URI Competitiveness in the A-10

[Obadiah]

Building on an earlier thread that raised questions about URI Athletics success rate, I have looked at how URI Athletics competitiveness stacks up against the rest of the A-10 now that the 2013-14 season has ended. As the following chart shows the results are rather grim, especially since URI Baseball had a bad year after a 10 year string of good results

A few caveats in this comparative ranking. The comparison covers eight sports, which I selected because they have national appeal, have spectator appeal, and have gate receipts or the potential for gate receipts. Not not all 13 current conference schools play all eight sports, in fact, only Dayton and Fordham match URI in this respect. Also I have not included ties or playoff games currently underway in baseball and softball. Despite these anomalies, I think the following is an accurate representation of how URI really fared in the A-10 this season. Please remember that in the Olympic sports not included in this analysis, URI did have some good performances especially in track and field, golf, rowing, etc. and this boosts URI's overall standing in the A-10.


URI Competitiveness in the A-10 in Eight Key Sports

Code: Select all

School	      Wins Losses    %	      Comments

VCU	          127 	59	.683	No football, softball
St. Joseph’s	 114	 72	.613	No football, volleyball
Dayton	       151	102	.597	
Saint Louis	  134 	98	.578	No football
Duquesne	      75	 61	.551	No baseball, softball
Fordham	      126	119	.514	
GW	           113	111	.504	No football
Richmond 	     69	 72	.489	No men’s soccer, softball, volleyball
George Mason	  79	103	.449	No football
St. Bona         77	108	.416	No football, volleyball
La Salle	      86	133	.398	No football
UMass	         71	124	.364	No volleyball
URI	           73	164	.308	

In another analysis I will look at the URI performance in these same sports over the preceding three years to compare to this .293 figure.

[RF1]

That is pretty bad. Without looking it up, I would guess much of the problem lies with the women's sports. Many of them typically do horrible year after year. Doesn't help on the men's side that baseball, soccer, and basketball fared poorly this past season.

[RF1]

2013-2014 TEAM RECORDS

Code: Select all

RHODE ISLAND		OVERALL RECORD							CONFERENCE RECORD					
MEN	BASEBALL	13	-	40			0.245 		7	-	18			0.280
MEN	BASKETBALL	14	-	18			0.438 		5	-	11			0.313
MEN	SOCCER	2	-	14			0.125 		0	-	8			0.000
MEN	FOOTBALL	3	-	9			0.250 		2	-	6			0.250
MEN	TEAMS	32	-	81			0.283 		14	-	43			0.246
														
WOMEN	SOFTBALL	13	-	22	-	1	0.361 		6	-	11	-	1	0.333
WOMEN	BASKETBALL	7	-	23			0.233 		2	-	14			0.125
WOMEN	SOCCER	6	-	12			0.333 		1	-	7			0.125
WOMEN	VOLLEYBALL	15	-	16			0.484 		7	-	7			0.500
WOMEN 	TEAMS	41	-	73	-	1			16	-	39	-	1	0.286

[RF1]

Not one single team sport (no individual contests) at URI had a winning record (overall or league play) this past season. The best was women's volleyball at 15-16 and 7-7 in league play.

[Obadiah]

Thanks RFI, I caught an error in the URI addition and made the revision. Your softball's overall record should read 13-32, not 22.

What is bad is that this record is similar to those of past season's, so this is no one year phenomenon.

[RhowdyRam02]

Obadiah, I appreciate what you're trying to do and I find it interesting, but I do have a couple minor issues. I don't see how football can count in this exercise. 7 of the 13 schools in the A10 don't even play the sport and Richmond is the only school we're even in the same conference with. A balanced and relevant comparison just can't be made when less than half of the conference plays the sport and the minority that do have such different approaches to how they handle the sport. And while we want to excel in all sports it's clear that in the A10 it's primarily only men's and women's basketball that matter to schools. Out of the 13 schools, 9 departments only sell tickets to those two A10 sanctioned sports, with URI obviously being one of the 9. GW, Saint Louis, and VCU sell tickets to volleyball, GW and VCU sell tickets to baseball, UMass is the only school that sells softball tickets, and Saint Louis and VCU sell tickets to men's and women's soccer.

I know that when Ron Petro was AD it was a point of department pride that we tended to finish towards the top of the A10 Commissioner's standings, but we were funded better by the state and our basketball team was successful or still reaping some benefits from prior tournament runs. When our men's basketball team wins I believe we'll move back up the overall standings. Also, football is a department killer in the A10. When you take out football records only 6 teams (VCU, St. Joe's, Dayton, St. Louis, Duquesne, and GW) have winning overall records. 4 of the 6 schools don't have football, one is non-scholarship and one is in the NEC with its lower scholarship numbers. Nobody in the conference plays football at a high enough level to offset the fiscal drain. If you have scholarship football in this conference you're hurting every other sport you offer.

URI's options going forward appear to be axe football and spread the money around to other sports and be better in the overall standings, continue to have a football team and have the rest of the department suffer from the financial drain of football, or hope the basketball team wins on such a high level and brings in so much money that we can keep football and its costs will stop killing us elsewhere in the department.

[Obadiah]

You misunderstand my point, Rhowdy. My focus is the URI performance in those eight key sports and only URI performance. As an added feature, I offered a comparison to other A-10 schools as a benchmark. Going off on football is not what this thread is about. Out of some 240 contests URI played only 12 involved football, so whether other A-10 play the sport or not is irrelevant. Look at this way: as a URI fan, if you watched the ticker on ESPN this year looking for URI scores, you were disappointed 70% of the time. Not a great feeling.

OK, it was only one year, but my look so far into past years performance is not pretty.

[rhodyrob]

I understand why you picked the sports you did but the athletic dept. does not do their job in supporting all sports. The Men's Track team again won the A10 title but this was not mentioned anywhere. The PR from URI stinks.The projo would put in something if they were informed. Esp. with a RI'er leading the way for Coach Copeland's team. It is even hard to find mention of the championship on the Gorhody site. This is the fault of the Athletic Depts. PR division. I'm sure that only a handful of the URI fans that go on the Keaneyblue site realize how well the track team represents the school.
Would love to see a thread on the basketball site that comes from the athletic dept. that lets the 100s of Rhody fans that use the site know when one of our teams does something of note. We are Rhody fans and a short comment on the schools teams would keep all informed and honor the young men and women that represent our school.
I realize this is the area of Keaneyblue that is for this but few ever go to this part of the site. A team winning a conference championship should be mentioned in the area that is viewed by many. A small area even without room for comments should not offend even the diehard basketball only Rhody fan.

[SGreenwell]

I understand why you picked the sports you did but the athletic dept. does not do their job in supporting all sports. The Men's Track team again won the A10 title but this was not mentioned anywhere. The PR from URI stinks.The projo would put in something if they were informed. Esp. with a RI'er leading the way for Coach Copeland's team. It is even hard to find mention of the championship on the Gorhody site. This is the fault of the Athletic Depts. PR division. I'm sure that only a handful of the URI fans that go on the Keaneyblue site realize how well the track team represents the school.
Would love to see a thread on the basketball site that comes from the athletic dept. that lets the 100s of Rhody fans that use the site know when one of our teams does something of note. We are Rhody fans and a short comment on the schools teams would keep all informed and honor the young men and women that represent our school.
I realize this is the area of Keaneyblue that is for this but few ever go to this part of the site. A team winning a conference championship should be mentioned in the area that is viewed by many. A small area even without room for comments should not offend even the diehard basketball only Rhody fan.

At least in my experience, the athletic department sends out plenty of releases about all sports. I think you're overestimating the audience's appetite to read about any non-basketball and football sport, though. I mean, my only experience is with a Patch site and running the Cigar in the mid-2000s, but the hit numbers for non-basketball stuff was under 100 per article.

Even on this site, which is full of URI diehards, there is almost zero interest in anything beyond men's basketball and football (to a much lesser extent). Usually we get about a thread or two a year on men's soccer, men's club hockey, women's basketball and other sports. I've also worked on and off as a sports editor and freelancer at the high school level for years, and that correlates with the interest in RI high school sports as well. While you'll get swells in areas with dominant teams - tennis is big in Barrington and SK, girls' soccer in Gansett - the response for articles on football and boys' basketball would dwarf other teams, with boys' hockey or baseball sometimes being more popular than the hoops.

[Obadiah]

I agree with SGreenwell comments, but my thinking on starting this thread had nothing to do with URI Athletics marketing, whether good or bad. It's just about the overall performance and competitiveness of URI Athletics, this year and over the last five years. And are you happy with that record or not? And if not happy, what would you suggest needs to change with a emphasis on needs that directly affect team performance.

[rhodyrob]

I know this very well. I have been involved with a minor RI HS sport for many years on many different levels. All I would like to see would be something like a public service announcement by the Athletic Dept. saying what honors our athletes have earned.
Something like this at the top of the NCAA or BUST site once a month

May 2014- URI Athletic Honors
Men's track wins A10 title. Winning events were --- and ----
----- of the baseball team earned a10 player of the week
Equestrian team wins regional title.
Former Rhody player ----- named to US world cup team

It would not need an area for comments but would let board members know that URI does have many great athletic activities going on. I think many of us would like to know but have no way of knowing where to look or are too busy reading other areas. I didn't even know we have an equestrian team and would love to know how the hockey ,sailing, soccer, etc. teams do by just looking at a quick easy to fine place.

[ATPTourFan]

https://twitter.com/gorhodyrams seems to share out virtually every tidbit of news. Follow that and you won't miss a thing.

[Ram99]

I understand why you picked the sports you did but the athletic dept. does not do their job in supporting all sports. The Men's Track team again won the A10 title but this was not mentioned anywhere. The PR from URI stinks.The projo would put in something if they were informed. Esp. with a RI'er leading the way for Coach Copeland's team. It is even hard to find mention of the championship on the Gorhody site. This is the fault of the Athletic Depts. PR division. I'm sure that only a handful of the URI fans that go on the Keaneyblue site realize how well the track team represents the school.
Would love to see a thread on the basketball site that comes from the athletic dept. that lets the 100s of Rhody fans that use the site know when one of our teams does something of note. We are Rhody fans and a short comment on the schools teams would keep all informed and honor the young men and women that represent our school.
I realize this is the area of Keaneyblue that is for this but few ever go to this part of the site. A team winning a conference championship should be mentioned in the area that is viewed by many. A small area even without room for comments should not offend even the diehard basketball only Rhody fan.

Not sure what you are talking about, Rob. The day the men's team won the track title, it was the lead item on GoRhody.com. Same thing when the women's team won the New England title. In fact, look at GoRhody.com right now. The five top links are a link to Geoff Cameron being named to the World Cup team (there also was a post when he was named to the preliminary roster), separate pieces on the men's and women's track team members who will be competing at NCAA East prelims and a piece about baseball players receiving all-conference accolades. Each of these pieces seem to be exactly the type of thing you claim to be looking for.

[ATPTourFan]

Yes, 99 said it well. Not sure what the real complaint is here.

[rhodyrob]

ATP/Ram99
I realize that GoRhody does a good job but I think it is used a lot less then this site. I check out this site a few times each day but go to Gorhody when I am only looking for something that I know is happening in a particular sport. Maybe this is just laziness on my part. This site has 477 members that are 95% RHody fans.(A few Seans) and MANY more that view but not post.
If you could put something like I mentioned that is quick maybe once a month posted by an Athletic intern that says what GRs links say and refer them to GORHODY for the story I think it would increase their hits and spread the word about everything that goes on in Rhody athletics. It would almost be like an add for the GORHODY site,
It seems like a bonus for both sites and all URI sports fans.

[Obadiah]

Back to the original subject of this thread.

After looking at URI perormance in the 8 sports programs, I turned my attention to the remaining URI sports and that performance is summarized below.

Men’s Sports

• Track & Field: Won both the Indoor and Outdoor A-10 Championships. Finished second in the New England Championship.

• Cross Country: Finished 12th in the A-10.

• Golf: 6th in A-10.

Women’s Sports

• Track & Field: 5th in A-10 Indoor Championship, 4th in A-10 Outdoor Championship. Won the New England Championship

• Cross Country: 10th in A-10

• Rowing: Second in A-10.

• Swimming: 7th in A-10

• Tennis: 9th in A-10

[rhodyrob]

How many A10 teams north of Virginia have football at the CAA level? If Rhody had went to the NEC level (Less Scholarships)and gave each one of the non basketball men's sports 2 or 3 extra scholarships would we improve our total records? I believe(not sure) that most of our sports have less scholarships then their completion and I think we have less than a school like Bryant. Give Coach Foster three more scholarship players and I'm sure it would be a big difference. The Women's sports have no excuse for the weak results.
Obadiah- sorry for going off the thread in my earlier posts.

[Seawrightspostgame]

I wish Bryant had no football team, then that would make sense.

[rhodyrob]

The conference that Bryant is in offers a lot less scholarships for football. Also not needing to answer to the State of RI may greatly help their athletics.

[RhowdyRam02]

I've been looking at a way to approach this from a different angle, and I'm trying to formulate a power ranking using the reverse of the A10 standings. If you come in last you get one point, if you come in first you get as many points as the amount of schools that compete in the sport. So for instance first place in basketball nets you 13 points, if you compete in a sport like men's swimming and diving that might only have 6 programs you get only 6 for first.

I'm also thinking of point multipliers to give additional weight to more important sports, and I'm determining what those sports are based on which schools sell tickets to a sport. So one point sports are men's and women's cross country, golf, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field, field hockey, lacrosse, and rowing. I'll multiply softball by 1.25, baseball and men's and women's soccer by 1.5, and volleyball by 1.75, women's basketball by 2 and men's basketball by 5.

Before I get too far into this project, does anyone see any flaws with the process, especially what I'm multiplying each sport by? Volleyball right now is valued higher than baseball and soccer because only two schools sell tickets to those sports where 3 sell tickets to volleyball, but I could see an argument that they be valued the same as baseball and soccer. Am I valuing women's basketball enough, or should they get a bigger multiplier? I'm also wondering the same thing in regards to men's basketball. I want to reflect the fact that it's by far the most important sport in the conference, but I want this project to be more than a simple reflection of the men's basketball standings.

[SGreenwell]

I've been looking at a way to approach this from a different angle, and I'm trying to formulate a power ranking using the reverse of the A10 standings. If you come in last you get one point, if you come in first you get as many points as the amount of schools that compete in the sport. So for instance first place in basketball nets you 13 points, if you compete in a sport like men's swimming and diving that might only have 6 programs you get only 6 for first.

I'm also thinking of point multipliers to give additional weight to more important sports, and I'm determining what those sports are based on which schools sell tickets to a sport. So one point sports are men's and women's cross country, golf, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field, field hockey, lacrosse, and rowing. I'll multiply softball by 1.25, baseball and men's and women's soccer by 1.5, and volleyball by 1.75, women's basketball by 2 and men's basketball by 5.

Before I get too far into this project, does anyone see any flaws with the process, especially what I'm multiplying each sport by? Volleyball right now is valued higher than baseball and soccer because only two schools sell tickets to those sports where 3 sell tickets to volleyball, but I could see an argument that they be valued the same as baseball and soccer. Am I valuing women's basketball enough, or should they get a bigger multiplier? I'm also wondering the same thing in regards to men's basketball. I want to reflect the fact that it's by far the most important sport in the conference, but I want this project to be more than a simple reflection of the men's basketball standings.

The "best" way to weigh it is probably by using a multiple of the revenue generated by the sport in some way. However, it's probably going to produce really big factors for sports like men's basketball and football, and everything else will be an afterthought. I mean, having a Top 25 basketball program is probably worth more than championships in five minor sports.

[Obadiah]

Here is a look at how URI performed over the last five years in the key eight sports. It shows that out of 40 program records in the period, URI produced 7 winning seasons. The just completed season showed the lowest winning percentage, primarily because the baseball program suffered their first losing season in many years.

Code: Select all

     Sport          2009-10    2010-11*   2011-12    2012-13    2013-14         Comments
                     W    L     W    L     W    L     W    L     W    L
1.   Baseball       31   26    31   22    33   25    35   24    13   40     Four winning seasons
2.   M Basketball   23   11    20   14     7   24     8   21    14   18     Two winning seasons 
3.   Football        1   10     5    6     3    8     0   11     3    9     No winning seasons
4.   M Soccer        9    9     3   13     4   10     4   11     2   14     No winning seasons
5.   W Basketball    9   20     7   21     1   28     6   23     7   23     No winning seasons
6.   W Soccer        6   12     3   13     7   10    11    8     6   12     One winning season
7.   Softball       19   35     7   46    21   32    10   37    13   32     No winning seasons.
8.   Volleyball     11   17    14   14    15   15    11   17    15   16     No winning seasons
Total              109  144    90  149    91  152    85  152    73  164

Winning %            .431       .377       .374       .358       .308

*Thorr Bjorn's first season as Athletic Director.

[Andrew]

Doesn't mean much $ wise compared to other sports, but the softball record in particular is BRUTAL.

[ATPTourFan]

From the A10 message board:

[RF1]

From the A10 message board:

That graphic is embarrassing. A school the size of URI with the amount it spends on athletics should not be so pathetic across the board. Smaller schools like SBU, Lasalle, and St. Joe's should not be appreciably better. Thorr really needs to demand better and swiftly act if things do not change. This performance should not be the norm nor should it be tolerated.

At least UMass sucks nearly as bad.

[ramster]

From the A10 message board:

That graphic is embarrassing. A school the size of URI with the amount it spends on athletics should not be so pathetic across the board. Smaller schools like SBU, Lasalle, and St. Joe's should not be appreciably better. Thorr really needs to demand better and swiftly act if things do not change. This performance should not be the norm nor should it be tolerated.

At least UMass sucks nearly as bad.

- You keep Baron far longer than you should.
- You keep the women's basketball coach far longer than you should. Even fans on this Board attributed the poor 5 year performance of something systemic within the University itself, that the problem was deeper than the Coach who had proven herself at other Schools. I said "bull" then and even moreso now that the new HC has clearly hit the ground running or should I say SPRINTING
- You keep the women's softball coach far longer than you should.
- You reap what you sow

- This graph is totally embarassing

[adam914]

Nowhere to go but up, I guess?

[ramster]

Nowhere to go but up, I guess?

Not necessarily
Look at this year's baseball team

[RF1]

You can accept a program or two having a bad year. It will happen on occasion. It however is not acceptable that every program has a bad season in the same year. That points to a greater issue. Success and excellence in athletics is not something that URI is totally committed to. If it happens, great. If not, no big deal. A culture of mediocrity (or even less) is pervasive at URI and in the state of RI.