Big congrats to our women's team - what an outstanding win over the nation's top-ranked team! And yeah, must really suck to be UNC and work so hard only to get a grossly underseeded opponent this early in the tournament.
Without knowing tons about the world of women's tennis, it seems like the sport would benefit from a ranking system similar to college football during the BCS era, should they want to retain computer metrics. For the first half of the season, the focus was on the AP and Coaches rankings, and then mid-way through, switched over to the BCS rankings once there were sufficient metrics to make good judgments. Or maybe something more like the College Football Committee, which does manual rankings but takes lots of stats into consideration. Regardless, when we're beating higher ranked teams almost 9 times out of 10, it's abundantly clear we are being systematically underranked year after year. That does a disservice not only to us, but also those highly ranked teams that I'm sure would love to avoid Stanford as long as possible.
Re: this being the result of our light schedule, in professional tennis, the rankings reward playing a certain number of tournaments in order to incentivize participation, which is the way the sport monetizes itself. But I don't think the college tennis tournaments are making anyone any money, so a rankings system that punishes schools that prioritize their students' academics and minimize mid-week travel seems perverse, to say the least. This should really be addressed, along with the requirement of a winning record, so as to obviate any future Razerback-esque shenanigans.
Without knowing tons about the world of women's tennis, it seems like the sport would benefit from a ranking system similar to college football during the BCS era, should they want to retain computer metrics. For the first half of the season, the focus was on the AP and Coaches rankings, and then mid-way through, switched over to the BCS rankings once there were sufficient metrics to make good judgments. Or maybe something more like the College Football Committee, which does manual rankings but takes lots of stats into consideration. Regardless, when we're beating higher ranked teams almost 9 times out of 10, it's abundantly clear we are being systematically underranked year after year. That does a disservice not only to us, but also those highly ranked teams that I'm sure would love to avoid Stanford as long as possible.
Re: this being the result of our light schedule, in professional tennis, the rankings reward playing a certain number of tournaments in order to incentivize participation, which is the way the sport monetizes itself. But I don't think the college tennis tournaments are making anyone any money, so a rankings system that punishes schools that prioritize their students' academics and minimize mid-week travel seems perverse, to say the least. This should really be addressed, along with the requirement of a winning record, so as to obviate any future Razerback-esque shenanigans.