Proposal to Women's Soccer Committee for Changed RPI Formula

Recently, I gave the Women's Soccer Committee a proposal to change the RPI formula to address some of the current formula's major problems.  The proposal is to change to what I call the 5 Iteration Adjusted RPI using the 2009 Bonus and Penalty Points regime.  I'm not going to go into a detailed discussion of the proposed new formula here.  For details on the proposed new formula, you can go to the "RPI: Modified RPI?" page of the RPI for Division I Women's Soccer website.

As I show in detail at the "RPI: Modified RPI?" webpage, the 5 Iteration ARPI formula provides ratings that are at least as consistent with game results as the NCAA's ARPI versions.  More important:

• The 5 Iteration ARPI rates conferences more accurately in relation to each other (1) in terms of general fairness and (2) in relation to conference strength.  In fact, the 5 Iteration ARPI eliminates the NCAA ARPI's biases in relation to conference strength.

• The 5 Iteration ARPI rates the regional playing pools more accurately in relation to each other (1) in terms of general fairness and (2) in relation to region strength.  It doesn't eliminate the biases in relation to region strength of the NCAA's ARPI, but it significantly reduces the biases.

• The 5 Iteration ARPI, for practical purposes, eliminates the disconnect that the NCAA's ARPI versions have, between teams' ARPI ranks and their ranks as contributor to opponents' strengths of schedule.  Thus the 5 Iteration ARPI will eliminate the incentive and need of coaches of potential bubble teams to try to "game" the system in their scheduling of non-conference opponents.  Under the 5 Iteration ARPI, an opponent's value in terms of contribution to your strength of schedule will be roughly the same as its actual rank.  This is as distinguished from the NCAA's RPI versions, where an opponent's value in terms of contribution to your strength of schedule can be very different than its actual rank.

Again, I cover all of this in detail at the "RPI: Modified RPI?" page.

For those of you who are coaches that have followed my work on the RPI, if you agree that a change to the proposed new formula would be a good idea, it will be very helpful if you will let any contact you have on the Women's Soccer Committee know you think the Committee should take a careful look at my proposed change.  This could be particularly helpful as, driven by basketball, the NCAA is in the process of taking a careful look at the RPI as well as at other rating formulas.  Thus there is an opening for changes now that has not been there in the past.

Here are the current Committee members, with email addresses:

Karen Hancock Oklahoma State: karen.hancock@okstate.edu

Janet Oberle, Saint Louis: oberlejl@slu.edu

Janet Rayfield, Illinois: rayfield@illinois.edu

Mick D'Arcy, Central Connecticut: darcym@ccsu.edu

Foti Mellis, California: fmellis@berkeley.edu

John McElwain, Sun Belt Conf: mcelwain@sunbeltsports.org

Tony da Luz, Wake Forest: daluz@wfu.edu

Shawn Farrell, Seattle: farrells@seattleu.edu

Chad Miller, Western Carolina: millerc@email.wcu.edu

Stephanie Ransom, Georgia: sransom@sports.uga.edu