Response to commenters
My response got too long for the comment box, so I just pasted it here:
The rankings are based on wins AND losses, plus consistency. For example, if Pennsauken goes and beats Wilson, Pennsauken is going to jump up and Wilson is going to fall a little bit. But if, say, Overbrook beats Cumberland, I can't ignore Overbook's losses and just stick them in at No. 12. The rankings are a living thing, very subjective but as systematic as possible. In the end, the only ranking that matters to me is No. 1 and the only list that matters is the last one. I pray for clarity on that issue, and everything else is just fun. Everybody thinks this stuff is easy, and it certainly is simpler if you only care about one team.
And two polls kind of defeats the purpose of ranking teams to begin with, taking the fun out of it. It's now done in football for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that teams play only 10 or 11 games, and can't possibly schedule enough non-conference games to let us make a fair comparison. Another big reason is that you need at least 20 kids just to field a football team, whereas seven does the job in basketball. Small schools have competed just fine in the past. Sterling finished at No. 1 and the very next year, Wildwood -- the smallest public school in SJ -- finished No. 2. Now, what happens if we went to two sets of rankings and, say, Haddonfield lost to Shabazz in the TOC final. We wouldn't get to recognize them as the best team in SJ, but only the best small-school team.
The Colonial is in a downturn this year. The best teams right now -- in my view, Heights and Collingswood -- have one senior starter between them, and a lot of the squads that are normally there have fallen out. If you recall, five Colonial teams -- Haddonfield, Heights, Sterling, Collingswood and Haddon Township -- were in the Preseason Top 20, and every one of them fell out at different times for very real reasons. Pitman was in and fell out. Glassboro did the same. I can't keep somebody ranked just for the sake of school-size diversity. If I did, the rankings we publish in the paper would be a sham and I'd have to come on here and post "the real T20" every week.
If the coaches of the smaller schools believe they're getting disrespected in the rankings, they have not told me. I hear it mostly from the parents, and god bless them, but they're whacked. In the pyramid of respected opinions, kids and coaches are at the top and parents are at the bottom because their passions so often get the best of them.
The rankings are based on wins AND losses, plus consistency. For example, if Pennsauken goes and beats Wilson, Pennsauken is going to jump up and Wilson is going to fall a little bit. But if, say, Overbrook beats Cumberland, I can't ignore Overbook's losses and just stick them in at No. 12. The rankings are a living thing, very subjective but as systematic as possible. In the end, the only ranking that matters to me is No. 1 and the only list that matters is the last one. I pray for clarity on that issue, and everything else is just fun. Everybody thinks this stuff is easy, and it certainly is simpler if you only care about one team.
And two polls kind of defeats the purpose of ranking teams to begin with, taking the fun out of it. It's now done in football for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that teams play only 10 or 11 games, and can't possibly schedule enough non-conference games to let us make a fair comparison. Another big reason is that you need at least 20 kids just to field a football team, whereas seven does the job in basketball. Small schools have competed just fine in the past. Sterling finished at No. 1 and the very next year, Wildwood -- the smallest public school in SJ -- finished No. 2. Now, what happens if we went to two sets of rankings and, say, Haddonfield lost to Shabazz in the TOC final. We wouldn't get to recognize them as the best team in SJ, but only the best small-school team.
The Colonial is in a downturn this year. The best teams right now -- in my view, Heights and Collingswood -- have one senior starter between them, and a lot of the squads that are normally there have fallen out. If you recall, five Colonial teams -- Haddonfield, Heights, Sterling, Collingswood and Haddon Township -- were in the Preseason Top 20, and every one of them fell out at different times for very real reasons. Pitman was in and fell out. Glassboro did the same. I can't keep somebody ranked just for the sake of school-size diversity. If I did, the rankings we publish in the paper would be a sham and I'd have to come on here and post "the real T20" every week.
If the coaches of the smaller schools believe they're getting disrespected in the rankings, they have not told me. I hear it mostly from the parents, and god bless them, but they're whacked. In the pyramid of respected opinions, kids and coaches are at the top and parents are at the bottom because their passions so often get the best of them.
posted by SMc. @ 10:24 PM
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