USA Rugby released the pools for its college 7s national championship today, and the groupings for the Women’s DI Elite are … interesting. USAR pointed out that three of last year’s semifinalists are competing in Pool A, which looks much tougher than Pool B. No disrespect to Harvard and Davenport, but they’ve got to be the 7th- and 8th-ranked teams, and they’re in the same pool.
There is good geographical distribution and splitting up teams from the same league, but those can’t be reasons for rankings. And, yes, everybody has to be able to beat everybody to be crowned champion, but *if* there are lopsided wins, the top teams get that crucial advantage of resting players on day one.
There’s always going to be controversy in a competition like this, especially 7s, and an eight-team bracket was always going to mean every game was important. But some transparency – the name of the game! – as to how these pools were formed would go a long way.