Ron Wellman's Performance Metrics (Part 2)

[thedeacfan]

A post on Scout from "tjcmd" prompted this bit of research. He said, "Name a few small budget programs like ours that have been better contibutors to a power conference than we have over the last twenty years."

My response:
Why bother to limit the comparison to teams from "power conferences". You don't have to be in a "power conference" to have nationally relevant athletic programs. The current Director's Cup standings include everything but baseball. Wake is #97. Below is a table that includes the other schools that are currently ranked between 94 and 100 in the Director's Cup. The last column is the AD revenue for that school. In case you're wondering, the average AD revenue for those other six schools is less than $22 million.

School	Director's Cup Rank	AD Revenue
Wake	97	$42,286,588
Old Dominion	100	$32,893,744
North Dakota State	99	$15,273,267
Western Kentucky	97	$22,269,484
New Hampshire	96	$26,237,332
Northern Arizona	95	$10,681,513
Stony Brook	94	$24,336,965

http://espn.go.com/ncaa/revenue/_/page/1

http://b2.caspio.com/dp.asp

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/spor...ollege-athletics-finances-database/54955804/1


Interesting Note: Coastal Carolina is ranked 82 in the Director's Cup and has AD revenues of less than $19 million. They will improve in the final DC ranking because they made the baseball tournment.

 

[coredeac]

Assuming these figures are correct, that's one hell of statement.

 

[w84it]

How do the other schools with AD revenue comparative to us rank (say +/- $3M)???

 

[Ball State Deac]

Yikes!

 

[DEACS76]

It is that bad. This has to be Wellman's last year.

 

[LCDeacon]

Y'all realize that North Dakota State got the same amount of Directors Cup points in football this year as Alabama, right?

 

[DCDeac]

Y'all realize that North Dakota State got the same amount of Directors Cup points in football this year as Alabama, right?

Yeah... I think I had a post early on looking at Director's Cup stuff for Wake then went and researched it. Basically it's completely retarded.

 

[thedeacfan]

Yeah... I think I had a post early on looking at Director's Cup stuff for Wake then went and researched it. Basically it's completely retarded.

So what did you find?

 

[PhDeac]

North Dakota State won their championship. I don't have a problem with that unless you're saying we should drop down to FCS.

 

[LCDeacon]

For comparison purposes it doesn't make sense to compare Revenue to Directors Cup points since there are so few revenue sports and 90%+ of the rankings consist of non-revenue sport results.

If Wake won the BCS National Title and the NCAA bball tourney and bombed everything else we would be 97th and pounding our chests.

 

[RacerDeac]

For comparison purposes it doesn't make sense to compare Revenue to Directors Cup points since there are so few revenue sports and 90%+ of the rankings consist of non-revenue sport results.

Sure it does. Revenue drives your ability to be competitive in all sports, both revenue and non-revenue. Facilities, coaches, etc, etc. The point is that we have WAY more revenue, way more National exposure, and way more potential than the teams we are similar to in the standings.

 

[LCDeacon]

The low revenue teams we are similar to in the standings are there because they compete in either different sports (skiing, Rifle, womens ice hockey), play in different divisions, etc. NCA&T did better in the Directors Cup than Maryland/Virginia/Kentucky in Men's Basketball last year. Sure those teams were down, but to compare the success of a team who misses an at-large berth from a major conference vs. an auto qualifier from the MEAC isn't an exact science when debating 'performance metrics'. I don't care if NCA&T wins every conference title for the rest of time.

Wake would still be at/towards the bottom, but a better comparison for me would be BCS schools and only the sports that Wake competes in. Even that is not right because not everyone plays those sports.

 

[DCDeac]

So what did you find?

Just that years I remembered our primary teams as being good we were ranked below years when they weren't. Being ranked behind schools that sucked - ie. we'd go to a bowl game and make the tourney but other schools won a water polo championship so they were ranked with us.

I really don't give a shit if our Equestrian team is nationally ranked. Football and Basketball matter, and they saw a lot of success under Wellman for a stretch. Grobe and Prosser were excellent hires, and the facility improvements have been extremely impressive. There's no need to rewrite history to make Wellman out to be a bumbling idiot from day 1. Now that we're mired in the worst run of basketball most living Wake fans have ever experienced and football is in what I'd call a do-or-die year, Wellman is on the hot seat along with [Redacted] and justifiably so.

 

[PhDeac]

Just that years I remembered our primary teams as being good we were ranked below years when they weren't. Being ranked behind schools that sucked - ie. we'd go to a bowl game and make the tourney but other schools won a water polo championship so they were ranked with us.

I really don't give a shit if our Equestrian team is nationally ranked. Football and Basketball matter, and they saw a lot of success under Wellman for a stretch. Grobe and Prosser were excellent hires, and the facility improvements have been extremely impressive. There's no need to rewrite history to make Wellman out to be a bumbling idiot from day 1. Now that we're mired in the worst run of basketball most living Wake fans have ever experienced and football is in what I'd call a do-or-die year, Wellman is on the hot seat along with [Redacted] and justifiably so.

Which years?

 

[DCDeac]

No idea what exact years I looked up plus the site was a pain in the ass to go through. I'm impressed by the level of effort involved in putting together those stats, but overall my take from the director's cup standings is that Wake not fielding as many teams as other schools screws up the numbers, and that the emphasis put on sports that nobody gives a shit about screws up the numbers.

I'm not saying it's meaningless, I'm just saying it's not some ultimate statistic that proves anything other than vague trending - far less important than the actual current state of football and basketball.

I definitely don't have the time or inclination to go back through that stuff, so if folks want to believe Director's Cup numbers are the standard by which you measure an Athletic Director, more power to them.