College Baseball Selection Committee Warns Teams Against Cancelling Games For RPI Purpose
The NCAA Division I Baseball Committee on Monday sent a memo to every head baseball coach in the country, warning them against the practice of cancelling a non-conference game for reasons other than inclement weather.
Coastal Carolina athletic director Matt Hogue, the committee chairman, wrote the memo, which was obtained by Baseball America.
“On behalf of the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee, I wanted to let you know that we are concerned with the practice of cancelling regular season games for reasons other than inclement weather,” he wrote. “It is not the intent or spirt of the game to adjust scheduled games in an attempt to strategically impact selection data or metrics.
“As you are aware, when selecting teams for the championship, the committee weighs all the available data and the complete body of work. The committee has kept, and will continue to keep, a watchful eye on team schedules and any known reasons for any cancellation. During the committee’s subjective evaluation of teams, games cancelled to avoid the impact on mathematical metrics will be discussed and could have a negative impact on the committee’s evaluation of a team.”
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In recent years, it has become increasingly common for teams that are on the bubble for at-large bids in the NCAA Tournament to cancel games near the end of the season that carry more risk than reward in the calculation of RPI, the primary metric the selection committee uses to build the NCAA Tournament field. A loss against a bad RPI team, especially one in the bottom half of the 305 teams in the country, can have significant negative impact, while a win is effectively worthless.
Because the selection committee historically has so heavily relied on RPI, many coaches are unwilling to risk a bad loss so late in the season, when they have little time to offset it. Because non-conference games are just contracts between schools, they can be broken, sometimes for a fee or the promise of another game the following season.
As the practice of cancelling games has become more common, it has become a greater issue within the sport. It’s not good for players, who miss out on game time, often during mid-week action when there are more opportunities for players who are not established regulars. It also creates negative headlines and is difficult to explain to casual fans because it’s a practice that does not exist in other major sports. And, as the memo outlines, it’s perceived as being unsporting – it’s almost literally a case of taking the ball and going home instead of facing a challenger.
Yet the practice persists because the NCAA Tournament selection process rewards it. There have been suggestions to change RPI’s formula to make one loss to a bad RPI team not hurt as much or to enact a specific penalty for a cancelled game, but such policies carry their own problems and so nothing has been enacted. Whether this week’s memo will lead to any actual change in coaches’ calculations this year remains to be seen.
