How does a college program make their schedule?

Trying to understand here...you have a website and sell a book with a subtitle, "Adjusting to Baseball, School, and Life as a Division 1 College Athlete"...but you're asking us how college schedules are made?

I am very confused.

At my school our head coach handles all the scheduling. There are certain parameters and barriers that have to be taken into account (i.e travel time/expenses). Conference games are set in stone annually and switch back and forth between location depending on the year. My coach attempts to schedule as good of a non-conference schedule as possible. In DIII, regional opponents are weighed to be a higher value than non-region opponents when it comes down to receiving at-large bids to the NCAA tournament after the conference playoffs are over, and therefore he tries to focus on only playing regional opponents. I believe in-region is considered to be anything inside 200 miles of our campus, but I could be wrong on that. If we do venture outside of our region it is generally a team that is a perennial national power, ranked in the top 25 and/or made a CWS appearance the year before. Our main conference rival is consistently ranked in the top 10 in the nation every year, so obtaining a good strength of schedule and tough in-region opponents is vital when vying for that at-large bid if we aren't able to pull out in the conference tournament.

Hello Justbaseball,

You are right I have a book out about my experiences playing college baseball but I have never pretended to be an expert about every area of college baseball. I am still learning a lot everyday and this topic came up while chatting about my book.

As a student-athlete I try to share college life from the perspective of a player. I didn't get to see a lot of the inner workings behind the scenes and still want to continue to learn. I am hoping I can use the knowledge of this board to learn about this side of the game that students don't get to see.

Ken

I will not pretend to be an expert in this area, but I've seen at least one message board where coaches exchange information about open dates:

http://www.collegebaseballinsider.com/opendates.html

This is a small percentage of available games, so there must be another way that they schedule those big school home & homes. I don't know how that works.

quote:

Originally posted by justbaseball:
Trying to understand here...you have a website and sell a book with a subtitle, "Adjusting to Baseball, School, and Life as a Division 1 College Athlete"...but you're asking us how college schedules are made?

I am very confused.

I always wondered how scheduling on the D1 college level worked also. It seems to me that many schools in warmer weather (and with the ability to charge for attendance), promise a "guarantee" to Northern teams looking for a place to play in a warmer climate. The terminology always sounded to me like a guaranteed win for the host team.

I always wondered how this worked? What would be considered a good or generous guarantee?

Was wondering as well. Sons college with a new HC on board that he will be attending starting in 2013 came out with his 2013 Freshman schedule a couple months ago. I am thinking he had the right to make any changes or schedule what HE wants and to help for recruiting purposes he made that schedule ASAP but had to maybe accept what schedule was already in place for 2012 season. Seems logical.

My team's Division 3 scheduling works similarly to the way JH described. Head coach does a good deal of the decision making, if not all of it. We've had the defending national champion, Marietta, come down in February for years now. I assume there is some mutual agreement, but probably not a contractual one.

To clarify on in-region opponents - at our level, at least, at-large postseason selection starts with in-region Win-Loss records. In-region strength of schedule is the next adjustment. There is a subjective aspect to it, in which tough out of region opponents may be considered.

What is in=region or out of region? Well, it's fairly arbitrary. The NCAA has it set up so that the amount of teams in each region is roughly the same. This allows some sense of fairness in playoff selection, since each region will be drawing from the same amount of teams. I say it's arbitrary because, for instance, a team from Maryland played in the South Regional here in Memphis last year. They are, in fact, a South region team. Same with Christopher Newport and eventual champion, Shenandoah. All well over 500 miles away from a fellow in-region opponent. I'd venture to guess in the case of the team from Maryland, there were more non-region teams within a given distance than in-region.

quote:

Originally posted by GoingwiththePitch:
Hello Justbaseball,
I have never pretended to be an expert about every area of college baseball. I am still learning a lot everyday and this topic came up while chatting about my book.
Ken

Ken, thanks for taking the high road in responding to the aggressive response to your original posting. It makes total sense for you to ask the question, and it make for an interesting thread.

Ken, RedSox fan,

I did not intend to make an 'aggressive response' to the question. I can see how you took it that way re-reading my words...perhaps I was in a hurry? I don't know...it wasn't intended to be.

I am sorry.

I was confused...genuinely confused.

I don't know (for sure) the answer to the question. I can only give you a little bit based on talking with one of my son's college coaches during recruitment. Conference schedule is set largely (completely?) by the conference. Out of conference schedule seemed to be set by the coach himself. He told us that he scheduled games with teams/coaches that he personally knew and was comfortable with. He also told us that his schedule was geared to have the highest RPI opponents he could find...based on team and their own conference affiliation. He must be pretty good at that because his team's SOS is regularly in the top-5 in the nation. His school is a perennial top-20 type of program and he is a 30+ year coach and alum from that school...so I would guess that he feels pretty comfortable generating that type of schedule.

I don't know how much oversight is provided by the AD. I assume there are budgetary consideration (e.g. travel), but beyond that I just don't know.

Hope that helps. Again, sorry if I sounded "aggressive." Wasn't intended.

I am not unserstanding why this would be such a difficult thing to figure out.

I also heard that there is a message board that coaches post opne dates. I am going to assume that most of the time it ism't the big D1 asking who wants to visit but the other way around.

RPI, SOS most likely is a big reason, northern schools get to come south to play in warmer weather, and eastern often goes west, against good competition. The prize is half of the gate fee, which smallwer programs desperately need as income. It's also easy to see that geography dictates who plays who out of conference.

I will also bet that coaches have relationships.

I've checked in on the website I posted only once in a while over the last 5-6 years as I've been a fan of college baseball long before my son became a candidate to play. Both big and small schools post there, but it appears to only "hook up" teams who have an open date for whatever reason.

As JH pointed out, the conference schedule is set "way in advance and set in stone", so the only scheduling left to the program is the out of conference schedule.

I followed this process originally as a fan of the two local teams (Arizona & ASU). So my perspective is skewed that way.

It appears, they both schedule with a similar philosophy, stay at home early against weaker teams, using the 60-70 degree afternoon temps to draw teams in and provide them with an ample opportunity to practice outside while they're here. It is not uncommon for either team to play 32-36 home games as a result of this early season, home slanted schedule.

After a few weekends of this, it gets progressively tougher. Usually a single weekend road trip and a few road trips for mid-week games before the conference schedule starts. The trend towards bigger RPI games occurs during this time frame. Usually a home & home (alternate years) with an RPI powerhouse is on the schedule. One year that'll be a big home series, next year its the "big" road trip.

Around spring break, the PAC-12 schedule takes over with only a few weekday games (which they NEVER had back when they could start in late January)and one weekend off for out of conference after that.

Before I posted this, I checked both schedules to see if the above was correct and it "kinda" was. ASU (29 home games at Packard) "travels" across town to Surprise early for their tournament & four games that could be easily considered home in early March and then makes their "big" trip to Long Beach State, then basically stays true to formula. Arizona (35 home games) stays home with Auburn during their second weekend, which is pretty early for that kind of test. They then return to formula with only a mid-week two game trip to Rice as a "big out of conference trip".

How do they decide all this? Again, I am by no means an expert, but I suspect they have their "formula" and find schools that fit their formula 3-5 years out.

I suspect a team like Harvard (who is traveling to Arizona in early March) probably has their own formula, which includes traveling to someplace warm early, to get some work outside and help the RPI (if they can win a game against a big school).

I know my own alma marter, Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute (the other RPI) always spends a week in Florida over spring break with other D-III teams trying to get 7 or 8 games in before going home and trying to complete the rest of their schedule during the occasional blizzard. They get some diversity for their RPI before heading to a conference with only a few other teams.

Again, my opinions are just conjecture based on observations I've made over time. I'm sure somebody else here will find this thread and help out.

My older brother went to RPI, engineer.

Conference games are set in stone for years. My son left Clemson in 2007 and they still play the same non conference teams as when he was there, give or take a new one added and subtracted each year. South Carolina, Georgia, Coastal, College of Charleston, Elon, Western Carolina are all regulars and mostly due to being within regional distance. Due to so many schools now in the ACC, conference games begin immediately. Playing games against SEC schools help boost their SOS (Strength of Schedule) as would a non conference team playing at Clemson.

For smaller programs, the better the program becomes, the better programs they will seek out to play. This is great for player development.

I believe in D1 baseball (not sure about the other divisions), the importance of playing against harder teams (for everyone) is essential for consideration for a post season berth, if they don't win an automatic bid.

Yeah, RPI. Great school and they are upgrading the facilities. My uncle was on the board and named business school after him.

There are some great insights provided here. I wonder if the Athletic Director ever gets involved with the scheduling depending on what their goal is for the program. Is it left up to the coach alone to decide if he wants to schedule as many big games down south to make the schedule look impressive vs. scheduling a lot of local games to beef up the wins.

I know we were forced to stop playing one of our rivals b/c of a falling out so there are certainly politics involved as well.

I always wanted to play more teams in established conferences such as the Big East and CAA, and didn't know if the reason we didn't was they didn't want to play us, "we" wanted to play easier games, or something else. In basketball it is discussed in depth b/c of March Madness, but in baseball everyone seems to take the schedules that come out as inevitable and accept it. Quite interesting.

Ken

Hey!!! My father went to RPI. Small world.

RPI is indeed a good school. I put in four very difficult years there to get my engineering degree, but it has served me well.

When I was there (84-88) I remember seeing the baseball team practicing on the football field early in the spring, hitting fly balls to kids who couldn't catch them. They've come a long way with the facilities and quality of their team. They put a good team on the field every year.

I went back six years ago (for the first time since graduation) when son was playing in his 12U Cooperstown year. We went the last week of Cooperstown, so school was actually in session.

I would've said it was 3-4 years ago but the solid math background over rides the failing memory. I couldn't believe the positive changes they'd made in academic facilities, student diversity and athletic facilities. Plus the persistent 30 knot wind in sub zero temperatures was still a few weeks away.

I sat my son down several times and asked him to "think about it", but he wanted to go D-1 and stay local.

quote:

Originally posted by JPontiac:
My team's Division 3 scheduling works similarly to the way JH described. Head coach does a good deal of the decision making, if not all of it. We've had the defending national champion, Marietta, come down in February for years now. I assume there is some mutual agreement, but probably not a contractual one.

To clarify on in-region opponents - at our level, at least, at-large postseason selection starts with in-region Win-Loss records. In-region strength of schedule is the next adjustment. There is a subjective aspect to it, in which tough out of region opponents may be considered.

What is in=region or out of region? Well, it's fairly arbitrary. The NCAA has it set up so that the amount of teams in each region is roughly the same. This allows some sense of fairness in playoff selection, since each region will be drawing from the same amount of teams. I say it's arbitrary because, for instance, a team from Maryland played in the South Regional here in Memphis last year. They are, in fact, a South region team. Same with Christopher Newport and eventual champion, Shenandoah. All well over 500 miles away from a fellow in-region opponent. I'd venture to guess in the case of the team from Maryland, there were more non-region teams within a given distance than in-region.

From the NCAA D3 base baseball General handbook:

quote:

Each Division III men’s baseball team is assigned to one of eight geographic "evaluation" regions. The primary criteria
used for ranking and selection is based on how a team performs against other Division III "in-region" teams. In addition,
results versus Division III opponents within 200 miles or less of a team’s campus, but outside its assigned geographic
region, will be considered "in-region" and part of the primary selection/ranking criteria. All conference competition is
considered in region. And finally, the championships committee has expanded the definition of an in-region contest to
include "all competition within an institutions membership geographical region (Bylaw 4.13.1.1)." The country is divided
into four membership regions. For most institutions, the change in definition should result in an expanded list of potential
in-region opponents than in the past.

NCAA D3 General Handbook

So to be in region the school can be with in 200 miles of the school in question even if they are set up in different regions by the NCAA.

I believe this rule is why you see a lot of schools playing teams from their own region when going on their spring trip. It is important to do well against strong oppenents in your region if you want a "at large bid".

It is why NCAC teams will play several OAC teams, during the spring trip. It is an opportunity to face them with your top pitching and hopefully get a win againt the likes of Hiedelburg or Marietta, instead of using a weekday pitcher during the conference schedule when you come back home. Of course you may face one of their conference pitchers as well.