dmShortSaledude
Well-Known Member
What is really skewing the RPI are the tricks the MWC use to inflate their RPI. The biggest one is the DII and JuCo schools they schedule for warm up games that do not show up on the RPI. If they were forced to substitute those games against teams from the low majors then the RPI would fall right in place.
But the Pomeroy ranking system is definitely better than the RPI, it not only take into account the SOS (which is the main component of the RPI) but it also factors in individual games and such. While the RPI is easy to manipulate Pomeroy is a little more difficult.
We can debate RPI all day long and some here really hate it (understandably so) but one thing we all have to remember is with the RPI we know exactly what it looks at so the coaches know exactly what they are doing when they schedule games against bad low majors. Fran himself even said he was counting on a couple of upsets in the conference schedule that did not happen. Going forward I am sure he learned his lesson and will use the RPI to his advantage and schedule non conference better. You can get away with scheduling a couple of warm up games against bad low majors, but not SEVEN of them.
We can still easily schedule some cupcakes against bad teams, we just have to make sure they are not in the 300+ range. Like the MWC. The RPI is obviously flawed when weighting the low teams. Anything below a 225 shouldn't make much a difference, as they all suck just about as bad as one another.
Its is too bad for those lower teams looking for revenue and/or a chance to play better teams. They will be squeezed.