EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions in this Mailbag do not reflect an official viewpoint of CHSAA.
In this installment of the CHSAANow.com Mailbag, we tackle the question of the next CHSAA commissioner, football’s RPI standings, and more.
To ask a question for the next Mailbag, use this form, or ask on Twitter: Tweet to @jryancasey
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I’ve heard that CHSAA is hiring a new commissioner. Who is it going to be?
— Erin, Highlands Ranch
Man. Not even going to ease into this mailbag, are we?
I don’t know who the next commissioner is going to be after Paul Angelico retires next summer. Actually, no one knows — because applications aren’t even being accepted until January.
We’ve heard some names batted around, but I don’t really want to feed into a speculation machine.
Here’s what we do know: the Board of Directors, who will be making the hire, has published its timeline. The job will be officially posted on Jan. 2, 2016, and applications will be taken until Feb. 14. The new hire will be announced at the April Legislative Council meeting, which falls on April 20.
The Board has opened up the job to anyone who wants to apply.
This is the first time since 1986 that the hiring process has actually been opened up. (That does not mean that there won’t be internal candidates.) That was four commissioners ago, when the Association hired Ray Plutko from California. He was only in charge for four years before returning to California.
In 1990, after Plutko left the Association, The Los Angeles Times wrote that he “turned CHSAA from a lethargic watchdog into a highly visible office.”
Here is Ray Plutko’s legacy: he hired much of the current staff, built the building where the office currently resides in Aurora, set up the current committee structure, as well as the modern classification system.
Since Plutko, the Board has internally hired Bob Ottewill (1990-2002), Bill Reader (2002-10) and Paul Angelico (2010-present) as the commissioners. Each of them served as Associate Commissioner prior to being hired as Commissioner.
All this is to say that we’re headed into relatively uncharted territory.
Thing is, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Though I advocate for it more often than not, change can absolutely be scary. I love our current staff. We are a close-knit family, as cliche as that sounds. And having worked in other professional environments before CHSAA, I know that’s not always the case.
We’re going to lose a lot when Paul retires. (We’ll touch on that later this season.) Add in the fact that Associate Commissioner Tom Robinson is also retiring, and I’m at a loss. They are the Association’s rudder, and it’s scary to not know where we’ll be headed.
Both Paul and Tom have consistently said that things will be fine without them, that the Association has gone through transition before, and will again. I know they’re right, and that we will hire great people as their replacements.
But, no, I do not know who that’s going to be. We will absolutely keep you updated throughout the process, though.
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Why isn’t football’s RPI posted like the other sports?
— Sharon, Commerce City
This is a question we’ve been getting a lot recently, so thank you for asking. There are two reasons it isn’t published yet.
Each of the fall sports (save for football, for now) have daily feeds that update on CHSAARPI.com. This is something we set up with baseball last spring, and was easy to transition to field hockey, boys soccer, softball and volleyball this fall. The reason for that is because the formula is exactly the same: just the basic RPI formula.
That’s not the case with football, which has opted to use a classification modifier because of the relatively short season (compared to those other sports).
We have worked with our official stats partner, MaxPreps, since the summer to nail down a feed that would show accurate data while taking this classification modifier into account, but the programming has proven to be more challenging than we anticipated. We are getting closer, however.
Internally, we are keeping all the RPI standings for all sports manually on an Excel spreadsheet, so we do have the accurate football data, and we are monitoring it.
We haven’t manually published those football RPI standings because there is not enough data to make it meaningful yet.
Traditionally, we haven’t published football’s computer data (think Wild Card points) until after Week 6 for that same reason. If you were monitoring RPI data for softball, volleyball (or whatever sport), when most teams had played three or four games early in the season, you know that was also the case for those sports.
So, here’s the short answer: We’re still working on the feed, and if the automatic feed still isn’t accurately displaying data after Week 6, we will publish the football RPI standings manually at that point.
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What happens to the RPI if a team forfeits a game?
— Nate, Colorado Springs
It just counts as a loss for the team that forfeit, and a win for the team that receives the forfeit.
One thing we may look at in the future is adjusting how to handle if a team were to drop a program after the season begins, because that could possibly really negatively affect all of their opponents in the OWP column.
We have a few possibilities in mind about how to adjust dealing with this, and will look at that over the summer in advance of the 2017-18 season.
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I was just wondering if there is an all-time team records for all the Colorado high school football teams.
— Mike
We have a football record book that we try to update pretty regularly, but we do not keep track of individual teams’ win/loss records, if that is what you are asking.
I like that idea, though. Maybe it’s a project we can work on.
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In last April’s meeting of the Legislative Council it said the 3A consolation bracket has been modified. Modified as in being done away with?
— Chris, Pagosa Springs
Kind of. They opted to change it so that it cuts down on the amount of consolation games, but it is still around.
So here’s what is happening now:
- If a team loses on the first day of play (Thursday), that team will not play any further games, and will go home.
- If a team loses in the semifinals (Friday), they will play in the third-place game on Saturday.
Essentially, the only consolation game that will be played in 3A is the third-place game.
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Where is state basketball going to be held this season?
— Jill, Broomfield
A-ha! Stay tuned.
The venues need to be approved at the next Board meeting, which is in October, along with a vote on the mercy rule in basketball.
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Are you guys planning on updating the app? When?
— Cole
Yep, absolutely. What we launched in late August was version 1.0, but probably more like version 0.6.
We have plans to do a lot more with it, including integrating scoreboards, standings and stats, and things like our live coverage.
We also recognize that the news feed in the current version of the app is like trying to drink water through a fire hose with so much content, so we’re adjusting how it is presented and filtered.
When? Well, hopefully soon.
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