I cannot understand why anyone pays attention to RPI

[Seinfeld]

Going into the tournament, the Warren Nolan RPI had the Big East rated as the #4 conference RPI. That same conference proceeded to get three #1 seeds and now has four teams in the Elite 8. Is there a more worthless sports rating index out there?

 

[8dog]

the committee pays attention to it.

The reason their RPI is so low is b/c they have 16 teams and the bottom 6 teams were not good.

 

[The Lord Humongous]

That's the exact line that has come from both baseball and basketball committees in the past. Conference RPI really doesn't mean a lot but each team's RPI does. I don't think it's awesome but it's not worthless. There's definitely some validity to the rating. In a word where everybody doesn't play everybody else you have to have something. Boyd Nation's ISRs in baseball are solid and take some of the regional slant that the south gets from playing so many different teams but in the process they slant too much to the west coast, imo...but they're still good, valid ratings. Basketball is no different...likely will always be a struggle to find a perfect ratings system b/c of the natural way schedulings is regionalized.

 

[MSUCostanza]

according to the committee, they only use RPI to help seed the teams once they've been selected. In other words, I believe RPI is a tiny, if not non-existent, part of actually selecting teams.

 

[DawgatAuburn]

Is there a more worthless sports rating index out there?

The BCS.

 

[8dog]

on a team's rpi is up for debate, but RPI is a critical number....this is the sheet they are given:

http://www.bbstate.com/schools/NM/sheet