College Natty's Bid Process
It's clear from the guidelines (https://usaultimate.org/college/2023-college-guidelines/) that bid allocation for each region will be determined after this weekend games.
Timeline – The official USA Ultimate College Regular Season will run from January 1, 2023 through April 2, 2023.
Bid allocation for Regions to the USA Ultimate College Championships (Division I) includes a combination of 10 automatic bids (1 per Region) and 10 strength bids (based on end-of-season official USA Ultimate College Rankings).
But do the rankings also determine the actual teams at the end of regionals?
Strength bids – The remaining 10 bids will be based on the ranking of teams in each Region in the end-of-season official USA Ultimate College Rankings, as outlined below.
Team strength – All 10 strength bids will be awarded to regions with the “next” highest ranked team, where “next” describes one more bid than the region has already been awarded up to that point. For example, a region with 2 bids and a region with 3 bids will compare their 3rd and 4th ranked teams, respectively, for a Team strength bid. A region may earn more than one Team strength bid.
Does this mean they continue to do power rankings through conferences and regionals so the bids are allocated by region based on April 2 rankings but the actual qualifying teams are based on power rankings including regionals on May 9th? Bracket play at regionals would not award a bid . . i.e. the team finishing second in multi-bid region would still need to be power ranked above other teams in their region to qualify?
Posted Mar 31, 2023, 3:06 PM UTC
Bids are locked in on April 2nd and remain unchanged through the post-season.For a 2 bid region, the teams who place 1st and 2nd at regionals will continue on to nationals. Whether those are the teams who earned the bids based on rankings doesn't matter. A lower ranked team can steal a bid if they perform better at regionals.
Rankings stop mattering after April 2nd except for seeding at nationals.
I believe you but can you point to anywhere that is laid out?
It says strength bids based on "end of season official USA Ultimate College Rankings" which doesn't say end of "regular season". And doesn't say bracket play at regionals.
Maybe you know from offline sources?
From playing 4 years of college ultimate and coaching for another 5 after that, I can confirm this is how it works. It's also the same for club.
I guess maybe the phrasing you're misunderstanding is that bids are allocated to regions, not teams. The regions get the strength bids based on the performance of teams in that region but the region is awarded the bid. The teams then have to earn that bid at regionals.
"All 10 strength bids will be awarded to regions with the “next” highest ranked team, where “next” describes one more bid than the region has already been awarded up to that point."
If you've ever read the rulebook, nothing is spelled out as easily as you want it to be. I can't find anything that phrases it like I have but others can confirm what I've said.
Not doubting you . . .just wanted to understand bcs they changed everything last year for Covid season, and I didn't know if this is the same as 2019 years and before of if they adjusted it.
This does mean, that BYU "wins" a bid for their region even though they won't play . . . that does seem slightly unfair, no?
But what will happen is that all regionals will have a "game to go" for the last regional strength bid (or auto bid for a one bid region).
This is a return to how it was handled in 2019 and prior.
The BYU thing is something that the frisbee community still hasn't figured out how to handle. On one hand, inclusion. On the other, BYU can't win the bid at regionals if they don't play Sundays. The only thing I can concretely say is, if you want BYU's bid, beat 'em during the regular season.
For your last point, I'm not sure what your question is. 1 bid regions (including auto-bid regions) just mean that whoever wins the region goes to nationals. I can't tell if you're asking how it works or arguing that it should work differently. Can you clarify?
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Tournament structure in each region is literally based on their individual bid allocations going into regionals weekend. The bracket in a 1-bid region looks very different than the bracket in a 2 or 3-bid region.
what would the bracket look like in a 2 bid vs a 1?
Using Southwest mens in years I played as an example (not sure if this is the usual case), in a two bid region the winners of each of the 4 pools get put into basically a semi-finals bracket for the top bid in the region, losers from those games fall into a backdoor bracket along with all the 2nd and 3rd place pool finishers for a larger backdoor bracket to get the 2nd bid (See 2017 men’s college southwest regional).
In a 1 bid region, you see more of the traditional prequarters/quarters style bracket right out of pool play that you would see at Natties (See 2015 men’s college southwest regional).