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Ron Wellman's Performance Metrics (Part 1) UPDATE New Low Achieved!

T

thedeacfan

Ricky Peral
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I did this a while back but made a mistake. I did the calculations as though BC, Miami, and VaTech were members for the entire 20 year period. I sincerely apologize for that mistake because it made Ron Wellman look bad... when in fact the truth was even worse. :rulz:

Here's a look at how Wake has "contributed" to the ACC's competitiveness over the last 20 years (Ron Wellman's tenure as AD). This is Wake's actual overall athletic performance in the ACC as reflected in the Director's Cup standings.

Years Wake finished in the top third of the ACC 0
Years Wake finished in the top half of the ACC 3
Years Wake finished in the middle of the ACC (5th of 9)2
Years Wake finished in the bottom half of the ACC 15
Years Wake finished in the bottom third of the ACC 11
Years Wake finished last in the ACC 5

Obviously Ron Wellman is not being judged based on Wake's performance in the Director's Cup...

I pulled the Director's Cup standings from their website. The completed results for the last 20 years are posted.

http://www.nacda.com/directorscup/nacda-directorscup-previous-scoring.html

Mr. Wellman has been successful at deflecting criticism for our poor performance in the Director's Cup. This is apparently accomplished by attributing the poor performance to the fact that Wake does not participate in as many sports as other schools. Not surprisingly, this excuse is only somewhat valid and is primarily just more AD "spin". Since a maximum of 20 sports (10 male & 10 female) can be used to calculate the point totals, a school that participates in more than 20 sports has more opportunities to use a better performing team in place of a lower performing team. However, the emphasis and weighting of the scoring system is on WINNING. The number of participation points awarded is minimal. A school like Wake that does NOT have winning as a priority, is never going to score well regardless of how many sports they participate in.

For the last three years 5 of 12 ACC schools have participated in less than 20 sports. GaTech & Miami had 17 sports, Wake had 18 sports, and Clemson & Florida St. had 19 sports.

School#SportsDirector's Cup 2011Director's Cup 2012Director's Cup 2013
GaTech17597274
Miami17515971
WFU18749298
Clemson19475452
Florida St19 9 511
* The table was updated to include the final 2013 Director's Cup standings on June 27, 2013. The score of 98 by Wake in 2013 is the lowest score ever for an ACC school in the Director's Cup competition.

Out of the 12 schools in the ACC, Wake has been the poorest performing for the last three years in a row. Florida State had only one more sport than Wake, but finished as one of the top schools nationally all three years. Obviously you do not have to participate in 20+ sports to score well. It is more important that you do well in the sports for which you do compete. In other words, Wake's poor scoring for the last two years has had much more to do with the fact that our Athletic Department is content to field non-competitive teams. This year we finished in the bottom half of the conference in 14 of 18 sports. Last year, we finished in the bottom half of the conference in 15 of the 18 sports in which we participated. Year before last, we finished in the bottom half of the conference in 13 of the 18 sports in which we participated.

Such a broad, pervasive, and consistent pattern of failure across so many fields of endeavor can only be attributed to decisions being made at the top. Ron Wellman is FAILING to field championship caliber athletes and teams. Given what we are seeing with the basketball program, is fielding championship caliber teams even a goal anymore? Are Wake athletes now supposed to be content with getting a "participation trophy"?

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/acc/genrel/auto_pdf/2012-13/misc_non_event/1213accrecordbook.pdf

ETA...
thedeacfan said:
One of the red herring arguments that is used to excuse our poor performance in the Director's Cup is that the other schools participate in more sports so they have more opportunities to score. I say that it's not how many sports you participate in; it's how well you do in the sports in which you DO participate. I have given some thought as to how to prove or disprove either theorm.

I have already pointed out that 4 other ACC teams participate in fewer than 20 sports and they are all performing better than we are in the competition. But what about the other 7 ACC teams who do field more than 20 teams? I began to wonder what a comparison would like if those teams were pointed in the Director's Cup based on their 20 worst scores instead of their 20 best? In other words, how do we compare to the worst of the worst? As I looked at the Director's Cup website, I realized that I had all the information needed to make that comparison if I was willing to take the time to manually create a spreadsheet. Last night, I did just that.

Once I had all the points for all the sports input into the spreadsheet, I looked at each individual school. For example, Carolina participates in 25 sports. So I subtracted Carolina's best 5 scores from the calculation. That has the same effect as if those sports got "0" points. Carolina went from having a total score of 1075.33 to having a total score of 629.33. That score would have placed Carolina in the standings at ranking of ~31 instead of 8th. For NCSU who only competes in 21 sports, I subtracted only one (the highest) score. They went from 633.6 to 555.6. And their ranking dropped from 34 to ~38. I used that methodology for all 7 schools.

As expected, comparing Wake's performance to the other ACC schools worst performing teams did not significantly improve Wake's standing among ACC schools. In fact, the only school who dropped below Wake was BC. BC was the outlier dropping 79 spots. The average position drop for all other ACC schools including BC was almost 16 positions. The average position drop for the other ACC teams excluding BC was less than 10.

School2013 Director's Cup Ranking~2013 Ranking based on 20 Worst
UNC831
FlSt1111
Duke1238
Va2047
NCSU3438
VaTech3638
Md4457
Clem5252
Mia7171
GaTech7474
BC76155
WFU9898

Even when we compare to the other school's worst teams, it's still very ugly. Hopefully this puts an end to the argument that we are expected to do poorly in the Director's Cup because other ACC schools participate in more sports.
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The crazy part is that if he had made a rational hire 3 years ago OR a rational fire 1 year ago, nobody would even realize how bad he has been. I know that I had a huge amount of confidence in the man, even a few months after he hired Bz. Now, I wouldn't trust the guy to take out the trash.
 
TheNines said:
The crazy part is that if he had made a rational hire 3 years ago OR a rational fire 1 year ago, nobody would even realize how bad he has been. I know that I had a huge amount of confidence in the man, even a few months after he hired Bz. Now, I wouldn't trust the guy to take out the trash.
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Very true...
 
Good info. I'm sure Dan or BSD will be writing a column on this soon.
 
BREAKING NEWS!!!

Winston-Salem, NC - In less than two weeks, when the points from baseball are added to the Director's Cup competition; Wake Forest will become the lowest ranking ACC school in the history of the competition. Wake is currently 97 and that ranking ties the previous record set by GaTech 19 years ago. However, San Diego (currently ranked 106) was in the baseball tournament and appears to have earned more than enough points to move ahead of Wake in the standings.

Wake Forest's performance in the Director's Cup has been on a 5 year decline under the leadership of embattled Athletic Director Ron Wellman. (Although to be fair, five years ago he was not "embattled".) Four years ago Wake was in the bottom third of the conference with a rank of 53. Three years ago Wake was last in the conference with a rank of 74. The last two years Wake has been last in the conference with a ranking in the "90s" (92 & currently 97).
 
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thedeacfan said:
BREAKING NEWS!!!

Winston-Salem, NC - In less than two weeks, when the points from baseball are added to the Director's Cup competition; Wake Forest will become the lowest ranking ACC team in the history of the competition. Wake is currently 97 and that ranking ties the previous record set by GaTech 19 years ago. However, San Diego (currently ranked 106) was in the baseball tournament and appears to have earned more than enough points to move ahead of Wake in the standings.

Wake Forest performance in the Director's Cup has been on a 5 year decline under the leadership of embattled Athletic Director Ron Wellman. (Although to be fair, five years ago he was not "embattled".) Four years ago Wake was in the bottom third of the conference with a rank of 53. Three years ago Wake was last in the conference with a rank of 74. The last two years Wake has been last in the conference with a ranking in the "90s" (92 & currently 97).
Click to expand...

:dancindeac:
 
thedeacfan said:
BREAKING NEWS!!!

Winston-Salem, NC - In less than two weeks, when the points from baseball are added to the Director's Cup competition; Wake Forest will become the lowest ranking ACC team in the history of the competition. Wake is currently 97 and that ranking ties the previous record set by GaTech 19 years ago. However, San Diego (currently ranked 106) was in the baseball tournament and appears to have earned more than enough points to move ahead of Wake in the standings.

Wake Forest performance in the Director's Cup has been on a 5 year decline under the leadership of embattled Athletic Director Ron Wellman. (Although to be fair, five years ago he was not "embattled".) Four years ago Wake was in the bottom third of the conference with a rank of 53. Three years ago Wake was last in the conference with a rank of 74. The last two years Wake has been last in the conference with a ranking in the "90s" (92 & currently 97).
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Lol

You have a link to the whole article?
 
Nice analysis, but this poor performance is not Ron's fault. He is not on the field or on the court, he can't score the ball or defend the goal. This is on the players. All Ron does is hire the coaches. This is definitely on the players.
 
birdman said:
Nice analysis, but this poor performance is not Ron's fault. He is not on the field or on the court, he can't score the ball or defend the goal. This is on the players. All Ron does is hire the coaches. This is definitely on the players.
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Is this for real? Can't be. We have a 20 year pattern here..either Ron has hired coaches who can't coach the right players to win championships or he has hired coaches who can't recruit the right players to win championships
 
Can we boil this down to a soundbite for the next billboard?

"Worst Athletic Program in the ACC"


The Director's Cup is as good a source as any.
 
More like "Worst Athletic Department in the ACC in the last 20 Years".

We know Dan won't write anything about it. Will Mundy allow anybody from BSD to write on it?

#historicalcompetitiveness

thedeacfan said:
BREAKING NEWS!!!

Winston-Salem, NC - In less than two weeks, when the points from baseball are added to the Director's Cup competition; Wake Forest will become the lowest ranking ACC school in the history of the competition. Wake is currently 97 and that ranking ties the previous record set by GaTech 19 years ago. However, San Diego (currently ranked 106) was in the baseball tournament and appears to have earned more than enough points to move ahead of Wake in the standings.

Wake Forest's performance in the Director's Cup has been on a 5 year decline under the leadership of embattled Athletic Director Ron Wellman. (Although to be fair, five years ago he was not "embattled".) Four years ago Wake was in the bottom third of the conference with a rank of 53. Three years ago Wake was last in the conference with a rank of 74. The last two years Wake has been last in the conference with a ranking in the "90s" (92 & currently 97).
Click to expand...
 
Ron was also in charge a few years ago when we had a run of pretty strong finishes in the Director's Cup. What has he done since then to drive us into the toilet? Honest question, I do not know what coaches have changed since then. I do know field hockey used to dominate and not can't even make the tourney and we have the same coach, right...?
 
scooter84 said:
Ron was also in charge a few years ago when we had a run of pretty strong finishes in the Director's Cup. What has he done since then to drive us into the toilet? Honest question, I do not know what coaches have changed since then. I do know field hockey used to dominate and not can't even make the tourney and we have the same coach, right...?
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Looking back on old threads, this isn't the first time I've answered your question with your own post:
http://www.ogboards.com/forums/show...ctors-Cup-Standings/page4?p=820410#post820410

scooter84 said:
Our glory years for the Director's Cup were the 7 years from '01-'02 through '06-'07. During those years our average finish was 36th, we peaked at 23 in '06-'07 and never finished lower than 44th.

During those years, FH dominated, with 3 national champs, a runner-up and 2 other final 4s. That team accounted for 16.5% of our points by itself. The M and W golf teams were consistently strong, scoring every year and, together, accounting for almost 23% of our points. The M and W soccer teams were also very strong, scoring every year (except men in '01-'02) and throwing in a final 4 and a couple of elite 8s for the men. Together they accounted for over 16% of our points. Finally, the M&W tennis teams were also very consistent, scoring every year except the women missed one - and accounting for right at 16%.

So, FH, golf, soccer and tennis accounted for like 71% of our scoring.

W cc and M basketball both also did well during this period and the T&F and baseball teams were contributing occasional points.
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Field hockey has fallen off. That's the big one. This post and subsequent posts suggest FH was a victim of the culture wars:
http://www.ogboards.com/forums/show...oard-Development-Thread?p=1224937#post1224937

"Wellman put the Field Hockey team on probation a few years back due to "culture" issues so that sport has not been able to bump the standing up like usual."

Obviously, Bz has killed men's basketball. Grobe has fallen off. None of the programs that weren't contributing then are contributing now despite new coaches hired by Wellman.
 
TBR said:
Is this for real? Can't be. We have a 20 year pattern here..either Ron has hired coaches who can't coach the right players to win championships or he has hired coaches who can't recruit the right players to win championships
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No, it is not for real. It is a subtle attack at Wellman's culture war and [Redacted]'s (the key hire in Wellman's recent cultural revolution) tendency to blame the players, saying things like - and I am paraphrasing here - "I can't rebound the ball for them..." in press conferences after games.
 
PhDeac said:
Looking back on old threads, this isn't the first time I've answered your question with your own post:
http://www.ogboards.com/forums/show...ctors-Cup-Standings/page4?p=820410#post820410



Field hockey has fallen off. That's the big one. This post and subsequent posts suggest FH was a victim of the culture wars:
http://www.ogboards.com/forums/show...oard-Development-Thread?p=1224937#post1224937

"Wellman put the Field Hockey team on probation a few years back due to "culture" issues so that sport has not been able to bump the standing up like usual."

Obviously, Bz has killed men's basketball. Grobe has fallen off. None of the programs that weren't contributing then are contributing now despite new coaches hired by Wellman.
Click to expand...

I don't see that this really answered my question. With respect to field hockey, this is the first time I saw anything about their decline being caused by being put on probation (not saying it wasn't posted before - I just must have missed it). Was the field hockey team really causing problems, or what? Did that really damage recruiting that much? I don't know much about field hockey or its recruiting landscape.

As for the other sports that used to contribute, but now don't, you mention new coaches being hired by Wellman - which ones? Specifically, m/w tennis, m/w golf and m/w soccer have been the backbone of our Director's cup scoring in the past. Has there been coaching turnover? If so, why - did coaches leave on their own, or get fired? If they were fired - was that a good decision? If they wanted to leave on their own and were not retained (convinced to stay), why not? Did Ron hire the old coach? Did he hire the new coach? If so, was it a reasonable hire, on its face (unlike Bzz).

And on and on. Lots of questions. The point is - Ron has been around a long time. During that period we have been good at a lot of things. Was that because of him? I don't know. Now we stink at most everything. Is that because of him? I don't know. I am pretty convinced it is - but I don't like for people to come to conclusions without real data and logical reasons.

And, I think it is a little disingenuous for Wake fans to use the Director's Cup to bludgeon Ron - as someone else pointed out, if we were doing well in basketball and football, no one would give two craps about the Director's Cup.

What would be interesting to me would be a list of every coach that Ron has hired during his tenure. For each one, a simple rating could be given in two categories - (i) hiring decision at the time, based on data available then (either (a) reasonable/good hire, (b) defensible hire, or a (c) head-scratcher/big risk), and (ii) success of the hire, based on data during the coach's tenure at Wake (either (a) good/great success, (b) mediocre/jury still out, or (c) failure).

As an example, I would rate Grobe as a reasonable/good hire who has been successful (a/a). I would rate Buzz as an obvious c/c. I would rate Haas the golf coach as an a/b or a/c... Probably a c because of our history and expectations in golf...
 
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