NCAA rankings, scoring all the talk at conference
LAS VEGAS – John Fields couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.
Decades ago, the longtime Texas men’s golf coach was sitting in a conference room in Orlando, Florida, as Golfstat founder Mark Laesch unveiled his groundbreaking ranking to the college golf community. Fast forward to last week and Fields and his fellow coaches found themselves in a much larger space at the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and with a new statistician – and his new ranking – standing in front of them.
“I remember Mark Laesch having to explain his ranking and take all the bullets, and everyone upset with him for one reason or another…,” Fields said.
“Well, here we are again.”
Following a tumultuous fall season in which the NCAA’s decision to move away from incumbent Golfstat and sign unproven startup Spikemark to be its new scoring and rankings provider backfired, hundreds of NCAA golf coaches gathered for their national convention. An opportunity to discuss policy and catch up with peers, yes. But also, a chance to meet face to face with the man tasked with creating their sport’s new set of rankings: Columbia business professor Mark Broadie, the founder of the PGA Tour’s strokes-gained system.
Broadie’s new team and individual rankings, which debuted on Spikemark’s website (now powered by Clippd and soon to transition into the brand, Scoreboard) a few weeks ago, haven’t exactly been well received by coaches. Even after two webinars and posted materials online, it’s clear that much of Broadie’s algorithm, which has already undergone a few tweaks since the concept was debuted shortly before the semester began, remained lost in translation.
“I’ve already left,” one coach texted less than halfway through the first webinar, held the week of Thanksgiving. “I can’t take it.”
Like the webinars and social-media discourse, Broadie was not spared the heat during a pair of formal, hourlong sessions. A handful of frustrated coaches fired questions at Broadie. The rest just listened, though many with confused looks on their faces.
“This is as fair a system I could come up with,” Broadie said at one point, seemingly exasperated.
Yet, while the professor could’ve bolted up to his hotel room following his schedule speaking arrangements, he instead chose to stick around and make himself available for more questions. Several coaches took him up on that both days. After the first session, Broadie sat behind a table outside the main conference room with his laptop and entertained a revolving door of coaches for hours. When his first break came during the third hour, Broadie could be seen nearly sprinting to a nearby bathroom. He returned for more questions until he was pulled away for a dinner reservation – and even then he briefly retreated for one final thought.
The second afternoon, Broadie held court inside the conference room as a half-dozen coaches picked his brain, many of them leaving with a better understanding of the ranking than when they arrived.
In layman’s terms, Broadie’s ranking, based on how he explained it on Wednesday afternoon, uses the strokes-gained averages of teams or players to determine the strength of field, which in turn sets the baseline points for zero strokes gained. From there, the strokes a team or player gains or loses to the field average in that event, factored in with any performance premiums, determines the number of points they receive for that event.
“On some things, I’m still lost, and maybe that’s a knock on me,” said one of those coaches, Oklahoma State men’s coach Alan Bratton. “But I’m confident that the ranking has gotten better from the summer – and probably significantly better. And listening to the people from Clippd, I think the sport has a good partner there, and Mark Broadie, too; I still think his understanding of our sport has a ways to go, but it has grown and he’s certainly shown that he wants to make it better.”
Added North Florida men’s coach Scott Schroeder: “And he’s willing to listen.”
Turning the dial
While Broadie’s dedication to college golf was evident, he couldn’t quell every concern about his algorithm. Schroeder asked a question the first day that sparked a debate about Broadie’s points premium for above-average performance (Broadie defines this as when a team or player gains 1.5 or more strokes than expected in an event).
“Above-average performance helps more than below-average performance hurts,” Broadie explained.
“But who made that decision?” Schroeder inquired, noting that college golf is different from pro golf, where players will happily trade consistency for a more volatile record with a few wins and top finishes but also some poor showings. College teams? Not so much.
“I made that decision,” Broadie answered succinctly before later adding: “This could be turned up or turned down, and if people think this is not enough or too much of a win premium, that could be changed.”
Another qualm with the rankings deals with Broadie’s universal points system, which allows cross-divisional play to be counted whereas in past rankings it wasn’t. While Broadie explained that there was a simple conversion of points between divisions, some coaches feared that “playing up” provided an edge. One example was Hartford, which is transitioning from D-I to D-III and played several D-I and D-II teams this fall, ranking No. 14 in Broadie’s D-III men’s team rankings and No. 136 in the Golfweek/Sagarin ranking, a head-to-head system. “It’s probably a data issue,” Broadie said, noting that the top five in both rankings were identical. (Upon further investigation, it appears Broadie was correct, though even Broadie’s ranking appeared to be missing one tournament that Hartford played.)
“All [rankings algorithm] knows is which teams are playing together in a round and what are the scores,” Broadie explained. “It doesn’t take into account the divisions.”
Perhaps the biggest hang-up for coaches is match play, which is averaged with stroke-play results in Broadie’s ranking. Broadie’s philosophy with match play is that every player, regardless of their points average, increases that average with a win and decreases it with a loss. Broadie himself admitted to match play not being a great indicator of true performance, but he was asked to include it and did his best. Broadie added that assuming teams play their usual number of match-play contests, the format will have minimal impact on the rankings.
Issue could arise if teams decide to schedule to where they play “80%” match play and small-field events (four teams or fewer) because, as Broadie says, “The ranking is more accurate if you play against more teams.” But teams looking to game the system, trying to pad their points via match play or small-field events, are only creating more risk. They could lose, or perform below average, or even increase the probability of performing above average and not being rewarded as much for it.
All in favor...
Following Broadie’s first session, the D-I men’s coaches met for their breakout session, which included the nine members of the NCAA golf committee and John Baldwin, the NCAA’s managing director of championships and alliances. The discussion centered on the rankings, and at one point the matter of standardization came up. Many formats are used in college golf – from stroke play to match play, 5-count-4 to 6-count-5, 18 holes to 54 holes, two-team fields to fields of 20-plus teams. It's why the sport is often referred to as the "Wild, wild West."
Schroeder conducted a couple straw polls during the breakout, and it appeared that the vast majority of the hundred or so coaches in the room were in favor of teams being required to play a certain percentage of rounds using a standard format (Schroeder proposed this as 5-count-4 stroke play, at least 36 holes, and at least eight teams).
“We need to get as much information that goes in that’s the same, and then however it’s set up will produce a similar result,” Schroeder said. “The biggest concern is the outliers that exist with regards to match play and really, really small events. That’s why it’s important to get every event to be 5-count-4 and to have a certain number of teams.”
“I think that’s a no-brainer,” Bratton said of standardization.
The same coaches also overwhelmingly supported Broadie taking out any extra premium for above-average performance in the rankings. While there were no straw polls the next day in the D-I women’s breakout, there likely would’ve been a similar show of hands.
However, as that session, which had a series of passionate exchanges between coaches and committee members, reached its end, Wake Forest women’s assistant Ryan Potter stood up to calmly caution the room.
“We asked for transparency for years in the Golfstat ranking, and there was information at the bottom of the website so you could go and try to figure it out, but we didn’t understand it. Now, we have transparency, and a lot of people don’t understand it,” Potter explained afterward, expounding on his address to the room. “We’ve had webinars, we’ve had things sent to us, and he's been here for two days to help us, and I think it’s our duty to figure the math out and understand that it works. And we have to be careful about, hey, let’s do this this, and this, and this to the ranking and change it, and it becomes adulterated.
“We counted them all (events) last year. We have this new system and now we can see all of it, and now we’re wanting to change stuff that we did in the past. And honestly, [Golfstat] worked pretty well. I never had any issues. Maybe someone who was 57th that wasn’t going to get into regionals that thought they should, but who knows if they were right or not.”
Not that Potter didn’t have his questions for Broadie, but it was clear he was tired of the consternation.
There’s some preliminary support for a small group of rankings-savvy coaches who would have a direct line to Broadie and be able to provide checks and balances throughout the season. Perhaps having trusted eyes on the process will streamline what is currently a slew of questions and ease the stress levels of coaches.
For now, the onus is on every coach to get as educated as possible.
Some took Broadie up on his availability. Many did not.
“It’s been a pretty good session as far as gaining understanding how the ranking works,” Florida Golf Coast men’s coach Andrew Danna said. “I think that like anything, there’s a way to go, but I think over time it can be accurate and be beneficial to college golf.”
Added Fields: “Change does not come without pain. I know they’ll get it right.”
OTHER NOTES FROM CONVENTION
• The NCAA Division I golf committees have expanded from six to nine members, with each of the Power 5 conferences represented as well as three members from each of the following conferences – American, A-SUN, C-USA, Mountain West, SoCon, Sun Belt and West Coast, and one member from another conference. With lots of conference realignment taking place and seats not transferring, Oregon State’s Jon Reehoorn was named to the men’s committee.
• The NCAA will keep current rule in place regarding foreign competition, which limits teams to one international tournament (excluding Mexico and Canada) every four years.
• Following last season’s debut of the National Golf Invitational, the NCAA has finally gone away from teams and players needing a waiver to play in a season-ending tournament that is not the NCAA Championship. All teams and players are now allowed one season-ending tournament. That includes players of teams competing in the NCAA postseason who are not in that team’s NCAA lineup. Individuals, however, can’t play in an NCAA regional or championship and then join their team for the NGI, while individuals also can’t play in the PGA Works and the NCAA postseason.
• With third paid coaches being allowed, the NCAA rules committee provided some clarification on giving advice. A maximum of two advice-givers will be allowed at a time, though teams can switch out advice-givers during a round. With concerns that teams could have third coaches scout holes ahead and then swap out, an NCAA rules official said it would monitor such behavior and that multiple subs of advice-givers during a round almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed. Non-advice-giving coaches are allowed to, among other things: coach prior to and after round, and during practice rounds; deliver food, drinks and equipment; assist players in scoring. The penalty for having more than two advice-givers is a general penalty for each infraction.
• While freshmen in sports such as football can play a certain number of contests before losing a year of eligibility, that discussion for golf has been tabled.
• The NCAA will continue to not implement MLR G-12, which states that a player cannot use any written, printed, electronic or digital materials to help with reading a line of play for any stroke to made from the putting green, as “most coaches” were not in favor of doing so.
