2007-2008 Power Rankings

REVISED RANKINGS

Yes, I’m finally back. I’m not in a good mood though. The stress in making these rankings is starting to take its toll. It’s a thankless job, as my hours of watching game film and scouring through hundreds of tab summaries often go unrewarded. But I have a commitment to my faithful readers to continue to give them a quality product, and with that I will not disappoint.

Also, I find it fascinating that the most response I’ve ever received for a set of rankings involved the rankings of teams who did not get a gold bid, most of whom would not crack the top 60 rankings. This is why, I will now only rank teams with records no better than 4-4 at regionals. This newfound popularity has gotten to my head, and there’s nothing more I’d like than to skyrocket in the all-time rankings for thread views and replies. If this is the only way it can be done, then it’s got to be done.

Needless to say, this edition of the rankings is all about business. No more wisecracks, no dancing around the hot-button issues. What you’re getting is the pure, unfiltered truth. And I won’t apologize if I come off as angry.

Let’s do this.

PROGNOSTICATOR’S DARLING TEAM

It’s official. As of today, I am divorcing myself from Harvard. It’s a bittersweet ending because there is no good reason for it to end. But I think in the long run, it’s best for both of us. Harvard will now not have the additional pressure of having a target on their backs because of my habitual public swooning over them. I, of course, will regain some of my credibility that has been robbed from me by the Prog haters.

So starting right now, the new Prognosticator Darling Team is…..

(drumroll)

The Cornell University Mock Trial Organization
(www.cornellmocktrial.org)

If you think about it, this is a perfect union. They need a defender after everyone proclaimed UCLA the second best team in their division last year despite Cornell’s second place trophy. The Bowerman-Rozental-Arfa-Shabib foursome could do some damage in a back-alley brawl against the Cooper-Kerns-Snidow trio from Harvard.

Simply put, Cornell’s time has come and I’m jumping on the bandwagon just in time. Now it’s time to sit back and just wait for the dividends of this merger, so to speak, to pay off.

To those teams that were not selected, you just weren’t trying hard enough. And to Harvard, we’ll always have the memories.

So while the rumors that Anatoly Rozental is Prognosticator begin to make their way around AMTA, here’s what else is on everybody’s mind:

THE PROG MAILBAG ™

Last mailbag, I actually forgot to answer a question that had been raised. So I’ll go ahead and answer it right out of the gate, and to make amends, I will have a bonus question/comment at the end of the ‘Bag, Hell, let’s just call that segment "The Bottom of the Bag™."

Why did Furman and NYU switch spots if both were idle? – philbertk

Well, I can’t divulge my information or my sources, but let’s just say a question I had before the silver tournaments was answered, and indicated that a change was in order. Both teams are very good and won their respective regionals, but Furman gets an edge based on this information, as well as the fact that they qualified two teams to nationals, which is somewhat related to the first point. I just feel more confident in Furman at this stage of the game than I do NYU, but not by much.

Wow...did this [that “this looks like one of the worst gold fields top-to-bottom in recent memory”] really need to be said?? To each his own, I guess. – thekingishere

Wow, indeed. It looks like we’ve reached a new high (or is it low?) in Perjuries hypersensitivity. I’ve been called out in the past, and perhaps rightfully so, for singling out particular teams, but now I’m being criticized for offending all of the 64 teams that are competing at golds, which transitive property tells me means that I am also offending every other school who wasn’t “good enough” to make it to the worst gold field in recent memory.

Look, this season there is no clear-cut favorite to win the national title. There is no feeling of inevitability that existed with Virginia the last two years or with UCLA the two years before that, and Iowa the year before that. And yes, there exists the possibility that the lack of a clear favorite means that all teams are stronger across the board and just that no one team is that much better than the others. But I also don’t think that any team this year would have a chance against any of the last 5 or so title teams.

The same thing exists with top attorneys in the country. There is no Dan Young or Amanda Bonn or Lawrence Hilton or Samantha Bateman or Ryan Faulconer this year.

All this means is that there’s more uncertainty and probably more excitement. This tournament could go in any number of direction, and there’s a better chance than ever that an unexpected team wins the whole thing.

Just don’t get overly sensitive on me over this. And while I’m at it, Netflix called, and they want you to return those Audrey Hepburn movies.

Although I'm sure everyone (myself included) appreciates the hard work that goes into these rankings, the pretentious, self-righteous tone of Prog's posts annoys me to high heaven. – darkarmour

I don’t see why it should. The funny thing is that this post came directly after one of the more tame and factual editions of the Rankings in a while. So while my instinctual reaction is to banish you from ever reading my column again and encourage everyone to take away some of your karma points, I’m going to take a mature approach instead.

Being a man of the people, I will let all of you decide whether a change in my tone is needed. If you decide it is, I have no problem abandoning my trademarked wit and cleverness, and giving y’all my “Everybody is a Winner” rankings, which will just list every team in AMTA in alphabetical order, so as to not offend anyone. And my mailbag will simply answer questions in the most concise way possible. So start posting your opinions on the matter in this thread.

Wow, Prog writes the best post in the history of perjuries, and it sits for 3 hours without any love?!?! What is this board coming to? Prog, your latest offering is the perfect blend of on-point analysis and humor. – No Time

Tell me about it. I’m not going to make any Rodney Dangerfield or Aretha Franklin references, but Perjuries’ all-time Karma points leader is in serious need of some respect. These columns are time consuming, and all I get is less positive feedback from people and more demands to do things a certain way. Speaking of which…

I think it’s giving too much credit to take a team's past years' performance into account in a rankings system. Different people compete different years. Sometimes coaches change. The rankings should be based upon current season performance. With that said, what is the purpose of a top-fifty ranking if there are teams in the top 50 that aren't at the championship tournament?

I say revise the rankings to reflect performance, not past reputation. – Always the foreigner

Well, I suppose that if someone like Alan Greenspan had people telling him how to do his job, then it’s only to be expected that people would tell me how to do mine as well. That being said, you do have excellent points: competitors change, coaches change, and this season’s performance can indicate this season’s strength. That is why I have taken all of these into consideration when making these rankings the entire year!!

That being said, you also have to realize that past performance in past years could also be indicative of the current year’s strength. What if the competitors from a top team last year don’t change, the team tries new things during the year and they don’t reach that level of success at first, but slowly come around to it? (Gee, can you think of anyone that fits this example?) Am I supposed to erase last year’s performance from my memory, including All-American awards and final round appearances? No, I’m going to give it some due weight. Similarly, if a team does have different personnel, but has the same coach, and that coach has consistently placed his teams among the top in the country each year, should I not consider that?

If anything, I think I’m worried that I’m putting too much weight on this season’s performances, and I’m not going enough with my gut feelings. Maybe I shouldn’t raise a team too high in the rankings for having two teams make golds if I don’t believe that either team has much of a chance to win the title. Or maybe a first place regional trophy doesn’t mean as much as I’ve given it credit for, and I should instead give credit to the second place team or (gasp!) the third place team that had to qualify through silver. And don’t get me started on the issue of whether every gold team is better than every non-gold team. I think we all know the answer to that, and there’s a team in St. Louis, or perhaps in Cincinnati, who would finish in the top 10 at golds, but won’t get that chance.

Prognosticator, when evaluating splits (as you surely must do when comprising your trademarked Rankings), how much weight do you give to differentials? I ask because many on this board treat their own +14, -1 rounds as instances where they "clearly" got cheated by a loony judge. I disagree; I don't see any reason to necessarily assign more weight to the larger differential, as most seem to do. Please provide the definitive answer. – AndrewLias

There is no singular way to evaluate a split, in my opinion. However, I think the best way to evaluate a split is by coming to terms with the main fact: one judge just thought you weren’t as good as the other team. I don’t really care how they came to this determination, because with this activity you will rarely ever know how you are being judged. As far as the differentials, they are important too, to an extent. I don’t see the +14, -1 split to mean that both ballots should have been won by the +14 team. I do see it as meaning the +14 judge felt much stronger about the team she had winning than the -1 judge did (and perhaps that it is more likely that another random judge would side with the more convinced judge, but even that’s iffy). But not knowing the scoring range the judge uses, it’s hard to definitively come to that determination. And I do believe in the occasional “crazy judge,” but in most cases, I think that the team that lost the ballot failed to convey something they should have.

Another interesting thing to consider is what to do with ties. This season, one of my concerns with Virginia A is that they had a round where both judges tied them against George Washington (and I’m fairly certain that this wasn’t even GW’s top team). What this tells me is that that both judges failed to believe that Virginia A was the better team. So I would probably treat this as worse than a normal split ballot. The same applies with Harvard’s performance at silvers. They had two tied ballots in the tournament, to go along with a loss, which meant three judges didn’t think they were better than their opponents. I think it really matters, and that in terms of winning a national title, previous ties aren’t much different than previous losses.

I think both Loras and ASU get to Gold, but damned if I could tell you who they replace. – Herb

Sorry to do this to you Herb, but you were the only person who posted predictions on this thread, so I had to put them out there again to show everyone that this is no easy task. So, for the record, Herb is 0-2, while I was (with Georgetown’s bid) 5-for-14. I’m still shocked about the Waukegan results, which I think may have ended up being the most difficult silver of them all. Here’s hoping I have more success with my upcoming Gold Prediction Special, which will be published next week (more on this later).

I suppose the key to getting ranked in this is to have a cabal on perjuries. – skopenhagen57

Well, I’ll abandon the Luke Brewer jokes, or the insinuation that Ohio State gets tons of Perjuries love because of them, and instead I’ll answer this question seriously. No, you don’t have to have an army of Perjuries soldiers for your team to get recognized. Surely it would help in the unforeseen occasion where I err in my rankings and need someone from that particular team to send me information that would set me straight. But the reason UCF is ranked third in my non-golds rankings is because they’re a team that would likely finish ranked anywhere from 6th to 20th in their nationals division, who had two third place teams at regionals, and who had the misfortune of facing the only team I felt strongly enough about to predict at finishing silvers at 8-0 (oh, and they just happened to be the only team that did) in the fourth round of a tournament that they were the second best team going into that round.

Also, I think there’s merit to the argument that it can only make your team better by having multiple people on your team that devote hours to the activity, who in the hours they don’t spend practicing with their teams are online talking about mock trial to other, perhaps some with more experience. I can think of two “surprise” teams, Minnesota-Morris and St. Louis, who were probably significantly helped by members of their teams who do spend a lot of time on these boards.

So to answer your question more directly, no, the amount of people a team has on Perjuries is not taken into account in the rankings, but maybe it should.

I have to tell you that, had we gotten an elusive gold bid, we were really looking forward to making Prog fan club shirts to wear at Gold. – starrydecisus

To be honest with you, I only ranked you that high because I wanted you to wear those shirts. OK, I violated my no joking rule, but it is unfortunate that the UCF “cabal” will not be representing the ol’ Rankings thread in St Paul. But worry not, because mocksluzer was supposed to be on this task, so I’m sure it will get done.

At the very least, I'd at least like to understand why [Case Western Reserve is] ranked so far below teams that we beat at the tournament either in record or head-to-head. I think you can at least explain why you've made the judgments you did. – Leviathan

Well, if I had to do things over again, I probably would consider having Case Western in the rankings, but even if they were to make it, odds are it would not be as high as you’d like. Here’s some rationale for you for my thought process in comparing Case Western to other teams, though:

Illinois-Chicago – This team out-placed Case Western at the Polar Bear invitational (at 6-2) and at regionals (also at 6-2). They did not impress with a 3-4-1 record at silver, but they did lose only to second-place Notre Dame, a loss/tie to fourth-place Northwestern, and a split against a Washington-St. Louis team (who finished in 10th place). They hit a very tough schedule, and given that they were ranked well above Case Western before silvers, I didn’t drop them too far. And while Illinois-Chicago’s loss to Case Western was pretty bad, it was their B team that lost. This is not enough for Case Western to leapfrog Illinois-Chicago.

Grinnell – This is one that was very close, as the teams finished with identical records and were next to each other in the final placement. Grinnell got the edge because it had a better regionals season, and because I think they were more impressive at silvers than Case Western. Their three losses came against 6-2 teams (one of which was a split), and their St. John’s/Ben’s win was more impressive to me than the Illinois-Chicago B win. With common opponent to look at, Grinnell’s round against third-place Northwood was closer.

Loras – This one may be based on reputation and where they started out in the rankings, but Loras also had a very difficult schedule. They only lost both ballots to first-place Wisconsin-Madison, and split ballots with two 6-2 teams (Washington-St. Louis, who was ranked first in my rankings, and Illinois). To top it off, Loras had the best win of anyone, beating 5-3 Loyola-Chicago (with whom Case Western split with). I just don’t think that Case Western would have fared much better had they had a CS of 24, and Loras got the boost given their better success leading up to this point.

Overall, these three teams each faced at least two top ten teams (and each took at least one ballot from them), whereas Case Western only faced one (which it lost both ballots to). Taken together, these three teams’ ranking above Case Western is justified.

Dear Prognosticator,

I think you've ranked our team too low.

Our record shows that we're an excellent team and should be moved up in your rankings… If you remove the rounds we lost due to poor judging, we're basically undefeated.

True, we didn't exactly win our region -- but we play in a really difficult region… If you need any more proof that our regional ranks among the toughest in the country, consider the fact that every season our regional qualifies teams to the national tournament and the national championship tournament.

Finally, our record doesn't even do us justice. We have a really talented team of people who work very hard. When we lost ballots, it was because we had people who were abroad or sick or having an uncharacteristically bad day. When we won ballots, that was a more accurate indicator of our future performance.

I demand that you either rank us higher or explain in detail why you consistently refuse to recognize our excellence! Still, part of me hopes you continue to underrate us. Our natural desire to win is nothing compared with the motivation that comes from being slighted by a lone anonymous Internet poster. If you move us down in the rankings, that might just be what it takes to propel us to the national championship.

With absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever,
– AndrewLias

Best. Post. Ever. In fact, AndrewLias, if I am ever on vacation and need a guest host, if you will, you are number one in the Rolodex (and not because it’s alphabetical and “A” is at the top). I do think it would be fun to have someone try to fill these shoes some time. So anyone else want to be Jay Leno to my Johnny Carson?

People tend to forget that although Prog's rankings are amazingly thorough, entertaining and more legitimate than the BCS ever will be, they are still somewhat subjective. – MT4e

Now, MT4e, if you want to be a part of Prognosticator’s Darling Team, you cannot make any disparaging remarks about me. So while these may be my own opinions, they are certainly objective, and have already been cited as a source in other threads for analysis.

With so much time before golds, will you undertake any rankings other than gold finishes? Here are categories people would have a lot of fun with: top ten attorneys in the country (not necessarily at golds); top ten witnesses; and five teams most likely to capture spirit of AMTA at golds. – Private Message

This is a fun question to end on. However, it is not the aforementioned bonus at the end of the ‘Bag.

Let’s go one-by-one, but with I’m only worried about predicting gold awards, not my personal ten best. Also, I’ll only include one person per list per team:

Ten Attorneys Most Likely to Win an Award (alphabetically):

Ben Adams (Furman)
Alex Bowerman (Cornell)
Co’Relous Bryant (NYU)
J’me Forrest (UC-Berkeley)
Ryan Guptil (Georgetown)
Zachary Hill (Rhodes)
Alanna Holt (Michigan)
Koby Kirkland (Texas)
J.J. Snidow (Harvard)
Tara Tedrow (Wake Forest)

The Next Fifteen (in order): Gus Lazarus (Miami), Shikha Gupta (Virginia), William Lawrence (Morehouse), Katy Groover (Richmond), Staci Windsor (Bellarmine), Allison Smith (Bowling Green), Kristeena Winkler (Eastern Kentucky), Nila Bala (Stanford), Van Everett (Drake), Andrew Blackwell (George Washington), Stephen Corby (South Carolina-Upstate), Barrett Anderson (Iowa), Emery Reusch (St. Louis), John Robinson (Yale), Cameron Linden (Air Force)

Ten Witnesses Most Likely to Win an Award (alphabetically):

Alex Boyajian (Virginia)
Guy Edouard (Harvard)
Anthony Franklin (Texas)
Michael Griffin (NYU)
Miles Prince (UCLA)
Nathan Robinson (Brandeis)
Laura Sheffield (Weber State)
Rich Shephard (UC-Berkeley)
Eric van Kleist (South Carolina-Upstate)
Paul Wiley (Virginia)

The Next Ten (in order): David Reichbach (UC-Berkeley), Peter Youngblood (Wake Forest), Peter Fuller (Southern California), Tony Heaphy (Michigan), Jasmine Johnson (Rhodes), Jay Fenton (Hamline), Mike Kilgarriff (Loyola-Chicago), Nathan Smith (UCLA), Samy Harmoush (Columbia), Michael Smith (UC-Irvine)

Teams Most Likely to Win Spirit of AMTA Award (alphabetically):

Middle Tennessee State
Northwood
Texas
UC-Berkeley
Weber State

While I’m at it, I’ll also throw my hat in the ring in some other Perjuries fodder:

Hottest Mocker: Kareem Shabib, one of my Big Red from Cornell.
Best Opener: J’me Forrest from UC-Berkeley
Best Closer: J.J. Snidow from Harvard. Yeah, I know. Old habits just die hard.

The Bottom of the Bag™

And finally, The Bottom of the Bag. This will be another additional feature to the Rankings with each Mailbag, a place for the most noteworthy question/comment of to be answered. This week, since I didn’t answer a previous question/comment in my last Mailbag, I have decided to even things out by answering a future question/comment in this installment of the ‘Bag. Here it is:

Prog, I apologize for my prior posts condemning the tone in which you communicate your wonderful rankings and commentary. I’m still quite bitter that you did not predict my team would win two gold bids, and I foolishly decided to criticize you, despite your immense contribution to these message boards. I deserve the drop in karma points that you alluded to, even though you chose to have mercy on me. Again, I sincerely apologize. – darkarmour

Apology accepted. Just never do it again.

***

THE TOP FIFTY(-THREE) ®

After much deliberation, many sleepless nights, and a fierce two-out-of-three battle of Roshambo, I have decided to rank only those schools going to gold (53 of them). Also, as I alluded to above, I am making some drastic changes in the rankings. For the most part, they reflect teams I believe are most likely to win the national championship. Simple as that. Oh, and we have a new top-ranked team.

Following these rankings, I will also include a list of 7 teams that are not attending gold, and where they would appear in these rankings had they been eligible The number next to the team indicates the team in these rankings that they would be above if included.

1. UC-Berkeley (LW: 2) [Idle]
2. Virginia (LW: 1) [Idle]
3. Furman (LW: 5) [4-3-1(9th) at Memphis]
4. NYU (LW: 6) [Idle]
5. Michigan (LW: 8) [Idle]
6. Texas (LW: 9) [8-0 (1st; gold) at Memphis]
7. Harvard (LW: 15) [Idle]
8. UCLA (LW: 3) [Idle]
9. Pittsburgh (LW: 7) [Idle]
10. Rhodes (LW: 4) [Idle]
11. Miami (LW: 12) [Idle]
12. Southern California (LW: 11) [5-2-1 (6th) at Tucson]
13. Cornell (LW: 14) [Idle]
14. Georgetown (LW: 17) [6-2 (5th; gold) at Waukegan]
15. Bellarmine (LW: 21) [Idle]
16. George Washington (LW: 10) [Idle]
17. Wake Forest (LW: 20) [Idle]
18. Loyola-Chicago (LW: 18) [5-3 (13th) at Waukegan]
19. Chicago (LW: 13) [Idle]
20. Northwestern (LW: 24) [6-2 (4th; gold) at Waukegan]
21. Iowa (LW: 19) [5-2-1 (9th) at Waukegan]
22. Richmond (LW: 30) [4-4 at Memphis]
23. Duke (LW: 22) [3-5 at Memphis]
24. Morehouse (LW: 31) [Idle]
25. Brandeis (LW: 23) [Idle]
26. Washington & Lee (LW: 38) [6-2 (3rd; gold) at Memphis]
27. Stanford (LW: 49) [7-0-1 (1st; gold) and 7-1 (2nd; gold) at Tucson]
28. Eastern Kentucky (LW: 25) [Idle]
29. Columbia (LW: 33) [2-6 at Tucson]
30. Yale (LW: 27) [Idle]
31. Maryland (LW: 29) [Idle]
32. Penn State (LW: 32) [Idle]
33. Drake (LW: 34) [Idle]
34. Macalester (LW: 37) [Idle]
35. Villanova (LW: 35) [Idle]
36. Air Force (LW: 45) [6-2 (4th) at Tucson]
37. Tennessee (LW: 40) [Idle]
38. UC-Irvine (LW: 41) [Idle]
39. St. Louis (LW: 43) [Idle]
40. Hamline (LW: 44) [3-5 at Waukegan]
41. Princeton (LW: 46) [Idle]
42. Boston (LW: 50) [Idle]
43. Missouri-Kansas City (LW: 26) [3-4-1 at Waukegan]
44. Bowling Green (LW: 47) [3-4-1 at Waukegan]
45. Notre Dame (LW: 56) [6-1-1 (2nd; gold) and 3-5 at Waukegan]
46. Wisconsin-Madison (LW: 60) [7-1 (1st; gold) at Waukegan]
47. Mississippi (LW: 51) [Idle]
48. South Carolina-Upstate (LW: 52) [Idle]
49. Minnesota-Morris (LW: 54) [Idle]
50. Northwood (LW: Unranked) [6-2 (3rd; gold) at Waukegan]
51. Syracuse (LW: 55) [Idle]
52. Middle Tennessee State [LW: Unranked] [6-1-1 (2nd; gold) at Memphis]
53. Weber State [LW: Unranked] [6-2 (3rd; gold) at Tucson]

THE SEVEN WOULD’VE BEEN RANKED AND WHERE THEY WOULD BE RANKED ACCORDING TO THESE RANKINGS IF ELIGIBLES: Washington-St. Louis (18), Cincinnati (29), Central Florida (37), Illinois (48), Georgia Tech (49), Charleston (51), Kennesaw State (52)

This about does it. In keeping with my tradition of holding my next column ransom for information, I will not post my Gold Predictions Super Post Edition of the rankings. Which is really a shame, cause it will be special. What I will require is information necessary to make accurate predictions ABOUT EVERY TEAM in BOTH DIVISIONS. So if you’re on the team, faced the team at regionals, faced the team at silver, scrimmaged the team before nationals, or just have heard information about any of these teams, send it my way. If you don’t, I’ll just claim after golds that I predicted everything accurately, and you’re all going to have to digest through several darkarmour posts.

That’s it for now. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.