In this opinion column, Goff Rugby Report editor Alex Goff looks at the big three college 7s championship events, and discusses where they can be better, and how they're doing so far.

So let’s compare once again the major college 7s tournaments and see where we are in this world; now that the CRC, ACRC 7s, and USA Rugby Championships are in the bag, let's see how they stack up against each other.

Who Are You?

All of these tournaments use the word “championship” which is fine, because that’s just a word meaning that it’s a competition. The ACRC is a loose-enough affiliation that it can basically invite anyone, but could likely morph into a series, which would be good as that would differentiate itself a bit more.

The CRC is an invitational which reserves four spots for qualifiers. The USA Rugby Championship is a qualified-for event that has spots for invited teams.

Who Are You Not?

None of these tournaments is a true national championship in that none had all of the best college 7s teams involved. USA Rugby has the best claim to the term “National Championship” because the event is run by the national governing body of the sport, and any team can participate - they just have to be good enough. 

The CRC did a good job of avoiding talk of a national championship, although the team that won, Cal, use the term “National Champions” repeatedly. It’s semantics, but the semantics matter, because we have to acknowledge that we don’t have a tournament with the best 16 teams involved - that’s indisputable.

Who Matters?

ACRC 7s is a men’s tournament, so they have a men’s focus. CRC has brackets for women, NSCRO, and high school, but there’s a distinct feeling among some teams that these aspects are afterthoughts. Sure the finals are played in the stadium, but the women continue to get overlooked in terms of the TV coverage, and that rankles. USA Rugby, for all its faults, gives equal time and notoriety to the women’s championships and the men’s DII championship. And next year they’re adding a women’s DII bracket, so we hear.

(In the CRC’s defense, some of the issues with, for example, televising the women’s final, is due to what NBC wants to do. What NBC probably is trying to do is show as many different college teams as possible in what they see as a men’s event. I think that showing the women would be a great move, and spending two hours on Sunday in which you show teams that placed 9th, 10th, 13th, 14th, 17th, and 18th out of 20 seems misguided, but NBC has never listened to me before so I am just spitting in the wind.)

Coverage

The CRC blows everyone else out of the water when it comes to how many people they reach. The Philadelphia area embraces the tournament. This year, according to the CRC, almost 25,000 people attended the event (that number likely including athletes, staff, and volunteers). Even if you take that number with a grain of salt (I’ve been to a lot of 7s tournaments and I do a pretty good job of estimating crowds, and the crowds looked good, but not significantly better than 2014 or 2013, and 25,000 is an increase of about 30%), it’s way, way more than USA Rugby’s event.

There were fans at the USA Rugby Championships in Denver - I’d guess non-playing fans might have topped 1,000. USA Rugby’s event was on live stream and on ESPN 3 for the finals. The CRC was on NBC Sports Network and NBC all weekend. ACRC was live streamed.  

There’s really no comparison.

Venues

PPL Park is a really nice stadium in which to watch rugby. The awnings over the seats mean you don’t get burned by the sun, and the seats are comfortable. The field quality this year was low, which is due to a lot of use from soccer (you could see the traditional soccer stress spots). The stadium should do a better job there.

The drawbacks to PPL Park are the concourse, which has a Cold War East German aspect to it with its concrete and limited choices, and the space for players - the tournament staff have worked hard to give the players more space in which to rest and warm up. I am not sure they’ve succeeded, and for many teams it’s better to drive the 30 minutes back to their hotel in Philadelphia than hang around the stadium. 

PPL Park did add new fields outside the stadium, which helped immensely in keeping the event in one central area.

Denver University is a nice venue for the USA Rugby event. There are three fields, all next to each other, and if you position yourself wisely you could watch three games at once. One of the fields had no bleachers, while the other two had seating. Two of the fields were artificial surface (one needing big weights around the posts to keep them upright). All had electronic scoreboards. It’s not PPL Park, but that’s not what it’s designed to be - it’s supposed to be a nice stadium for a multi-bracket rugby tournament where all the brackets matter. For that, it worked nicely. Where USA Rugby’s event was superior to the CRC was in player relaxation and warmup space, with tents for al teams, and a warmup area in addition to the three playing fields. Teams also could eat at the school cafeteria right next to the fields.

The ACRC 7s was held at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex,which is a lovely stadium with plenty of nearby warmup space. It’s hard to argue against this venue as a place for a rugby tournament.

Things to Change

The ACRC 7s would do well to be a series leading in to the other major events, giving teams a formal warmup that has its own reward.

The CRC should have more rankings games for their top eight. Right now, if you tuned in on NBC to watch the final two hours, you would see three games featuring teams from the bottom 60% of the field. Many would have rather seen a 3rd/4th game between Arizona and Life, or Michigan, Arkansas State, Indiana, and Navy still playing.

The Cup Final was great, and the guy from Notre Dame scoring with only one shoe on was great. But overall the culmination of the weekend could have been better.

USA Rugby needs to build their event. The organization stuttered in getting their college 7s championships off the ground in 2011, and then they decided to move it to spring (where I think it should stay). Now they need to work on marketing it right, building relationships with the City of Denver and Denver University, and building relationships with the teams - all things the CRC did fairly well.

Competitive Balance

I wrote something about this 18 months ago, in which I compared the competitive balance of the CRC and the USA 7s Championships. In it, I found that both tournaments suffered from blowouts, which is something we don’t want, and both tournaments had their share of close games.

Here are the stats from this year:

USA Rugby 66 games, 22 (33%) within a try, 16 (24%) 30-point blowouts or more.

CRC 46 games, 17 (37%) within a try, 6 (13%) 30-point blowouts or more.

ACRC 51 games, 10 (20%) within a try, 9 (18%) blowouts.

(All stats Men’s DI games only.)

That certainly says that the CRC is more competitive, but that’s also a result of the tournament being more established and solidifying its selection processes. USA Rugby’s event is still finding its feet in terms of seeding, and in terms of getting college teams to buy in, especially after the schedule change.

The CRC made a massive improvement by selecting a strong field of 20 teams, and that improvement has coincided with an increase in fans - I don’t think it was a coincidence, by the way. I and others spent years saying good teams are more attractive than well-known teams that aren't good. 

The Future

Sometimes change results from staying the course. USA Rugby needs to keep their tournament at around the same time at the same place. They say everyone is welcome if they qualify, and now teams just have to believe it and plan for it. We might well see the end of fall 7s with the schedule as it is now, and that may not be a bad thing. 

I’ve heard the suggestion that USA Rugby hold their tournament the same weekend as the CRC, and go head-to-head. I am not sure if that will work. What will work is for Boulder to keep on offering DII colleges and women’s team equal time in the sun - USA Rugby’s job is to provide a pathway for everyone, even programs the CRC doesn’t want to touch. They are doing their job.

The CRC organizers have to finally admit that the way to a rugby fan’s heart is through quality of play, not name schools that aren’t good, or bands, or even mascots. It’s the product on the field. The CRC does run the risk of losing the women once and for all, as they see that Denver is nicer to them.  

I do know that the USA Rugby Men’s College 7s National Champions are the Lindenwood Lions, and not the Cal Bears, but I also know that Cal may well be the best college 7s team in the country right now.

I also know a national tournament featuring Cal, Kutztown, AIC, Utah, St. Mary’s, Central Washington, Life, Davenport, Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, Dartmouth, Navy, Air Force, Army, and San Diego State would be a heck of a tournament.

As of now, teams will have to choose between the CRC and USA Rugby. Many could use the ACRC to build toward one of the others, so the ACRC has a solid place. But I think it will be very difficult for teams to play in both events. Air Force didn't, and Denver was a bus ride up I25. Notre Dame tried, and couldn't make the numbers work.  

But while  we don’t get to see that, on a development level, what we do get is, between the ACRC, CRC, and USA Rugby, well over 100 college rugby teams playing in a tough, two-day, national-level tournament of some sort. The games may not always be the best possible, but they do expose players to what is required, and what is possible.

Maybe that’s enough.