. If it rolls down to the Olympic sports, fantastic. This would be a hugely welcomed change for those of us who coach at mid- (or low-) majors and who have quality sides that could realistically win a game or two in the tournament - but damnit we lost in Pens to the park-the-bus 3rd seed in our conference tournament
Hey, I'd love to see a greater array of teams make it, but I will expect many of those additional slots to be taken by #8-12 Power 5 teams. But since you bring up mid and low major programs, let me ask you this. How important are conference tournaments at that level? I've always presumed that they have more value for teams that have no hope of winning a national title. If you look at the top teams in the ACC or Pac 12 for instance, I'm not sure the conference tournament is that big a deal. Sure, a win is better than a loss, but since most of these teams can harbor national title aspirations, it's not a big deal if they lose. Does having a second chance to "win" something matter? What is love to see in an expanded format is both regular season and tournament champions receiving automatic qualifiers. And we both know the world cup is gonna suck in four years.
Isn't "park the bus and play for penalties" how your team, and many others, would (and do) try to win games in a tournament with a top-seeded team? Happens all the time at nearly every level but there would certainly be more opportunities in any expanded tournament field. You have to assume you would be adding "play-in" games as they do now in MBB so you'd have teams at the bottom of the tournament playing into the lower seed positions in a 64 team field. You could have 32 teams play 16 "play in" games to get into the #13-16 seeds in each quadrant of a 64 team field. That's only one extra game for those 32 teams to have a 96 team field. It's not necessary to do away with Conf tournaments for those 16 play-in games. Perhaps like basketball, you might be able to predetermine where those play-in games are played. Like the "first four" but could have 8 of those locations around the nation each host 2 play-in games. This is likely to be the baskeball model. Point is - there is a way to do it that has very little affect on the top half of the draw in any tournament.
and please keep posting so the Philippine team thread with one poster isnt back at the top of the forum
In looking at this further, it would appear that adding 32 teams for a field of 96 might work really well. If it took a couple of years to implement this and then starting in 2025 a 96 team tournament would be about 26.1% (of a projected 360 total teams), and in another 5 years the total field might be 370 and a 96 team tournament would represent 25.9% The 96 team format then might be stable for 50 years or more if the rate of soccer expansion into Dl schools backed off a little to average 2 schools per year. That would be then 450 schools for a 96 team tournament yielding 21% which is still in the range that has been used (between 1/4th to 1/5th of the total soccer schools and still only adding one game for 2/3 of the field, leaving the top 32 seeds looking at the same ol' potential 6 games for the tournament.)
Generally skeptical of enlarging the tournament, regular season games just become less and less meaningful. Anyone have any idea where the 25 percent figure came from? Is there some actual reasoning behind that number or is it just arbitrary? And why would one think the same benchmark should apply to all sports?
100%, haha. But good news, Claudio - I mean Gio - will get lots and lots of playing time! Sorry, sorry...don't mean to open a can of worms here. To your question though - yeah, obviously the conference tournament is massive because it is our only chance to bring home a trophy on the season. But that's also the case for 70% of P5 schools. Agreed that regular season winners and tournament winners both receiving AQs is the logical way to go, which is exactly why the NCAA won't do it. I'm not looking for 4 teams from the Patriot or Horizon to get in, but typically most 1-bid conferences have a second team that is just as competitive and personally, I'd like to see that team get a chance over the 9th team from the ACC or the 7th team from the Big 12, etc.
I assume an expanded tournament would mean teams like this getting in *in addition to* rather than *instead of* the 9th ACC team, etc. The 9th ACC team has top 50 RPI wins/draws and a high SoS if they get in; they've earned it & they can and do win a game or two in the tournament. It wouldn't seem fair to me to replace them with the kinds of teams you're referring to; but I agree it would be good to see those teams *also* get a chance.
I think the mid major conferences should adopt a new rule for selecting their automatic qualifier. I think there should be a reward for being the regular season champion. I think they should automatically get a chance to be the auto qualifier. I think if the regular season champ wins the conference tournament then they should get the auto bid. if anyone other than the regular season champ wins the conference tournament then there should be an additional game. regular season champ vs tournament champ for the auto bid. that way one bad night doesn't cost the regular season champion their season. they would get a second chance which I feel they deserve.
It is entirely up to the conferences to decide how the auto bid is determined. I don't believe there is any NCAA rule mandating the conference tournament (if there is a conference tournament) winner receives the auto bid. @Enzo the Prince Sometimes. Not going into specific examples because we could go on forever there, but I do think SoS in P5 is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. These teams are halfway to an NCAA tournament bid just for being on the schedule every year.
My impression from what little I have read is that there is some budding consensus in the representatives to the NCAA that about 20% to 25% of the total teams playing would be appropriate for a pool of 200 teams or larger no matter the sport. I also read somewhere (I can't remember where) that if the pool of teams was small that a higher percentage would be appropriate and slowly get smaller as the pools got bigger. Perhaps if you had 20 teams that 8 teams (40%) might be appropriate to build excitement and support for increasing the sport. And them maybe 32% for 100 teams playing; and then about 25 % for 200 teams playing, etc. I gather that the philosophy here is to support fledgling efforts and ease off as things get bigger.
96 teams for the post-season is certainly doable. The current 4-week post-season schedule is 1-2-1-2. An additional 32 teams would see this schedule become 1.5 - 2 - 1 - 2. Very very doable. Just because it can be done does not mean that it should be done. I'm a voice in the wilderness advocating for a 56-team Tournament. But if the NCAA pushes for a 96-team March Madness, the $$$ from that effort should be able to pay for an additonal 32 teams for soccer. If the Tournament does expand to 96, I hope that there would be 2 AQs/conference. Let the conferences decide how they select their 2 AQs. We might see fewer conference championships as the mid-majors will be guaranteed to send their 2 top teams in their table, should they decide to do so. I would rather see a 2nd team qualify from the Big West than have a bottom-half team from the Power 5 that ride on the coattails of their top teams.
I'd be all right with an expanded tournament if the season is expanded as well. It's already problematic that teams have to play two games a week for most of the season. Either start the season much earlier during the summer or push anything like an expanded tournament into the spring with a bunch of non-cons or the end of the conference season moved as well, kind of like basketball. That 'causes problems for LAX of course, but I've always believed that should be pushed more into the summer like baseball anyway, coinciding with the pro LAX season. Also, 90+ tournament gets into territory where you can have double elimination formats benefit, maybe a two stage bracket. Go wild and have 8 separate brackets where 16 teams play each other in a double elimination format and two teams move on from each. Winners bracket winners get a bye into the final 8.
Everything was going great until that post right there from @babranski The full-year model, as proposed by the men, is not supported by the women's coaches. It's not at all practical and the merits of the benefits to the student-athlete are debatable. You talk about decompressing the schedule on one hand then suggest double-elimination like it's softball or something ?! Come on, now... You can go to 80 by just adding 16 play-in games on Wed or Thurs and have the first weekend stay as a 1-game weekend with those that played play-ins playing their next game (round of 64) on Sunday. Others could play their first game anytime the first weekend. You could still keep that 1-game Quarterfinal weekend (usually over Thanksgiving) and not change anything else. 96 teams would mean 32 play-in games so that's the entire bottom half the draw but still Zero change for the top 32 seeded teams. Done. I think there are 31 Conferences with AQs. I don't think I would support a 2 AQ plan. Plenty of mid-major teams would get in with an 80+ tournament. I've always said if coaches want to play less games (because they think its best for their players), then schedule less games. You can do that by vote in your conference meetings or just do it yourself in the non-conference schedule. No need to mandate less games. Some conferences are trying to do a double game week followed by a single game week and that's a good compromise I think.
Related to whether each conference should have two Automatic Qualifier spots in a 96 team bracket, here is an extreme example of what this would mean, but one that makes a point: This past year, the SWAC #1 regular season team and also conference tournament champion was RPI #267 Jackson State (Massey #330, Balanced RPI #326). The #2 regular season finisher was #331 Southern U (Massey #336, Balanced RPI #335). That is out of 348 teams.
What is it about the full year model that women's coaches don't support? Is it just the competition for limited resources that it creates? The few coaching contacts I know are completely for it. From the athlete's perspective it has some tremendous stress relieving benefits. And while you could squeeze in the 96 team tourney, it makes this situation worse, and becomes very easy with the full year model.
Last year, I took a look at how teams have fared in the NCAA Tournament since 2010. A total of 177 teams participated in the tournament, many of them multiple times. These are both automatic qualfiers and at large selections. Of the participants, 46 never got past the first round, which is about a quarter of the teams. Here are the teams that participated at least once but never won a game. This seems to me a good indicator of how #2 Automatic Qualfiers would be likely to do in the tournament if each conference were to have two AQs. AbileneChristian Belmont BoiseState Buffalo CalStateNorthridge Campbell CentralMichigan Charlotte Cincinnati Colgate Duquesne Elon Evansville FairleighDickinson GeorgiaSouthern GeorgiaU GrandCanyon IdahoState IUPUI JacksonState JacksonvilleU JamesMadison KentState LongIsland Mercer MississippiState MississippiValley Morehead NewHampshireU NorthernArizona NorthernKentucky NorthwesternState OldDominion Providence Rider SanDiegoU StephenFAustin TennesseeMartin Toledo UALR UMBC UNLV UtahState Valparaiso VermontU WeberState
For once I actually disagree with the numbers, because an expanded field (assuming it isn't doubled to 128) changes the equation entirely. A lot of these teams are playing each other and not a seeded team in the first round, so they will win a game. And THEN they'll go and lose 6-0 at Duke or Stanford...