BRS24
LisaG
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 6,447
- Reaction Score
- 42,889
And one of my favorite trivia questions.
The Official Bracketology Thread
- Thread starter browns
- Start date
- Status
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2016
- Messages
- 4,321
- Reaction Score
- 18,248
Is there any history of NCAA grading "on a curve" based on past injury history? If UConn can ignore the Villanova loss, wondering how high we would be rated. Ditto for Villanova and Siegrist's injury.All the more reason UConn will end up as a #2 seed. They moved up to 5th in NET thru last night's games:
DI Women's Basketball Rankings - NCAA Women's Basketball NET Rankings | NCAA.com
Get NCAA women's college basketball rankings from the Associated Press, USA Today/WBCA and NCAA committee.www.ncaa.com
P.S.-- I'm sympathetic to Villanova. They lost to Tournament darlings Princeton & Maryland out of the gate & had Maddie Siegrist, one of the Top 25 players in the country IMO, injured for the first part of their season. They beat UConn on the road, snapping our insane conference winning streak, swept Marquette, & split with projected Tournament entry Creighton & bubble team Depaul. Their NCAA bracket omission would be a tough pillow to swallow.
CL82
James Breeding sucks
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 63,735
- Reaction Score
- 250,157
Actually, you didn’t say much of anything at all.
JoePgh
Cranky pants and wise acre
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2011
- Messages
- 4,056
- Reaction Score
- 24,932
I think the essential point is that while the women's tournament may not make a profit for the NCAA, it is profitable to someone (ESPN, CBS, or their advertisers) and is therefore "earning its keep". It is not being run as a sop to Title IX or as a "be nice to the girls" gesture.
To use your sugar/candy analogy, suppose you have a candy package that you could sell for $5, but you choose to bundle it into a huge product that you can sell for $1,000. Skeets buys your $1,000 product and chooses to re-sell the $5 throw-in product to me, making some money for himself. I then add some flavoring and sell the up-flavored candy to the public for $10, and make some money for myself in the process. You don't see any revenue from me, and you don't actually "see" any money from Skeets beyond the $1,000 that he paid for the blockbuster product package. But for some reason, you do incur some minor costs to help me sell my candy, and it suits your political interests to claim that since those costs exceed your revenue, you are losing money on the throw-in product and should be therefore applauded for your corporate good will.
In fact, if you sold your major product for $995 and your candy for $5 (unbundled), then you would have to acknowledge that the $5 is revenue from the candy product, and when that is added in, the candy is profitable to you on its own terms. But since you get $1,000 either way, you would rather plead that all of that revenue is attributable to your main product, and the candy is being sold only as a charitable obligation, so you can't be expected to support it in a reasonable way.
Back to the real world: if the NCAA were the direct recipient of the $34 million that ESPN paid for the broadcast rights to the women's tournament, it would be even harder for them to explain to the public why the gym facilities provided to the women were so inferior to those of the men. By packaging the men's and women's tournaments together, they can promote the fiction that the women's tournament loses money, so of course they can't expect to have remotely comparable facilities.
CL82
James Breeding sucks
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 63,735
- Reaction Score
- 250,157
If we want to further “refine“ the sugar analogy, I would say a better version of it is say you bought 100 pounds of sugar for $1000 and only needed 95 pounds to make your candies, so you sold the excess 5 pounds to someone else for $50 and then sold your candies for $5000. What’s the value of the 5 pounds you sold? It isn’t $5000, is it?
So, back to the real world. We know what the fair market value women’s basketball tournament rights are. It is the price that a willing seller would sell the rights to a willing buyer both being reasonably knowledgeable and not under any constraint. That price is $34 million. Those are facts, they aren’t disputable. So, if we’re talking about the real world, those are the real world numbers.
But let’s leave the real world for a moment and go to the adjacent world of consultant reports. The consultant believes that women’s basketball tournament rights may be at worth as much as $81 million-$111 million. That’s not the real world, it’s speculation, but let’s assume for a moment it’s reasonably informed speculation. That means that at the consultants highest estimate woman’s basketball tournament rights are worth 10 cents on the dollar of men’s basketball tournaments rights. Again, that’s not the facts, the facts are they’re currently worth $34 million, but even if we assume that’s the highest end of the estimate is true, they are worth pennies on the dollar of what the men’s tournament is worth. That’s according to the report that everyone was relying on.
Look, I’m a women’s basketball fan, and I suspect few on the board are any bigger one than I am. But math is math. And the simple truth is the women’s tournament is not worth anything that even vaguely approaches the juggernaut of what the men’s tournament is. Does that make the efforts of the players and coaches give their all to participate in the tournaments any less compelling? Not to me. But the math is the math and it’s really undeniable.
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2013
- Messages
- 7,403
- Reaction Score
- 20,038
Does every team have the same situation as UCONN had? Or does for example a team that has one injury with one player equal what UCONN has with 6 in which 3 core players were out in 4 of the 5 losses?
And has every team lost the NPOY or near it for most of the season? Or is losing the NPOY the same as losing any other player especially a non-all american?
The committee can discuss the degree of injuries is my guess. They can't differentiate one injury vs 6? Can't differentiate 3 core players out which one is NPOY vs other?
.-.
This conversation is driven by the fact when the NCAA was caught giving the women a much inferior weight room, less accurate Covid tests, and poorer food than the men, used the excuse that the women's tournament lost $2.8 million in 2019. The NCAA gender equity review report has several ideas to help increase revenue to address that revenue short fall.
Interestingly, the president of the NCAA made $2.9 million in 2019, $100,000 more than the women's tournament 'lost'.
The NCAA is a non-profit whose mission statement states 'The NCAA is a member-led organization focused on cultivating an environment that emphasizes academics, fairness and well-being across college sports.' They get the vast majority of their revenue from the NCAA men's tournament- around $800 million, and distribute around $600 million of that to member schools.
NCAA to pay entire $613 million revenue distribution to members if NCAA Tournament completed in entirety
The NCAA and its member institutions suffered significant cash shortfalls in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic
www.cbssports.com
The women's tournament broadcast rights were bundled with 23 other sports and sold in 2010 in a deal that runs through 2024. I don't blame ESPN, they are a business that are trying to make a profit that cut a good deal to get product to show on their networks.
The way to determine the true market value of the women's basketball tournament would be to negotiate an extension of the contract. The men's tournament broadcast rights were originally from 2010 to 2024, like the women's. In 2016 the NCAA extended the men's contract through 2032 for more money. Why didn't they do that for the women?
We'll get to see in 2024 what the fair market price of the women's tournament is. Hopefully the NCAA uses some of the ideas from the gender equity review to increase revenue for women's basketball so they don't 'lose' money on the tournament.
No team has the same situation but there are top teams that have dealt with injures/sickness issues as well. They would also have to take into thought if the team that was missing the players still had more talent than the team that they were facing. As long as the committee is consistent with their evaluations then we should be happy. As far as your example this is a quick one
MD vs Baylor (Terps missing Benzan, Masonius, and Miller played 11min)
MD vs Stanford(Terps missing Benzan, Masonius, and Miller)
MD vs NCST(Terps missing Benzan, Masonius, and Miller)
MD vs SC(Terps missing Miller)
*Masonius out for the year with ACL
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2013
- Messages
- 7,403
- Reaction Score
- 20,038
If no team has had the same situation then what is your point? My point has been no team has had what UCONN has had. And you apparently agree with that. That doesn't mean ignore everyone else.
Either your not comprehending or you aren't willing to. The point is other teams have had issues too so the committee should grade everyone on that same scale. You also leave out that in many of those games you still had more talent than the teams you were going against. I guess they need to think about that too right?
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2013
- Messages
- 7,403
- Reaction Score
- 20,038
If the teams do not have the same injuries in terms of quantity and or talent then why should each be addressed the same manner?
Questions I asked before which you didn't answer were below in bold. Can you answer "any" of them? You gave me Maryland but who is the All-American at Maryland from last year that UCONN has lost this year? So your Maryland point didn't address my questions did it? Losing an All-American - former NPOY is equal to a player that MD lost???????
You are bringing up "more talent" and implying that UCONN should be penalized more because they have "more talent" than another team? Please show me where in the selection committee guidelines that it is a part of any criteria? I believe the point you are bringing up is nowhere referenced in the criteria, so why are you bringing it up?
Or does for example a team that has one injury with one player equal what UCONN has with 6 in which 3 core players were out in 4 of the 5 losses?
And has every team lost the NPOY or near it for most of the season? Or is losing the NPOY the same as losing any other player especially a non-all American?
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 7,168
- Reaction Score
- 28,519
Here's the horses mouth so to speak. The bolding is mine.
"The NET is one of many criteria used by the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee in the selection of the 36 at‐ large teams and seeding of the 68 teams which make up the bracket for the Division I Women’s Basketball Championship. Criteria used by the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee to evaluate a team includes (alphabetically): ● Availability of talent (injured or unavailable players) ● Bad losses ● Common opponents ● Competitive in losses ● Conference record ● Early competition versus late competition ● Head‐to‐head outcomes ● NET ranking ● Non‐conference record ● Overall record ● Regional Advisory Committee region rankings ● Significant wins ● Strength of conference ● Strength of schedule D"
The bolded phrase means that the committee can reduce the effect of losses on a team in which significant player(s) are out injured. But it is contingent on those players returning to the lineup and contributing. They can also downgrade a team that has key players with late season injuries that make them out for the season.
.-.
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 26,062
- Reaction Score
- 70,716
Filling out a bracket is hard. It's easy to say conference X shouldn't have this many teams, but conferences don't get bids; teams do. And when you lay out all the teams, you realize that last 10 or so teams in all have very slim resumes. So 9 could happen.
That said, filling out a bracket is hard and I have no faith that CBSSN did a very good job on its, so I wouldnt put much stock in it. For all the knocks he takes around here, Creme actually does decent brackets and understands the process as well as anyone.
Last edited:
CL, I've usually enjoyed your posts as being well thought out. But I'm having a little bit of a problem here...
1. the NCAA lost nothing. They sold the broadcasting rights for the M & W tournaments for 1.1 billion. It's a wonder how the NCAA didn't go chapter 11.
2. any transaction between CBS and ESPN did not involve the NCAA making or losing money. How such a transaction can be applied to the NCAA is beyond me. Please explain how the NCAA lost money because ESPN bought the broadcast rights from CBS.
3. when the broadcast rights were sold for $34M, that was probably the expected profit margin. Not the revenue. Would ESPN or anyone else pay $34M if they thought that was the maximum revenue the venture would bring in? Of course not. A business would only pay $34M (plus all of the production costs) if they were pretty sure the revenue would eclipse that and turn a nice profit. Again, none of this has anything to do with the NCAA.
4. I didn't say much of anything? Maybe, but I can't understand anything that you said.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2018
- Messages
- 113
- Reaction Score
- 760
To take the discussion in a slightly different direction, Michigan (ranked #6 and currently a projected 2 seed) lost bigly to Caitlin Clark and Iowa. Granted that UConn is beating inferior teams, but they’re not just beating them, they’re demolishing them. I still assume they’ll be the 2 seed in Bridgeport, assuming they plow through the BE tourney. The NCAA also likes to see full arenas, and few teams in WCBB can fill an arena like UConn.
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2019
- Messages
- 1,265
- Reaction Score
- 4,013
Or SC.
CL82
James Breeding sucks
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 63,735
- Reaction Score
- 250,157
Agree, I’m not sure what your point is.
The NCAA didn’t lose money. It made money from the sale of the $1.1B broadcast rights. Of which we know that 34 million is the fair market value of the woman’s broadcast rights because that is the price that was agreed-upon by CBS and ESPN for the sale of those rights. As explained ad nauseam above the price determined by a willing buyer in a willing seller it’s being reasonably knowledgeable and not in a constraint is fair market value, definitionally. If 34 million is the fair market value of the woman’s broadcast rates then the value of the men’s tournament is $1.066 billion. So, if it costs more than $34 million to put on the woman’s basketball tournament, it was a money loser for the NCAA because $34 million is what it contributes to the total purchase price.
Maybe, but the why is irrelevant, right?
Yeah, I kind of feel like we’re talking past each other and I think the discussion is probably boring to everyone else, so if you really want to keep talking about it PM me. I’m not sure I have much to add, but I’m happy to talk to you about it for a little bit.
.-.
You are right. We agree on two things, this is boring and Nika is a menace
Gus Mahler
Popular Composer
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2015
- Messages
- 5,166
- Reaction Score
- 19,963
Electric Light Orchestra? [j/k]
Gus Mahler
Popular Composer
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2015
- Messages
- 5,166
- Reaction Score
- 19,963
Quite the mane, was it?LOL. Mine for one. It's white, not blue and I've lost some of it, but luckily I started with a lot.
Plebe
La verdad no peca pero incomoda
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2016
- Messages
- 20,031
- Reaction Score
- 73,696
If Electric Light Orchestra did a ranking it would be every bit as relevant as Warren Nolan's.
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,517
- Reaction Score
- 6,832
Kristen Folkl did not get injured until after Selection Sunday. The only one who was injured before the brackets were finalized was Nygaard. Stanford appeared to have delayed her MRI and Tara did not answer her phone when called by the NCAA selection committee.
Harvard, by the way, did not deserve a 16 seed. That was a significant mistake by the committee..
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 26,062
- Reaction Score
- 70,716
Or was it?
.-.
JoePgh
Cranky pants and wise acre
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2011
- Messages
- 4,056
- Reaction Score
- 24,932
@CL82: You say, "if it costs more than $34 million to put on the woman’s basketball tournament, it was a money loser for the NCAA because $34 million is what it contributes to the total purchase price." That's a big "if".
I can't imagine that the NCAA's own cost to put on the women's tournament is anything approaching $34 million. The NCAA does not pay to rent the venues where the games are played; on the contrary, the venues pay the NCAA for the privilege of hosting the games and collecting the ticket and concession revenue. The NCAA itself does not incur production costs (announcers, camera crews, travel); ESPN incurs those costs. The NCAA does pay for the teams to travel to the games, and that is probably its most significant expense. It also buys a limited amount of advertising for the women's tournament.
Let's say (and I suspect this is in the ballpark of reality) the NCAA's total direct expense for the women's tournament in a given year is $3 million. Its revenue from the venues is perhaps $1 million, so on that basis it can claim with a modicum of honesty to have "lost" $2 million. But that is not real, since it does not include any portion of the $1.1 billion that it was paid for the men's and women's tournament package. If the proper portion attributable to the women's tournament is $34 million (which sounds about right), then the NCAA actually made a profit of $32 million ($34 million + $1 million from venues minus $3 million for direct costs) on the women's tournament.
But the NCAA doesn't want to admit that, since it would then be hard to explain why it can't afford reasonable gym and exercise facilities. So it chooses to pretend that the entire $1.1 billion was for the men's tournament, and it wouldn't have gotten a penny less from CBS if it hadn't included the women's tournament in the package. That allows it to say that the women's tournament is a money loser. CBS (or ESPN, for that matter) has no commercial reason to correct this misapprehension publicly, and of course they don't want to antagonize the organization that offers them this gold mine every spring.
But that doesn't mean that we have to believe the NCAA on this subject, and we really shouldn't.
I can't imagine that the NCAA's own cost to put on the women's tournament is anything approaching $34 million. The NCAA does not pay to rent the venues where the games are played; on the contrary, the venues pay the NCAA for the privilege of hosting the games and collecting the ticket and concession revenue. The NCAA itself does not incur production costs (announcers, camera crews, travel); ESPN incurs those costs. The NCAA does pay for the teams to travel to the games, and that is probably its most significant expense. It also buys a limited amount of advertising for the women's tournament.
Let's say (and I suspect this is in the ballpark of reality) the NCAA's total direct expense for the women's tournament in a given year is $3 million. Its revenue from the venues is perhaps $1 million, so on that basis it can claim with a modicum of honesty to have "lost" $2 million. But that is not real, since it does not include any portion of the $1.1 billion that it was paid for the men's and women's tournament package. If the proper portion attributable to the women's tournament is $34 million (which sounds about right), then the NCAA actually made a profit of $32 million ($34 million + $1 million from venues minus $3 million for direct costs) on the women's tournament.
But the NCAA doesn't want to admit that, since it would then be hard to explain why it can't afford reasonable gym and exercise facilities. So it chooses to pretend that the entire $1.1 billion was for the men's tournament, and it wouldn't have gotten a penny less from CBS if it hadn't included the women's tournament in the package. That allows it to say that the women's tournament is a money loser. CBS (or ESPN, for that matter) has no commercial reason to correct this misapprehension publicly, and of course they don't want to antagonize the organization that offers them this gold mine every spring.
But that doesn't mean that we have to believe the NCAA on this subject, and we really shouldn't.
Harvard's Allison Feaster was an All American that year and scored 35 points, with 13 rebounds and 3 steals. The NCAA seeds for stories sometimes. I think the NCAA wanted the story of Standford vs. an Ivy league school in the first round, so under-seeded Harvard. In 2005 Stanford and Santa Clara meet in the first round in Fresno, CA. Partially because both schools could bus instead of fly there, but also because the older Kimyacioglu sister played for Stanford and the younger sister played for Santa Clara.
Harvard Crimson article
Nygaard was injured the day before the selection show. It does sound like Tara likely avoided the phone call from the committee and the committee was going to seed Stanford as a 2 if Nygaard was out. Stanford was also missing a senior center/forward Naomi Mulitauaopele who was injured that season and I don't believe played at all that year, so two freshman who averaged 7 minutes a game had to try to replace Folkl's minutes. Harvard was highly motivated because this was the 3rd year in a row they were seeded 16th. They were 21-4 in the regular season with losses to Maryland, South Carolina, Princeton, and Dartmouth. Losses to South Carolina and Princeton by 3.
2015 oral history of game
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 26,062
- Reaction Score
- 70,716
Yes I remember the game - I saw it! I was in grad school and remember driving back to campus after the game just so I could get online to discuss the shock.
My reference was whether Harvard was underseeded on purpose -- the committee had no basis to knock Stanford down with no info on Nygaard. But maybe they thought Harvard was a good hedge in case something wasnt right.
Or, as you note Ivy had been seeded #16 the two previous years, so maybe this was just what their resume was. (And a 3 pt loss to SC in 1997 was nothing to write home about!).
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2016
- Messages
- 7,248
- Reaction Score
- 25,796
BRS24
LisaG
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 6,447
- Reaction Score
- 42,889
Plebe
La verdad no peca pero incomoda
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2016
- Messages
- 20,031
- Reaction Score
- 73,696
Not really a surprise. Many of the other teams in contention for the final few top 16 spots fared worse in the past few weeks.
.-.
- Status