Get ready folks

[Carlsbad7]

Why would there be waivers provided? Just because some small majority of parents want it isn't a reason to do it. Why would soccer consciously open that can of worms?

Waivers will happen to allow redshirted players to play down with their SY.

It's just how things work when something can be manipulated with power, money, and the desire to win.

 

[Jamisfoes]

You are fundamentally misunderstanding how Soccer Ranking works. What you are describing would apply to points based or bonus type rating/ranking, with GotSport Rankings as the best example. If you're ranking teams by how many points they win, and different leagues, tournaments, or other competitions all have different point ratings - it makes sense that they are essentially power rating the different competitions when they choose how many points to award. And as I think most can see - this method does not work, at all, at least as implemented by GotSport. Terrible teams are rated highly because they do well in nothing tournaments that somehow all have high point values, awesome teams are rated as bottom-dwellers because for whatever reason they don't appear often in GotSport-ranked tournaments.

But SR doesn't rank any tournaments, or compare them against eachother in any way. All that matter is how this team entity did when they competed against this other team entity. That is essentially it. Whether they were in the same league, different league, tournament, playoff, whatever - all of it is "rated" the same as a game. The results of these games are all that goes into adjusting the rating. All that is necessary is the ability to determine what represents a team entity, and as long as you have that, the rest falls into place.

Your predictions don't make sense in this context.

Speaking of team entity, SR currently could not tell which EA team is which resulting in all these EA teams showing as unranked. Not entirely SR’s fault, it’s how crappy EA’s website is.

 

[whatithink]

Waivers will happen to allow redshirted players to play down with their SY.

It's just how things work when something can be manipulated with power, money, and the desire to win.

So, they are happening now then, I mean they must be. If the change is from "1/1 to 12/31" to "8/1 to 7/31", then if you manipulate the latter, you can manipulate the former with all that "power, money, and desire to win.".

 

[Carlsbad7]

So, they are happening now then, I mean they must be. If the change is from "1/1 to 12/31" to "8/1 to 7/31", then if you manipulate the latter, you can manipulate the former with all that "power, money, and desire to win.".

It's doesn't happen now because Jan 1 is a date that doesn't change and there's no ambiguity.

With SY different school districts start at different times and for all kinds of reasons a player that's older than their classmates will be pushed to play at grade level.

If the rules aren't 100% clear and easy to define someone will push the envelope and make the grey area normalized.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Ugh... So your choice is to ignore the differences and let a 6 month player age differential not be normalized.

That's fine but in theory banding will occur because older players are playing against younger players in the same age group.

Personally I'd want to accommodate for the age diffences to normalize the results.

I don't see it that way. It all comes down to what is a team - and how is that team expected to do the next time that team plays. It is predicted to do as well as its rating suggests. And the team it is facing is expected to do as well as its rating suggests. It's how you can compare, apples to apples, how much better a 2012 team is when facing a 2011 team, or a B team facing a G team, or any other label/category of that particular team.

As long as there is a team entity, and it has game results, it gets a rating. There is no normalizing, rationalization, ignoring, or any other manipulation going on. The previous results of that team entity, strongly predict the future results of that team entity, and that rating will continue to move up or down depending on whether it plays according to its prediction, better, or worse.

All of the other hand-wringing about comparing a birth year team to a school year team to a showcase team to a whatever team, just doesn't matter. I think it would be mainly up the club or whoever is managing how their teams show up in the registration systems now and ultimately in aggregators like SR. And then at the end of it, those ratings can be sorted, by age, gender, state, etc. It sounds like you think there should be separate categories, for BY teams of a certain age, and SY teams of a certain age, to make sure the data is as "clean" as possible. I think that you're way overthinking it, and it doesn't really matter. The BY/SY adjacent teams are almost certainly going to be extremely close in rating, to the point that separating them in a ranked list wouldn't buy anything. But if it becomes necessary, or is shown to be silly, comes down to how clubs represent the separate, or not separate, team entities of the same age.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Speaking of team entity, SR currently could not tell which EA team is which resulting in all these EA teams showing as unranked. Not entirely SR’s fault, it’s how crappy EA’s website is.

Please post an example, either just a team name, or a link to the bracket. If you, (or anybody else), can tell by looking at the results which team is which, it's not challenging to point those results to the correct team. Once enough of the teams are connected and are then playing against other rated teams, all of them should get ratings pretty quickly and come out of unranked.

 

[whatithink]

It's doesn't happen now because Jan 1 is a date that doesn't change and there's no ambiguity.

With SY different school districts start at different times and for all kinds of reasons a player that's older than their classmates will be pushed to play at grade level.

If the rules aren't 100% clear and easy to define someone will push the envelope and make the grey area normalized.

So, 8/1 changes then - I never knew that. I must check next year.

As has been said by multiple people, they are changing the date range. It's not "School Year", its 8/1 to 7/31.

SoCal literally said it in the first paragraph that was posted here.

 

[whatithink]

We've caught multiple players on our own team, submitting altered birth certificates to play down. To say that you haven't seen anything in 15 years is less about how little cheating goes on and more about how observant to it one may be.

OK, I'll take your word for it that cheaters are cheating. If they are altering birth certs, then the date range is immaterial. I'm not sure what they get out of it bar maybe winning a game or tournament, and if that rocks their world, they are welcome to that same sad world. It will have zero benefit getting on elite soccer teams or programs as they get older. Its doubtful it even helps in HS, outside of freshman only teams, as they will have to compete with everyone to get on varsity, but ok, whatever.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

In the specific cases I listed, it was more so cousins could play on the same team, or friends could play on the same team - and had very little to do with future prospects for "elite" soccer or future scholarships. But we see club pass kids who aren't really that kid show up pretty often. When everybody knows everybody, it's pretty easy for the kids to pick out who is legal and who might not be on the opposing teams. And yes, it's more common in basketball than soccer IMO. To see a kid have a ton of highlights playing on a Class of 2030 team one tournament weekend, and see those highlights posted on their own Instagram with Class of 2029 emblazoned all over the videos, makes it pretty clear to anyone who's paying attention what's going on.

 

[Grace T.]

OK, I'll take your word for it that cheaters are cheating. If they are altering birth certs, then the date range is immaterial. I'm not sure what they get out of it bar maybe winning a game or tournament, and if that rocks their world, they are welcome to that same sad world. It will have zero benefit getting on elite soccer teams or programs as they get older. Its doubtful it even helps in HS, outside of freshman only teams, as they will have to compete with everyone to get on varsity, but ok, whatever.

1. It’s easier now that everything is electronic to cheat.
2. As random said it’s usually so players can play together, but I have seen instances especially at tournaments and summer league where it’s just blatantly played down to win.
3. I got called once for verification. Someone was using my kids old player card to play calsouth (we had left for SoCal)
4. There are plenty of places in the val that do this….it how illegal immigrants work…they need papers to even work at a dennys.
5. Because of this Latino league requires more docs than SoCal. My kid had trouble registering because they don’t have student ids anymore. They made him go back to the in person sign up and bring his yearbook.

 

[Jamisfoes]

Please post an example, either just a team name, or a link to the bracket. If you, (or anybody else), can tell by looking at the results which team is which, it's not challenging to point those results to the correct team. Once enough of the teams are connected and are then playing against other rated teams, all of them should get ratings pretty quickly and come out of unranked.

I can’t even tell which team is which. Unless it’s a team immediately in my area I have no idea. Also some of these teams play up a year. You really can’t tell looking at the EA website.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

I can’t even tell which team is which. Unless it’s a team immediately in my area I have no idea. Also some of these teams play up a year. You really can’t tell looking at the EA website.

Please post a link.

 

[TopesWin]

How would the soccer rankings app address when one league has players that are 6 months older than other leagues but the "same" age/grade/year of competition?

You have two choices. Either ignore the differences or apply some kind of "power" ranking to the teams that are 6 months older to normalize the results.

No, it just compares any two teams - different ages, no problem / different gender? No problem. The only trick would be that there would have to be twice as many categories: so there would be a top team for 2006 BY and a top team for 2006 SY, a top team for 2007 BY and a top team for 2007 SY, etc etc. No problems at all.

 

[Carlsbad7]

No, it just compares any two teams - different ages, no problem / different gender? No problem. The only trick would be that there would have to be twice as many categories: so there would be a top team for 2006 BY and a top team for 2006 SY, a top team for 2007 BY and a top team for 2007 SY, etc etc. No problems at all.

Yes, more categories would be a way to make things work. But, what your doing is splitting the teams by league. Assuming one league stayed BY and another changed to SY and you'd no longer have ECNL and GA rankings mixed together.

In essence you solve one issue but create another. As an example there would be 2x G2006 top ranked teams. One top team would be BYG2006 and the other would be SYG2006.

I guess it doesn't really matter that there's 2x top teams per age group. It might even calm the parents that go crazy about xyz league being "better" or "worse" than abc league.

 

[Carlsbad7]

Yes, more categories would be a way to make things work. But, what your doing is splitting the teams by league. Assuming one league stayed BY and another changed to SY and you'd no longer have ECNL and GA rankings mixed together.

In essence you solve one issue but create another. As an example there would be 2x G2006 top ranked teams. One top team would be BYG2006 and the other would be SYG2006.

I guess it doesn't really matter that there's 2x top teams per age group. It might even calm the parents that go crazy about xyz league being "better" or "worse" than abc league.

Thinking about this a little more...

If ECNL went SY and GA, MLSN, etc stayed BY and the rankings app split out teams by BY and SY (ie BSY2010 and BBY2010) the group that benefits the most would be the league with "lower" ranked teams.

On the girls side SY = ECNL and BY = GA. So the two top teams per age group would always be one team from GA and one team from ECNL. On the boys side there would be one MLSN team and one ECNL top team per age group.

The group that losses out in this situation is the lower top tier teams from a league with a large number of top teams. The group that wins is the league who's teams aren't ranked as highly but just happen to be the opposite of the BY or SY group with a large number of top teams.

Here's another weird thing that could occur. Say 99% of the leagues in the nation were BY and one rec league was SY. You'd end up with one top BY team that represented the best team of 99% of the teams playing. But you'd also have another SY top team that represented 1% on the teams playing. Someone that didn't understand the the makeup of the BY vs SY grouping would assume the SY2010 team and the BY2010 team were equivalent when they are not.

 

[fatdad]

Thinking about this a little more...

If ECNL went SY and GA, MLSN, etc stayed BY and the rankings app split out teams by BY and SY (ie BSY2010 and BBY2010) the group that benefits the most would be the league with "lower" ranked teams.

On the girls side SY = ECNL and BY = GA. So the two top teams per age group would always be one team from GA and one team from ECNL. On the boys side there would be one MLSN team and one ECNL top team per age group.

The group that losses out in this situation is the lower top tier teams from a league with a large number of top teams. The group that wins is the league who's teams aren't ranked as highly but just happen to be the opposite of the BY or SY group with a large number of top teams.

Here's another weird thing that could occur. Say 99% of the leagues in the nation were BY and one rec league was SY. You'd end up with one top BY team that represented the best team of 99% of the teams playing. But you'd also have another SY top team that represented 1% on the teams playing. Someone that didn't understand the the makeup of the BY vs SY grouping would assume the SY2010 team and the BY2010 team were equivalent when they are not.

Newbie here. What's the relevance of rankings in real terms? College recruiting? Invitation to tournaments?

 

[Carlsbad7]

Newbie here. What's the relevance of rankings in real terms? College recruiting? Invitation to tournaments?

It's a lot of things but none are exact 1to1s.

Rankings determine what teams you play against in different league events and tournaments.

People sometimes say that college recruiters don't look at rankings. But, they do.

Some parents shop for the next team to play on by reviewing each teams ranking. Coaches do the same thing when they're looking for a job.

 

[rainbow_unicorn]

It's a lot of things but none are exact 1to1s.

Rankings determine what teams you play against in different league events and tournaments.

People sometimes say that college recruiters don't look at rankings. But, they do.

Some parents shop for the next team to play on by reviewing each teams ranking. Coaches do the same thing when they're looking for a job.

Nobody of importance cares about rankings. Only parents care due to ego/pride. I see parents falling into trap thinking that their kid is good (when they're not) since they play on a high ranked team. As parents, rankings are fun to look at...but that's where it ends.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Yes, more categories would be a way to make things work. But, what your doing is splitting the teams by league. Assuming one league stayed BY and another changed to SY and you'd no longer have ECNL and GA rankings mixed together.

In essence you solve one issue but create another. As an example there would be 2x G2006 top ranked teams. One top team would be BYG2006 and the other would be SYG2006.

I guess it doesn't really matter that there's 2x top teams per age group. It might even calm the parents that go crazy about xyz league being "better" or "worse" than abc league.

Thinking about this a little more...

If ECNL went SY and GA, MLSN, etc stayed BY and the rankings app split out teams by BY and SY (ie BSY2010 and BBY2010) the group that benefits the most would be the league with "lower" ranked teams.

On the girls side SY = ECNL and BY = GA. So the two top teams per age group would always be one team from GA and one team from ECNL. On the boys side there would be one MLSN team and one ECNL top team per age group.

The group that losses out in this situation is the lower top tier teams from a league with a large number of top teams. The group that wins is the league who's teams aren't ranked as highly but just happen to be the opposite of the BY or SY group with a large number of top teams.

Here's another weird thing that could occur. Say 99% of the leagues in the nation were BY and one rec league was SY. You'd end up with one top BY team that represented the best team of 99% of the teams playing. But you'd also have another SY top team that represented 1% on the teams playing. Someone that didn't understand the the makeup of the BY vs SY grouping would assume the SY2010 team and the BY2010 team were equivalent when they are not.

I really think you've concocted a pretty convoluted solution to a problem that won't really exist by the time this all comes to pass, and described all the possible complications of same. I'm pretty confident it's not going to be nearly as bad, and even if it were, it would only be transitionary while all the leagues that matter got in sync.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Nobody of importance cares about rankings. Only parents care due to ego/pride.

We all want to believe this about ourselves, but unfortunately we're all flawed. However much it matters, or doesn't matter, can be applied to the score of a game, position in a standings bracket, or relative team strength ratings. A consistent argument could be made that none of it matters a whit, or all of it is terribly important - while the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle depending on the individual perspective.

I don't think it's correct that nobody of importance cares about rankings.