Some Answers, hopefully.

Well hello to everyone firstly.  I've been off the radar since making my way back to old blighty after a summer of excess in the states seeing some of you.  I will do my best to answer the questions and give you some information on how the RMAC dishes out POTW awards and how the NSCAA decides on rankings.

Before however I wish to congratulate all the players and coaches on both the male and female side of things at the FORT.  It's great to see everything going so well.  One bit of silverware in the cupboard already this year and hopefully more to come.

As you are all now knowledgeable soccer/football fans, you will understand that unfortunately not everyone in the great USA comprehends the beautiful game in the same manner as yourselves.  The complexities of a low scoring game resulting in 1-0 or 0-0 score line cannot be explained as a tight fought battle with edge of the seat entertainment due to the fact that you would have to appreciate the flowing nature of the game with all the tactical nuances being displayed.  That's far too much like hard work; I need to go get a hot dog and soda.  So when these awards are given out you have to realize the community on FLCsoccer.com will see different things from the normal, average American.  Let’s be honest here this is a game of opinions and it’s great to see there is such a strong backbone of them available emanating from the FORT.

RMAC POTW – These are given out by the sports information directors from each of the institutions submitting their picks, from their own schools, each week to the RMAC head office.  The head office then selects the POTW.  Most of the time this comes downs to stats collated over the last couple of games, hence why so many goalkeepers end up with the defensive player of the week.  They have saves, shots on goal, shutouts, etc. to demonstrate how well they have played.  So it is down to the sports info. Dir. to persuade the RMAC head office as to the credibility of their schools picks.  And yes, (in my opinion from contact I had with the RMAC whilst coaching there) the Fort is discriminated against because they win so many games, the bar of excellence is higher for them to achieve weekly recognition and the RMAC feels it needs to give some hope and encouragement to the other schools.  In short if you feel we deserve weekly rewards for our players then you need to badger the coaches to push and correctly inform the sports info. Dir. to sell our boys and girls to a higher standard.

NSCAA rankings – These are done on a weekly basis with a conference call between a few of coaches from each region.  Once the region is sorted out they are then sent into the national committee which consists of about 4 coaches, I think.  Each regions number one pick is put into the top 1-8 places to create a national poll.  The same is done with the number 2’s in each region, 9-16, and the number 3’s, 17-24. 

Teams should not lose rankings if they lose to a team ranked higher than them but do gain more credibility when beating a higher ranked team and should therefore improve their national ranking.  The national committee takes into account, overall record, previous week’s rankings, the historical strength of a region and the timely admission of each regions selections.  So if the regional stuff is not sorted out and into the national committee on time some regions rankings suffer and others gain.

Therefore Metro’s number 24 ranking is probably about right.  They are ranked third in the region, lost to a higher ranked team, so that will have no effect on them, and beat Mesa.  So they should be ranked somewhere between 17-24.  With the regions being re-arranged in the last couple of years taking the Texas sides out of our region battle means that there is now more opportunity to CO teams to be placed in the national poll.  Can play into the Fort’s favor by allowing them to play more nationally ranked teams but it also allows our competitors to spout off about their national ranking.

Hope all is well with people and look forward to seeing more great results coming the Fort’s way this weekend before the post season buzz starts.  Laters………