The ACC in Allen has a team in every sweet 16 game tonight.  They are pretty likely to win 3/4 of them too, but its not impossible to see a possiblity of 1 conference with all 8 teams in the Elite 8. 

This is not good for the game.  If Seble has any ideas that no changes are needed to keep things competitive at D1, this is your counterexample.  The higher baselines of the ACC combined with the increased importance of NT/PT money (as compared to D2) has created a bit of a runaway train.

but, this has not happened in other worlds - the ACC is good - often very good - sometimes less good.  Allen has seen a unique gathering of very strong coaches consistently working toward a strong conference - I gather with great scheduling and avoiding conflicts.  Text book example of how to build conference strength and use the advantages of baseline prestige.  But, compare across worlds

So, without doing the research, how is the ACC in other worlds?  How far ahead is the top conference in every world?  If this is a one world incident, it's pure talent and work by those coaches.  If it's every world, then it can be discussed.

ACC - Phelan is pretty much the same way.  We had 7 of 8 elite eight teams last year I think.  Two or three years back we had all 4 #1 seeds.  We got 9 in the NT this year and all won our first round games.

ACC becomes dominant given two things:  1) good coaches, and 2) relatively weak Big East/SEC.  If that happens, it becomes a vicious cycle and the ACC spirals out of control.

In Smith it's the SEC, not the ACC.  It's not so much the conference (of course it's a Big Six conference, but not always the same one), as it is the coaches and the competition from other conferences.

Though its the easiest for the ACC to spiral out of control.  The SEC has a check that their Baselines are WAY lower than the ACC.  The ACC baselines are better than the Big East or the SEC, so once they get the Conf Prestige/NT money gravy train going, its pretty much over. 

I still think a good solution to this would be to scale back the D1 NT money to the same ratio as D2 and D3.

In D2 1 NT game = $5000 = Scholarship Amount
In D3 1 NT game = $3000 = Scholarship Amount

In D1 1 NT game = $20,000
D1 Scholarship = $15,000

Reduce the value of an NT game to $15,000 and you'll limit the power of these superconferences.

This would have minor effects on most conferences, but on these superdominant ones, who are drawing $55,000 or something like that, it would cut their take by $10,000 per team.  THAT would have a limiting effect, which is exactly what is needed.  That and baselines need to be leveled a bit between the big 6, and then it would be a fair playing field. 

Are there any worlds where the PAC 12 is dominating? Or at least putting up a fight?

Irony:  All DI conferences in this game have 12 teams.  Yet the PAC-12 is still called the PAC-10.  Anyone think we should see if we could get them to change that, just because?

And the PAC-12 is solid in Smith, but not as dominant as the SEC.  Oregon State, UCLA, and Stanford have been very solid in the PAC-10/12 in Smith for the past few seasons. 

I think its tougher for the PAC10 to dominate a world like this because of the giant distance they have to go in order to get at 2/3rds the recruits.  They can be very very good, but the ACC in Allen pretty much signs every 5-star recruit east of the Mississippi and half the 5 stars in Texas.

ACC in Rupp is actually the weakest BCS conference with the SEC being the strongest. 

It'd be interesting to see what the ACC is like respectively in each world.

I'm not sure how we would measure the efficiency of each ACC though.  Is there some sort of formula outside of conference RPI for measuring conference efficiency?  And what would the parameters be?  Would duration of success be a factor, etc.? 

Unless the ACC is sending 8 teams to the sweet 16 every year in every world, there's no reason to believe the conference is overbearing.  

The ACC isn't anything special in Smith, even though *ONE* of the best teams in the world comes from there in Maryland.  I split my match-ups with ACC opponents 1-1 this season (I coach at a small conference school) and probably have the talent to beat 11 out of 12 teams in the conference (the twelfth team being Maryland).  

In Smith, the state of Texas is actually dominated by a Mountain West team (Texas Southern) and the SEC.  So the ACC's extreme prowess in Allen is not necessarily a sign that the ACC is the only potentially overpowering conference in all of the worlds.  The SEC can certainly match up to them, and I think with proper coaching most of the Big Six conferences could as well.  

Nonetheless, I'm still an advocate for reworking baseline prestige, but I don't think the ACC specifically is a perfect example of why, I think the fact that most worlds have a single dominant conference in DI (be it the ACC or the SEC or another conference) that showcases the problems with conference recruiting money rewards and baseline prestige issues.  

Oh I agree...I don't think specifically the ACC needs to be nerfed.  The idea of superconferences is what needs correcting.


The 3 levers I see are:
1)   NT/PT money (reduce it at D1 to be in line with the other levels)
2)  Conference Prestige's influence in Team Prestige (reduce it)
3)  Baseline Prestige (I would rather see a floor that would limit the fall of UNC/UCLA/etc rather than a anchor where they can go up so quick.)  The ACC does probably have a slight unfair advatange here though, but its minor. 

Quick caveat: I've never played at the D1 level.  You might want to stop here and move onto the next post.

I think those of you pointing out that the ACC isn't the dominant conference in other worlds are missing the point a bit.  It's not that something needs to be done to neutralize the ACC, it's that once any conference becomes this dominant you have a snowball effect that seems awfully hard to stop.  The conditions need to be right for it to happen, but the ACC has the easiest path to becoming a Uber-Conference.  That said, it could happen with any of the Big 6 and a strong Big East and SEC will prevent the ACC from ruling a world.

To use reinsel's term, I thought about fighting the Evil Empire in Allen.  To do so with my resume would have meant joining the Big East since I wasn't qualified elsewhere.  I ultimately decided it wasn't worth it.  (1) I was at a huge disadvantage and I wasn't sure how long it would take to make up half the deficit I would have and  (2) the other coaches in the conference didn't have the resumes that suggested that the conference collectively could stand up to the ACC.

I'm not going to suggest that me refusing to fight the Evil Empire is all that big of a deal.  I'm successful at lower levels but there is an excellent chance that D1 would eat me alive even if I wasn't trying to battle the ACC.  That said, I think there are plenty of other coaches that are better than me that are making similar decisions about trying to battle the ACC.  It has led to why D2 is so competitive these days since if you aren't going to fight the ACC you need to drop a division.  A number of good coaches that should be in Allen BCS schools have chosen to return to D2 instead.

And unfortunately that makes the snowball effect even worse.  The ACC (or whatever conference) gets stronger and the other BCS conferences get weaker by attrition.

I did a quick look at the coaches in the Big East and the SEC.  This is just my opinion and I didn't take a hard look at things.  Right now the Big East has two good coaches and maybe 3-4 others that might be good based on resume.  (I'm including a coach that just went 0-16 as one that might be good so I'm being pretty generous in my assessment.)  The SEC actually seems to have a good number of above average coaches.  But right now no program is really excelling, at least in comparison to the ACC.  Three programs have prestige at A or A- but two of them just had coaches depart.  Including the creator of this thread that chose to have some distance between himself and the ACC.

Right now the ACC has a conference prestige of A+.  The SEC is at B.  The Big East is at C+.

I don't think its a matter of parity, but I think you'd want a scenario where the Big East could at a certain level compete with the ACC.  Right now they don't seem like they can.  Which means, as reinsel notes, the ACC pretty much has full rule east of the Mississippi.  And you have a number of coaches who are making the decision that it just isn't worth fighting the Evil Empire.
Big E

Posted by reinsel on 11/13/2011 4:50:00 PM (view original):
Oh I agree...I don't think specifically the ACC needs to be nerfed.  The idea of superconferences is what needs correcting.


The 3 levers I see are:
1)   NT/PT money (reduce it at D1 to be in line with the other levels)
2)  Conference Prestige's influence in Team Prestige (reduce it)
3)  Baseline Prestige (I would rather see a floor that would limit the fall of UNC/UCLA/etc rather than a anchor where they can go up so quick.)  The ACC does probably have a slight unfair advatange here though, but its minor. 

I would not change DI $$ - too many unforeseeable ripple effects

I do think there is a good argument for reducing the impact of conference prestige on team prestige and reducing the effects of baseline prestige.  Some would say get rid of it - I would just make it a smaller factor compared to the effect of actual game play.  

I also think recruit generation needs fixing - see scores of threads - basically as many others say we need to reduce the gap between the top 50 or so players and the next level of players.  Right now, being able to grab the 25 or 50 elite players is the food that feeds the superconference dominance machine

close the gap and mid majors and other BCS conferences could better compete.  Not a lot - I bet a smidge would make a big difference

I look at recruit generation this way:  There should be a few crazy dominant recruits, the one-and-done recruits (Rivers, Drummond, Davis this year, Irving last year (Sullinger and Barnes, too, would have left had there been no lockout).  These guys can come in with super-elite ratings and maybe IQs, but there really should only be 2 or 3 of them.  Then there should be another level of ~20 five star guys.  ESPN had 22 five star guys, Rivals had 28 for this incoming freshman class.  In Tark and Knight, there are 39 five star guys, which is far too many.  Most of these five-star guys should leave early as well.  In the class of 2008 (who would be seniors this year), none of the top 16 are still in school.  The top players should be nearly-guaranteed to leave early.  Among the next tier of players (3 and 4 star guys), there should be a few with killer potential, but mostly these guys should be pretty good players, but not overly dominant.  According to rivals, there are about 70-80 4 star guys every year.  In Knight this year, there are only 36 4-star recruits and 37 3-star recruits.  Clearly, this group of players that are recruited by middling schools is greatly under-represented.  If this group was accurately represented, I believe we would find many more mid-majors contending.  I have found there to be some very low ranked players who do have great potential.  A few more of these guys that would go to mid-major schools would be nice, but I don't think this is a main issue.  

So for those who didn't bother to read all of that: There should be less five-star players, there should be way more 3 and 4 star players.  There are already two star and below players that can develop into NBA caliber players out of mid-majors, coaches just need to look hard.