An NPI webinar today confirmed a few facts but also missed a potential opportunity to assuage some doubts.
The confirmed facts are that all losses count and the NPI database will be withheld until traditional regional ranking time.
Literature leading up to the dials being set said losses that increase NPI and wins that lower NPI (after the minimum threshold was reached) would not be included. It was said on multiple occasions today that all losses count toward a team’s NPI.
One of the NPI’s major selling points, to me, was that there were frequently updated data to pore over. However, the data created will not be seen publicly until mid to late October at a to-be-determined online location. Daily NPI iterations that I think we could have opportunity to view has been deemed, if I got the gist, not useful enough to publish. I guess I am unsure why more, frequent objective information is not encouraged. NPI is being (or certainly could be) tabulated daily. Allow us to parse that NPI. Or even misinterpret it, as seemingly assumed. You bought the software. Use it. Publish it.
The potential missed opportunity is a small detail but an important one. My sense of the NCAA’s sentiment around the NPI rollout is one of business as usual. Not much has changed in terms of reaching the Pool C endgame — challenge yourself in nonconference, get some signature wins and we will see you at regionals (paraphrasing, of course). The NPI dial-setters used three seasons of data and selections to vaguely mimic what the committees have rewarded. The easiest way to relay that “Business as usual” is not just a perception is to say how many Pool C selections would have been different over the past three season while using the 2024 NPI dials. No specifics. Just say X-number of teams would have been different in 2021/2022/2023 if we had used 2024 NPI. It would not be a knock or validation of the those committees nor a validation or knock on NPI if those facts were disclosed — the fields were chosen in different manners — but it seemed like an obvious agenda point to include. The information is available. Share it.
-Ricky Nelson
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