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The NCAA is doing away with RPI, the metric that’s been used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee to pick and seed the teams for March Madness. Instead of RPI, they’ll be using a new ranking metric called NET going forward and they’ve just released the first round of NET rankings that’s absolutely horrendous.
Compared to any respectable rankings (AP, Coaches Poll, Pomeroy, ESPN, etc.) the new NET system has coughed up what appears to be a pile of cat vomit. Coming it at #1 on the list is Ohio State Men’s Basketball who are ranked #16 in the AP and USA Today Coaches Poll. Kansas isn’t even in the NCAA’s Top 10 while Gonzaga and Duke are ranked 5th and 6th respectively. Those three teams are 1-3 in the AP and Coaches Polls.
Here’s the NCAA’s first NET poll.
🚨 FIRST EVER NET RANKINGS 🚨
1. Ohio State
2. Virginia
3. Texas Tech
4. Michigan
5. Gonzaga
6. Duke
7. Michigan State
8. Wisconsin
9. Virginia Tech
10. Loyola MarymountFULL Rankings 1-353:
👉 https://t.co/sx7FOdytf5 pic.twitter.com/XQtckLdtCi— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) November 26, 2018
FiveThirtyEight‘s Nate Silver, a man who has built a media empire out of advanced metrics of every type, wasted no time at all ripping the NCAA’s new rankings to shreds. As he points out below, the NET ranking rewards teams with good records against really shitty teams because it barely accounts for strength of schedule. This career statistician thinks that the ‘eye test’ is better than the NCAA’s new NET.
These are the worst rankings I've ever seen in any sport, ever. NCAA needs to go completely back to the drawing board. https://t.co/UXKbrGyuP8
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 26, 2018
The big problem seems to be that only 1 of the 5 components (not sure why there are 5 components instead o 1 cohesive rating) considers strength of schedule. So it rewards team with good records against very poor schedules. Probably won't get much better as the year goes along. pic.twitter.com/WTzqcaW6Qr
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 27, 2018
This is incompetently designed. It's worse than RPI. Worse than the eye test. It could make a total shitshow of the NCAA tourney for a couple years and cost the NCAA millions by devaluing its most valuable franchise. It's why you never want to design an algorithm by committee.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 27, 2018
The rest of Twitter wasted no time at all roasting the NCAA for these garbage rankings. And honestly, they’re trash. The NCAA has 1-loss Florida State ranked 44th in the nation while every other major poll have the ‘Noles ranked 14th or higher, and that’s just one example of how ass-backward this NET ranking is.
I’m sure everything will be (mostly) fine in time. But this is a pretty embarrassing debut for the NCAA’s NET rankings. It looks like the computer is broken or something. It doesn’t reflect what it’s supposed to reflect. https://t.co/6TQDhGJ3ST
— Gary Parrish (@GaryParrishCBS) November 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/clubtrillion/status/1067106844257083392
The lesson here with this jumbled mess of a debut edition of the NET rankings: Don't release them until January. Wait until there's a large enough sample size.
— Jeff Eisenberg (@JeffEisenberg) November 26, 2018
The only Twitter account that seemed happy about these new rankings is Ohio State Men’s Basketball which hopped in the mentions to thank the NCAA.
Loving the new system guys, keep it up!
— Ohio State Hoops 🌰 (@OhioStateHoops) November 26, 2018
We’re a fan of Net Rankings 🤷♂️https://t.co/DF8ucidW8D
— Ohio State Hoops 🌰 (@OhioStateHoops) November 26, 2018
These initial rankings don’t really mean anything at all now. They’ll only be important around the time of the various conference tournaments and then the rankings will change drastically. But it is just another chapter of the NCAA completely butt fumbling something. There’s no reason they needed to release these now if they knew it was going to cause such a controversy and make their new metrics look shitty (which they do, in fact, look shitty).