In October, the NCAA released the list of qualifiers for each qualifying tournament. The full release can be found at the link below, but here is a table with this year’s information.
[TABLE=3]
Memorandum: 2009 Allocation of Qualifiers
UPDATE: If you look at the comments, you can see that this issue can be contentious as fans of different schools feel like a certain region/conference has too many or too few qualifiers. To help the readers understand this issue, please see these two documents: Division III Allocation of Qualifiers CHART | Explanation of the Allocation of Qualifiers Chart. The short version is that the number of qualifiers is determined by a formula taking into acount three years of data encompassing number of All-Americans, number of participants, and number of teams. This is used to figure out how many qualifiers each school “earns,” and that number is adjusted so no team can “earn” more than 10 qualifiers. It’s a three year running average, and the way to get more qualifiers is to perform at the NCAA tournament over a period of time. There has been talk of going to the system now in place in Division 1 that does not use historical data, but until (and if) that happens, this is the current system.
Division III needs to go to a qualifier format of 4 regionals. Each qualifier would take the top 4 from each weight. This would eliminate the wildcard selections and leave it in the hands of the wrestlers.
Let’s hear your thoughts!!
Another biased allotment for the midwestern teams! You would think the top brass on the committees who decide these sort of things would realize this only confines and isolates talent, which ultimately is a contributing factor when east coast teams such as Norwich drop their program. Just another politically driven design.
The committee does not come up with the allocation. The numbers are based on the performance of each conference/regional at the NCAA championships.
I realize this Jeff but what i’m trying to say is this is a bogus system. Think about it…with that many people from the same conference competing, the chances they will knock off many from smaller represented conferences are huge. It becomes a cycle thats hard to break. If team A enters 10 wrestlers in a tournament and team B enters 30, which team is going to have more place winners? The system needs to change!
The shear number is not the calculator, it’s the percentage of people you send that end up being All-Americans. A conference could send a small amount, but have a high percentage of them be AA’s, and that’s what will make the difference.
Or a conference can send a small amount and have a difficult time getting AA’s because other conferences are so loaded up…period! I can’t see how anyone can deny or dispute the fact that if you have more entries you will have more placewinners. Alot of variables come into play here, such as upsets, injuries, clash of styles etc. When you have have 30 men as opposed to 10, the less likely it is that these variables will affect your conference.
Look at the teams that are in those qualifiers. In the Great Lakes you have Augsburg, North Central, Elmhurst, and Saint Johns. All of those teams have a ton of kids that place every year. How fair would it be to take away their bids and give them to regions that don’t produce nearly as well. Same goes for the Iowa conference with Wartburg, Luther, Coe, Buena Vista and Cornell. You can call it bias all you want but the numbers dont lie, these regionals produce a high PERCENTAGE of AA’s every year. Yes if you send more they will place more, but if you look at the rankings all year you will also see that its these regions that have all the highly ranked wrestlers who win all the big tournaments all year and are deserving to wrestle in nationals.
You can’t deny the fact that the Great Lakes is deserving of more bids. 2 years ago I want to say something like 62% of the qualifiers they sent ended up being AA’s. That number is staggering and was easily the best performing qualifier. They were also at or near the top percentage wise last year as well.
I have a feeling in a few years this will be a moot issue and DIII will be adopting the new DI qualifying system.
P.S. Merry Christmas!
this is STUPID…the midwest did not get any more bids!…last year 59% of our qualifiers were all americans…we were the 4th best regional in terms of all american percentage…most of those kids have returned too
Jeez…how hard is it to have more than 16 qualifiers? The NAIA has a bunch more than 16 so there is “no selection committees”. I am over simplifying it…but this is not rocket science. How about 32 instead of 16? There will always be wrestlers who deserve to go but do not. However, with only 16, there are obvious wrestlers who do not get to go. With 32 qualifiers, this should take care of the obvious wrestlers who should go to “the show”.
If I remember correctly, it used to be 320 qualifiers, then it dropped to like 240, then to the 160 we currently have. I do agree that they should add some more qualifiers back, seems to me it would make for a much more interesting and difficult tournament.
We need to go to 4 regionals (With the top 8 or 12 teams divided equally) and take the top four from each weight class. I am not against the 240 or 320 qualifiers that have been discussed but I do not think the NCAA is going to give wrestling more qualifiers.
Taking the top 4 at each weight class would also get rid of the political wild card selection.
I don’t see what the big deal is the conference with the most all-american percentage should get the most qualifiers. 79% for the IIAC is pretty good only 7 kids didn’t all-american out of 32 qualified. But I agree with mewsh1 with moving to 240 it would make more upsets and make it more complicated to all-american.
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