AIA responds to Tribune’s power point claims
Brian Bolitho, the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s director of business media, responded to the Tribune’s claims that there could be a flaw in the power points system with a guest blog post on ArizonaSports.com Wednesday.
Although the AIA has failed to acknowledge an error and refused to meet with local engineer John Carrieres about the problem, Bolitho said that ‘to say the AIA is ‘ignoring’ an error is incorrect.’
He goes on to say that ‘the current system does not present an error as the formula is working as created by the committee that represented the member schools.’
While this may technically be true, it fails to address the fact that the power points system was flawed from the get-go. Just because it was passed by the executive board doesn’t mean there isn’t a flaw.
When Bolitho was asked in an email: ‘Does this mean it’s possible that playing more matches (Maryvale playing 14) could be an inherent advantage for the sake of Power Points?’ his answer was ‘No’.
This is the crux of the issue. At this point, there is mounting evidence that playing in more games is, in fact, an inherent advantage.
The point here is not to assess blame. The goal for the AIA should be to fix this error so that future teams are not unfairly punished because of the number of games they played.
If this system stays in place for the spring season, softball or baseball teams could schedule more games and benefit no matter the outcome. It could get ugly.
Bolitho said the AIA is paying close attention to the sectional tournament results this week and will bring those findings to a board meeting on Feb. 21.
Hey, at least that’s progress, but the spring season is going to be very interesting if the power points are not adjusted soon.
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So the teams like Basha who play in a very tough section get penalized. Too bad the AIA has no foresight here. 1st of all how can you allow automatic bids for sections when teams dont play each other?? Dump Sectionals and go back to Regions where you can have 6 or 8 teams all play each other and the champion is in. Travel is still the same if you have all the regions geographically mapped. Just dumb.
How is it that St. Mary’s girls basketball team gets ranked #1 prior to the seeding for state and after sectionals despite winning all their games they are suddenly ranked #3? And they initially had 2 fewer games before sectionals and should have been ranked lower in their sectional seeding. Seems that AIA plays with the numbers (power rankings) to get the match-ups they want not how teams actually played during the season.
What happened to AIA’s 7 pillars of character and level playing field for all student/athletes? Seems interesting that AIA got rid of Regionals but they go to Sectional Tournament system, yet AIA was complaining of lack of funding of games in the different divisions within 5A, 4A, etc. They both are still same amount of money and feel need to go back to Regionals AND return the regular season schedule to 2 games per week. I thought we cared about our student/athlete performances on and off the playing fields.
I thought AIA didn’t have money yet games are played at both ASU and job.arena while charging $8 for sectionals and $10 for state tournament. Way to go AIA in supporting Title 1 and small schools!!! (NOT)
Here is a must read on the PPTs as it really opens up to show not the behind the scenes that John is talking about with codes etc. but how it is a huge money grab for sectionals and how it affects teams personally:
Great Article: A Must read by Matt Hickman Daily Herald:
Superfluous sectionals only hurt AIA�s low approval rating http://www.svherald.com/content/sports/2012/02/11/248509
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