Is the Callahan Award Just a Popularity Contest?

Nation,

One of the best ultimate sites in the world, The Huddle, has posted an article about the Callahan award. An annual award given to the best male and female college player, it's an excellent award and should be a huge honour to anyone who has the chance to be nominated/awarded the prize.

Not only is the award a good thing, but the discussion and voting process is also good for the game of ultimate. It's nice when people are looking for the good players on their teams and on other squads. Those that go out of their way to nominate and advocate others are definitely to be saluted.

Here comes the but...

BUT with so many teams and so many players, combined with so little stats in the game of ultimate, how is the Callahan Award system anything but a popularity contest? I know we are following in the footsteps of pro sports, where sports writers are usually charged with the task of voting for MVP. Usually there is a lot of bickering over the definition of the MVP and the stats that most writers really don't understand.

I'm not saying the winners are not good players. Generally ultimate people can pick out the fast, the strong, and the spectacular play makers. However, winning a Callahan award involves the following keys

• You have to play on a good team and get exposure
  
• You have to have good champions to lobby for you
• In most sports the scorers tend to get more love from MVP voters, and I assume ultimate is no different. So you have to be a big thrower or scorer.. and that's more important than being efficient and truly the most valuable
• As with the case in all aspects in human life, it would not hurt to "look the part".
  

Despite all these issues with the award, I wouldn't want to see the Callahan award cease to exist. If we can improve our evaluation process as the game advances, it would be great. In the meantime, we'll keep watching the highlight clips, reading the campaigns and pick MVP needles from the proverbial haystack.

Factoid that Might Only be Interesting to me and Peter King

Nation,

I'm not much of a betting man, but I do like to try and observe trends. Thanks to the upa site listing past champions, I wanted to look and see if what has happened in past years can help predict who can win this year.

A simple listing of past champions and the top four teams tells us a very very small piece of the puzzle. However, a very interesting trend emerges on the men's side:

• Since 2000, only two teams (Florida 06 and Stanford 02) have ever won the title without finishing in the top 4 at the previous year's finals.
  

On the women's side, we see a similar set of trends

• Only one team (UC Davis Pleiades in 2004) was able to win a Finals title without being in the top 4 the previous year.
  

What does this suggest? It very weakly suggests that although a team can walk into the finals and win on both sides of the bracket, the teams that win (as of 2000) are usually knocking on the championship door year(s) prior to their victory.

It also suggests that despite Ottawa's talent and Canada's high hopes, they might have the odds stacked against them to win it. UC Santa Barbara, UCLA and Washington all experienced the final four last year and return this year. In fact, the two teams with the highest RRI (Oregon and Wisconsin) have lost games to Washnington and UCSB. These teams have experience and they are winning big games this year going into the finals.

On the men's side, Carleton College, Wisconsin and Colorado all made the final four last year and are back in 2009.

The game is changing at the college level and we all see it when we look at the athletes. It really isn't a sport where a team can be assembled and win it all in one season. That means the ability of a school to plan and commit to a multi year recruit and development program is much more vital. I find that exciting and look forward to better approaches from teams that help develop the game.

So, who is your pick to win the open and women's crowns and why?

Comparison of RRI, UPA Top 25 and Actual OpenFinals Participants

Nation,

After doing a comparison of women's UPA college finalists with the current RRI and UPA Top 25 rankings, 70% of the actual finalists were in the top 20 of RRI and UPA Top 25.

To my understanding (as per icultimate.com):

UPA TOP 25 RANKINGS- is an algorithm-based ranking system that ranks all teams with at least five games reported on the UPA Score Reporter Tool (SRT). The algorithm assigns a rating to each game based on the score, the strength of the opponent, and how long ago the game was and then averages each team's ratings.

RRI RANKINGS- The RRI rankings is another algorith-based ranking system that is based on the NCAA Hockey's KRACH ranking system. A Win Confidence Score is assigned to each game and represents how likely a team is to win a re-match of that game, based on the score. This allows the system to generate score predictions for teams in addition to the rankings.

Based on my last post, it seems clear:

• These rankings are limited by geographic, season, and head to head limitations
• These rankings don't affect seeding for UPA college finals, and people don't think they should due to their imperfect nature
• These rankings are merely references for fun/trends during a given season

So, purely for fun. Here are the top 20 Open teams in terms of RRI, UPA Top 25 and Actual Finals Participants (Ranked by RRI, as seedings are not yet posted):

#	RRI	UPA Top 25	Actual Finals
1)	Pittsburgh	Carleton College	Pittsburgh
2)	Carleton College	Colorado	Carleton College
3)	Cornell	Oregon *	Cornell
4)	Colorado	Florida	Colorado
5)	Florida	Virginia	Tufts
6)	Oregon *	Cornell	Virginia
7)	Tufts	Wisconsin	Wisconsin
8)	Virginia	Washington	California
9)	Middlebury	Western Washington	Stanford
10)	Wisconsin	Notre Dame	Luther
11)	California	Pittsburgh	Williams
12)	Stanford	California	Michigan
13)	Washington	Middlebury	North Carolina State
14)	Notre Dame	North Carolina State	Minnesota
15)	Harvard	Michigan	Kansas
16)	Luther	North Carolina-Wilmington	Texas
17)	Western Washington	Kansas	Georgia
18)	Williams	Stanford	California-San Diego
19)	Michigan	California-San Diego	California Santa Barbara
20)	North Carolina State	Texas	Illinois

63% of RRI top 20 teams are in the actual finals 68% of the top 20 UPA Top 25 teams are in the actual finals The Fact that Oregan has been suspended from play has been taken into account.