Derby News Network Power Rankings - June 2011

Choklit in mah bellaaaaayyyy!!! When Rocky wins.

you can change the #2 to a #1 now, thank you.

A note of purely-Gnosis-opinion: Tell the world all about your club and its doings. Don't try to be secretive. It won't help you win and your fans hate it. Lineups, stats, trivia, if it's relevant to the game and you've got it, stick it in a press release and get it to DNN and every other media outlet who might possibly care before and after every bout. Your fans are waiting to have a feeding frenzy; all you have to do is throw them some blood.

I'm not saying that was the case with Texas. TX is actually really great about putting out info; but here we see a case where fans (and DNN) would have loved to know this critical lineup info. The PR machine just never quite made it through. We do occasionally hear, though, that so-and-so team doesn't want DNN to know their lineup or whatever because it'll give away their secret weapon/weakness. I personally think that's silly.

and to a lesser extent DNN.

If head-to-head is all that mattered, the rankings wouldn't be predictive at all. Teams change. Please note Oly over Rocky Mountain. Not that any of the rankings got that right but they could have if each team had played a couple more games this year. Your method would have guaranteed that game to be predicted wrong.

You're saying that it's wrong to have Gotham #1 because of last year's playoffs. Surely Gotham isn't the exact same team they were last year, we already know Oly and Rocky Mountain aren't, so maybe they are the best team in the country.

the ranking is to be interpreted as which team should win right now correct? what evidence FROM THIS SEASON is there to make one conclude that kansas city would beat detroit? exactly. there is none.

one could however, conject that a battle hardened detroit squad which has three times the number of bouts under their belt THIS season, six of those bouts against teams that are THIS season ranked in the top 11 would beat a kc crew that has only played 4 relatively weak opponents.

detroit beat kansas city 10 months ago and would most likely beat them tomorrow. the ranking is not well reasoned imo.

and dude, if you cant compare schedules and margins of victory than how exactly are these rankings determined? dnn is an influencial member of the derby community and while these rankings are unofficial it is foolish to think that wftda members when making their seeding decisions for regional tournaments dont come to these boards for perspective. (although im sure no one would admit it).

i want all the teams to get a fair representation on this site. i just happen to love and root for my girls in DDG so it sticks in my craw a little.

That's an easy one. All WFTDA teams are currently capped at $0/year. Out-of-town recruitment is based on skaters' ability to offer jobs in their city and hot tub privileges. Signing bonuses may include two weeks of couch hospitality and free wifi.

Here's a different way: Interleague reps make better choices.

Another way might be to reduce the amount of leeway they're allowed. WFTDA is a democracy, so that might be a bit of a tough sell. Stuff like that tends to work better with incentives and disincentives versus outright bans. Hypothetical: What if teams in division X were allowed to play against teams in division Y but the results didn't apply to their rankings within division X?

Even more hypothetical: If they had divisions, one might assume announcements might be made towards year's end about which one each league goes into. That announcement date might push the date leagues start picking next year's opponents forward instead of deciding ever-more-earlier like they seem to do every year. Leagues might theoretically only pick Q1 opponents before the season starts, then wait until they know where they stand to pick Q2's opponents.

I'm reserving judgment on the pros and cons of that particular proposal until I've seen it in action during ECDX.

I don't foresee no minors having a great impact on blowouts. The current proposed no-minors rule set almost seems likely to INCREASE the number of track-cuts by jammers. Powerjams tend to inflate scores. When not evenly distributed they make for bigger blowouts. Which makes uneven match-ups seem even more uneven.

If you want a rules change that might even up scores somewhat, I'd give Adelaide Roller Derby's recent intraleague scores a look-see:

Salty Dolls 87
Mile Die Club 69

Road Train Rollers 77
Wild Hearses 68

Salty Dolls 99
Road Train Rollers 83

Mile Die Club 69
Wild Hearses 78

Mile Die Club 95
Road Train Rollers 96

For their intraleague bouts they skate the current WFTDA rules, with just two exceptions that I know of. Jams are 90 seconds long, and penalties are 45 seconds long.

I love thinking outside the box like this.

As with any radical change, however, there might be some unintended side effects unless such a rule were carefully crafted.

For example, the unjailed jammer and her pack, if they were nursing a lead, might completely stop on the track until there were about 15 seconds left on the opposing jammers' penalty, saving their energy and using the clock as their defensive friend, and letting the other team pick up direction-of-gameplay violations or other fouls. Then they'd bust loose at the very end to try to pick up those five points. Kind of like basketball players milking a shot clock down to 5-10 seconds before running their set play.

I bet 45 seconds of a jammer standing still during a jam would create infinitely more many boos than we hear now with 45 seconds of packs standing still at a jam's start.

I feel that the biggest problem with lopsided power jam scoring is that the defense has little in their arsenal to defend themselves. The big jam scores come because a jammer can lap the pack a number of times, and the only reason that's the case is because the blockers on the team with the power jam can easily slow down the pack by cruising around at the rear of the pack. They know the blockers on the team without the jammer can't speed up the pack unless everyone speeds up the pack, a point I am adamant about bringing up any time I get the chance.

A good idea for bringing power jam scoring (and scoring in general) into check would be to eliminate the split pack as a no-pack situation. If the pack is split with one team all in the front, one team all in the rear, and a big gap in the middle, the pack could instead be defined as the group of skaters at the front of the pack, regardless of numbers or team distribution. This would give the team on defense a fair chance to speed up the pack if they can all get to the front of it, and would force the team on the power jam to actively impede and block if they wanted slow things down.

This way, the team that demonstrates superior pack play gets to control the speed of it, which would be a factor into how quickly a jammer can get back around to the pack, which would then determine how many points they'd score over the course of the penalty or full jam. I also like this idea since it would make it impractical for a team to want to deliberately stall or knee at the start of a jam since the best place to be would be at the front of the pack, as opposed to the rear (as explained on my blog). Two birds with one stone, and all of that.

If able, I would totally haul my gonna-be hung-over butt up there to watch this!

we might be able to make this. :)

I think we've struck a really nice balance this year in Denver - since we can't have everyone at our practice space, we opened up hangover bouts as a "season ticket holder perk" - in addition to all the big events, they also get to see games in a different, more intimate environment. We can be more casual, but they appreciate being part of the "in-crowd".

We just started it this year, but I anticipate it'll really help season ticket sales next year.