What’s an FPI and Why should you care?

If you’ve ever taken the time to read all the published rules on your website, you’ll know that: the primary purpose of your League is for recreation. BAS is committed to ridding itself of aggressive players, bullies, cheaters, and players and coaches who persist in abusing the rules and/or the officials. How do we accomplish this? For players, the process is fairly straightforward. Red cards are issued for violations of the rules of the game, as appropriate and suspensions for repeat offenders are long enough to make a difference.

It’s a little more intricate for teams. You’ll notice an FPI column at the far right on your standings page. FPI stands for Fair Play Index. Every match that you play requires the game official to evaluate your team’s ability to “play fairly” and this is recorded by the official as a value between 1 and 5 (1 being poor and 5 being excellent). BAS uses an algorithm that also takes into account yellow cards and red cards issued to your team’s players and these cards negatively impact your FPI. The value displayed on the standings page is the mean average of all your FPI values for the current season. So if you’ve played 7 matches, the value shown is the average of those 7 matches.

So why does all of this matter? Again, referring to your published rules, you’ll note that: Any team with a Fair Play Index that is less than 70% of the division average will be ineligible for the post-season with subsequent play in future sessions under review. At the end of the season, your FPI will be scrutinized against all of the other teams in your division and if you’re outside of the measure described above, you will not be permitted to participate in any post season matches and will not be invited back the following year. We don’t take these actions lightly, but we also aren’t willing to tolerate teams who are not here to play soccer. Nor should you.

We are sending this communication out now because if the season ended today, there are a few teams that would not be eligible for the post season due to their poor FPI. We are pleased that 95% of our teams will never be impacted by this rule, but for those that are, what can be done about it? The plan to improve a poor FPI is simple, even if it’s not easy. Discuss this communication with the others on your team especially those who are regularly carded or regularly engage in dissent with the game official or verbal abuse and gamesmanship with the opponents. “Part of the game”, you say? No, not here (recall that the primary purpose is for “recreation”). The rule is published for a reason and it will be enforced.

Rules & FPI

• Women’s Outdoor
• Women’s Indoor
• Men’s Outdoor
• Men’s Indoor
• Coed Outdoor
• Coed Indoor