The winds of change have been blowing throughout Division III, including in the way teams will be ranked and selected for national tournament play. As most are likely aware, the Championships Committee has investigated and recommended the implementation of a new ranking and selection system, known as the NCAA Power Index (NPI), sometimes also referred to as “Pairwise” or the Selection Criteria Database.
That recommendation, with an effective date of the 2024-25 season, was subsequently approved in concept by the Division III Management Council and President’s Council. While many in the Division III community have known about the ongoing process to move toward NPI there seems to be a great deal of consternation and confusion over its details and implications. While certain details are still being set and the full implications of the new system may not be known until it has been in place for at least a year, I wanted to put together this blog post to lay out some information that we have been able to gather.
While change is sure to come with a dose of low-level grumbling there have been some entities that have logged formal concerns or at least expressed a desire to have the process slowed down or delayed a year so there can be greater understanding among the membership before NPI is put into place. That list includes at least the North Coast Athletic Conference, the Liberty League men’s and women’s soccer coaches, NESCAC men’s soccer coaches and the United Soccer Coaches Division III Advisory Council.
Any hope the parties mentioned above have of NPI not being in place for the start of Fall 2024 seasons is quickly running out.
The next part of the process following the approval of the recommendation to proceed with NPI was for the individual sport committees to consider and submit their recommended “dial” settings. The so called “dials” allow sport committees to tune relative weights of components such as winning percentage, strength of schedule, home/away multipliers, etc. that feed into the NPI calculation. The dials will be set by each committee, not by sports. This means we could see different dial settings in men’s and women’s basketball. This is not unlike what we have had in the past were the strength of schedule calculation for men’s basketball includes a home/away multiplier while the women’s basketball SOS does not.
Dials for Fall sports were due to be set by June 1 with a posting date set for June 15. Winter sports face a June 15 date for dial settings and a posting date of July 1 while Spring sports will have their dials set by July 1 to be posted July 15.
This all leads to one big final decision point: the Management Council meeting in July. It is at this meeting that the Management Council is to review and approve the NPI in its final form, taking the necessary legislative action to officially put it into place.
So what are the odds the Management Council slams on the breaks and defers for a year? At this point that seems unlikely given that it appears the bulk of the comments/complaints/concerns have all come from one sport: soccer. With NPI being a division-wide initiative, I have a hard time seeing one sport being able to mount an effort to derail what looks to me to be more of a certainty.
This is especially true based on what we’ve gathered based on the response from sport committees. If there was a group of people who were best positioned to sidetrack the NPI process it would have come here but responses have been generally positive. Level of support varied, particularly when it came to implementing for Fall 2024 instead of holding off until Fall 2025, but it appears only the men’s soccer committee was willing to go further and voice an opinion that the system is not ready to be implemented.
Once again, is a single sport going to be enough to hold off NPI for at least another year?
A common response we have heard from coaches about the possibility of NPI taking over as the ranking and selection system is a feeling of being in the dark. This seems to be the result of a process designed to develop and put the new system in place with input from the sport committees prior to engaging in mass education initiatives. Right or wrong, it appears the intention was to educate the wider audience on what IS coming rather than educating the wider audience on what COULD BE coming and soliciting feedback based on that.
It may be “too little, too late” for some coaches and administrators but for those willing to accept “better late than never” it seems more information is not far off. The plan is to hold educational webinars in July for Fall sports, late July/early August for Winter sports and late August/early September for Spring sports.
One positive of moving to a computer-based ranking system like NPI is that it has the ability to be available on at least a daily basis. However, it appears that is not currently the plan. While NPI would make regional rankings obsolete, it seems the plan is to produce regional rankings, pulled from the NPI, beginning three weeks before tournament selections. The full NPI list will also be published to NCAA.com on the same schedule. Perhaps that means there will be some level of suspense heading into the selection shows after all.
Stay tuned to the D3 Datacast for more about NPI later this Summer. We plan to do a full show breaking down NPI, what it means, what it might not mean and how wee feel about it when we take a deeper dive in our regular show so make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube!
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