While the RPI originally was created for basketball, the basic premise of the formula remains true for any sport – rankings are based on whom a team plays, whom it beats and how difficult the overall schedule is compared with all other Division I teams in that sport. Although other factors may be unique to specific sports, it also is true that almost any discussion by schools, media or fans about why a team was or was not selected, usually involve that team’s record or strength of schedule. When teams or leagues provide supplemental data to a committee, it almost always notes the team’s excellent record, its success outside the conference and/or the strength of the league or non-conference schedule.

The RPI is just one of many factors used by the committee. Each committee member must weigh each factor available and make his or her own decision regarding its importance. Clearly, the RPI will be more helpful to a committee member when evaluating a team out of his or her own region, especially if they never have seen them play.

Each committee member has an advisory group and all conferences have a representative. The committee uses input from these individuals, as well as the RPI data. If a committee member is evaluating two or more teams, a wide difference in RPI rank can be a factor.

How “wide” is “wide”? A very generic rule of thumb is 20 or more ranking places, in addition to the actual mathematical difference between RPI rankings. But since every circumstance is different, those ranges can vary quite significantly from sport to sport and year to year.

Sports committees using the RPI long have believed past tournament performance and/or potential professional talent should not be a factor when selecting or seeding teams. One of the original criteria in the selection of participants for any NCAA championship is “Eligibility and availability of student-athletes…”.

No matter how well a team or league is able to “reload” every year, a sports committee is obligated to only look at student-athletes on the current roster, not those who may have helped a team advance in the championship the previous year or years. That philosophy would make it very difficult for an emerging team to receive a fair evaluation if it had no recent tournament history. No selection process at any level of sport, collegiate or professional, uses past success as a factor in determining participation in a playoff or championship.

Like tournament success, potential professional ability does not necessarily translate into team tournament potential. Many collegiate stars never play professionally, while some players struggled in college before exploding in the professional leagues.

While neither polls nor statistics is part of the RPI formula, the committee does receive this data from the NCAA staff as part of the entire package they are given for the selection meeting. This is another situation in which adding factors to the existing RPI would require a complicated process to determine exactly how to add them to the formula, the mathematical factor and impact on existing factors.

The key thing to remember about league RPIs is every team has an equal impact on the conference ranking. A league with three or four outstanding teams can end up ranked in the middle of the pack if the same league also has three or four very poor teams. The teams essentially cancel out each other. Thus, a conference with few top 20 RPI teams, but also none below 150, can have a higher league ranking than a conference with more top teams but also a few 150-200 schools.

Those who offer opinions about which are the best conferences tend to compare the top four or five teams with the top four of five of other leagues. There is nothing wrong with this type of evaluation, just as there is nothing wrong with a mathematical evaluation that takes into account all teams in one league. The factors that determine the “best” league always will vary depending upon who does the evaluating, and what region of the country they are from.

Because of location, many conferences only play a small percentage of other leagues in their non-conference schedule. If the number of potential teams is small, the possibility that these teams will “beat up each other” could mean there would be fewer outstanding records to catch the committee’s eye, resulting in less at-large selections for teams in that part of the country.

Mathematically, it certainly can be argued that with fewer teams available it is possible all the teams in that region could “bunch up” with similar records. Those in other parts of the country, however, could argue that if the great majority of these teams are strong clubs, that also reduces the opportunity to play very weak teams that hurt the strength of schedule element of the RPI.

If the committee is asked to look past BOTH a team’s Division I won-lost record AND its’ strength of schedule, what other factors should it then consider? By eliminating or reducing the impact of these two factors on selection, elements like perception or reputation may play a larger role in the process. While that might benefit the traditional powers, it would make it more difficult for emerging teams to be considered, even those in that particular region.

Should different parts of the country be considered for selection using different criteria? During its deliberations, committees frequently discuss scheduling limitations for many parts of the country and always have factored that into the decision process.

It would be difficult to imagine a committee meeting without any type of statistical data to aid the group in its deliberations. If there were no RPI, what type of data should the committee receive? What if they only were supplied with each team’s won-lost record? How would a committee member compare two teams with similar records but no common opponents? What if the committee received printouts of all Division I teams and its game results? Even knowing all a team’s opponents, how would a committee member compare schedules?

Without some type of mathematical ranking, it would appear an “RPI-less” committee could run the risk of selecting teams based on reputation rather than facts. An emerging program from a perceived mid- to lower-level conference, experiencing a breakthrough season, might be completely overlooked unless the committee representative from that area could make a compelling argument without a lot of hard data. By contrast, a traditional powerhouse, experiencing a down year, might sneak into the field based solely on reputation and history.

Those who wish to do away with the RPI, must be able to offer an alternative set of data for the committee to use.

The committee always is interested in suggestions for improving the system. Interested parties can contact the NCAA statistics staff or committee members with any ideas.