GRR's Final D1A Rankings for 2021-22

05.02.2022

With the D1A 15s season done it's time to give you our rankings.

This isn't the official D1A rankings, and because of that we include teams that were in D1A conferences but opted for NCR playoffs or opted out of playoffs. Should those teams have been excluded from the official D1A rankings? We don't really think so because those teams still played their seasons in-conference.

And there are gray areas ... Ohio State backed out of the playoffs, but not at the last minute and so stayed in favor. UCLA backed out, but as a backup to the first backout in the West, Grand Canyon. It's not really UCLA's fault that they were surprised. Texas A&M had to foreit their playoff because they could only host on a Friday and Arkansas State couldn't make it. Ask people another time and they might have said it was Arkansas State's problem and the Red Wolves should forfeit.

Whatever ... we include them all, even St. Bonaventure, Penn State, and Kutztown. We don't include DIAA-level teams, but it's worth pointing out that some of those programs could potentially be good enough to be in this Top 25. We'll see how that all pans out in next year's Rugby East season.

This year's D1A season did suffer from the ripples of COVID (someone should tell California that almost everyone else is behaving normally). It also exposed the raw wound that is the NCR-USA Rugby divide (more likely to come on that very soon). It also showed the flaw in fall-spring absolutism. We get it, the only time to play is the fall, no, the spring, no, fall-to-winter-to-spring. What we did see was a fall-centric team win the championship. We saw a couple of spring-centric teams unable to enter the playoffs as promised. We are also seeing, by the way, that devoting the entire winter/spring to 7s is becoming icnreasingly unpopular. Play 7s? Yeah, great, do it. Play a series of tournaments? Lovely. Spend two or three or four or five months doing it? Too much. Players need 15s games.

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OK, on to the rankings. Below is a relatively subjective ranking but we did bring in a relatively simple mathematical formula. It's basically this: 10 points for a win over a top-ranked team (Top-10); 6 points for a win over a middle-ranked teams (Top 25 or so); Zero points for a win over a lower-ranked team and Zero points for a big loss to any team; 4 points for a close loss to a top-ranked team; 3 points for a win over a top-ranked DIAA team.

The number of games between DIA and DIAA teams isn't high, possibly because of the NCR-USA Rugby (CRAA) split.

Anyway, the highest score from that formula goes to ... Army. The second-highest is Saint Mary's. Those two score 110 and 101, respectively, which is a huge number. Consider that teams like Central Washington, Cal Poly, Arizona, Arkansas State, and Grand Canyon all score in the 20s. The next highest group includes BYU, Lindenwood, Cal, and Life. Cal is an interesting one because they had a couple of short games in the Storer Classic. Do we count those? If we do they areat 77, if not, 62. Either way, those four are in the 60s and 70s.

The system prompted us to make one major shift. We were really heavily leaning toward putting Lindenwood at #2. They almost beat Army, remember. But, Lindenwood's excellent season isn't quite as broad-based as that of Saint Mary's (five non-conference pre-playoff games against highly-ranked teams compared with one for Lindenwood). So we ended up putting Saint Mary's at #2, and since Cal split with Saint Mary's, we put Cal at #3. Really we feel it's a three-way tie for #2. Army has to be #1.

Here it is:

Goff Rugby Report Final D1A-Level Rankings 2021-22
Rank	Team	Conference	Notes
1	Army	Rugby East	Won DIAA, beating Saint Mary's, Lindenwood, Central Washington, and Life. Undefeated in Rugby East. Only loss was in a non-conference game with a re-structured lineup. Only top teams they didn't play were Cal and BYU.
2	Saint Mary's	California	Split with Cal, beat BYU three times, CWU, and, tellingly, beat Life in a close one. Lost, of course, to Army.
3	Cal	PAC	Split with Saint Mary's. Beat CWU, BYU.
4	Lindenwood	Mid-South	Both losses to Army were very close. They were undefeated in Mid-South. The "yeah but" part is that they didn't play any major teams outside of the Mid-South except for Army.
5	BYU	Rocky Mountain	Played some tough teams, often close, and beat Central Washington.
6	Central Washington	Independent	Close in a lot of games but not a lot of wins.
7	Life	Mid-South	Lost twice to Lindenwood but most losses close.
8	Navy	Rugby East	Close loss to Army in possibly game of the year.
9	St. Bonaventure	Rugby East	Opted for fall NCR playoff, which they won, but that doesn't erase the fact they were 3rd in Rugby East. But Rugby East winner was Army so ...
10	Penn State	Rugby East	Opted for fall NCR playoff, which they finished 2nd in, but that doesn't erase the fact they were 4th in the Rugby East. Still, they did beat Navy in the spring.
11	Ohio State	Big Ten	Split with Indiana. Won Big 10. But didn't play in the CRAA playoffs when they had a spot, which hurts them.
12	Indiana	Big Ten	Split with Ohio State and really there's not a lot of difference between them.
13	Arkansas State	Mid-South	In a very tough schedule they were actually quite competitive in losses, even to Army. Just not enough victories. Tough season for them.
Goff Rugby Report Final D1A-Level Rankings 2021-22
14	Davenport	Mid-South	Some close losses and they are close.
15	Arizona	PAC	Edged UCLA, tied GCU, but playing the top-ranked teams the games weren't close.
16	Grand Canyon	California	Up and down. Tied Arizona. Didn't go into the playoffs when they had a shot.
17	UCLA	PAC	Close to being in the middle.
18	Cal Poly	California	Actually a relatively tough schedule but weren't close against the very top teams.
19	Texas A&M	Red River	Won Red River but losses to Arizona showed they have a way to go.
20	Kutztown	Rugby East	Competitive but not quite able to get results.
21	Colorado State	Rocky Mountain
22	Colorado	Rocky Mountain
23	Michigan State	Big Ten
24	Santa Clara	California
25	Utah Valley	Rocky Mountain
Goff Rugby Report Final D1A-Level Rankings 2021-22

GRR's Final D1A Rankings for 2021-22

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