On the subject of age of recruits, I have felt the same way as Greenie for
a while.  My hunch is that a lot of the players coming in as 21+ year olds
aren't there for the education.  There are always exceptions, though.  A
case in point is the Gophers' Tom Nevers, who is a 23 year old freshman
this year.  Coming out of Edina High School, he committed to the Gophers,
but instead signed a contract with the Toronto Blue Jays to play baseball.
(Right country for this discussion, wrong sport.)  Having washed out, he's
now back to go to school, and maybe play some hockey (of course, he
seperated his shoulder during training camp).  My evidence that he is
actually committed to going to school is that the contract he signed with
the Jays stipulated that they would pay for his college education if he
didn't make it.  It's what he took as the bulk of his signing bonus five
years ago, and now it pays off.  So, there are different stories out there.
 
 
On the subject of the RPI, I actually was thinking of the end of the year
rather than a glitch early in the season.  That was simply what nudged me
into bringing up the subject.  Two years ago, CC was very close to making
the tournament, but came up short.  A very weak non-conference schedule was
the main culprit.  They played Air Force for two games (which as I
understand it really is a series that they don't have a good way to get out
of, even if they want to), two games with Alaska-Fairbanks that Don Lucia
scheduled as a favor to his former employer and an infamous holiday
tournament.  This tournament was a typical looking affair where CC invited
another quality team and two weaker opponents for them to play in the
semis.  Unfortunately, the other good team punted its first game, leaving
the Tigers to beat up on one more SoS wrecker.  What was said (though
someone who could run the calculations would need to confirm this for me to
be certain) is that a loss to their expected opponent would have put them
in the NCAAs.  I suspect that it won't matter this year, since I expect
that CC will repeat as WCHA champs, but I'm not sure that a system ought to
be designed such that a given game will hurt a team's rating whether they
win or not.  I like a SoS component because it prevents teams from loading
up on weak teams to improve their W/L record (the Gopher basketball team
just faced Charleston Southern and Bethune-Cookman in one week, for crying
out loud), but if a team forgoes the benefit of the win in a computerized
index, perhaps they ought to be able to ignore the cost of a weak opponent.
In throwing out the idea, I would limit the number of applications per
season and perhaps only allow it to be used with non-conference games.
 
Actually, I was surprised this morning.  I spent all night at work worrying
that I was too harsh in my posting on Canadian recruitment and instead
found almost all the comment on my other subject.  Whew!
 
J. Michael Jackson
 
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