Predicting the Podium: How Good Are Collegiate Rowing Polls?

By Kieran Harrington

On April 28, the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association released its Week 8 CRCA/Pocock Coaches Poll, the ninth of the 2026 season, including the Feb. 17 pre-season edition.

By the end of the season, all three national collegiate championship leagues—NCAA for women’s varsity programs, IRA for men’s varsity programs, and the ACRA for club programs—will have published multiple coaches polls.

The polls are administered by the coaches’ associations: CRCA for the NCAA; Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association (IRCA) for the IRA; and the American Collegiate Rowing Association for themselves.

National rankings provide an immediate shorthand for programs, regattas, and fans, indicating how a crew’s season is going, the challenge of the next race, and the importance of a result. A ranked crew gets more attention, period. And in Olympic sports like rowing, which are losing ground in the allocation of athletic department resources in the age of NIL and conference realignments, earning positive attention is vital.

While these rankings generate interest throughout the season, their predictive accuracy varies. For the NCAA, the championship seeding polls are different—and run separately— from the CRCA polls. For the IRA, polls operate under a joint agreement between the IRCA and the IRA. The ACRA is its own authority.

A comparison of final polls from recent years with actual NCAA championship results suggests a clear pattern: Accuracy is highest at the top of the rankings, while variability increases significantly in the middle of the field.

In 2024, the final CRCA/Pocock Coaches Poll aligned closely with championship results at the top, with most remaining teams deviating by only one or two positions, producing a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.78 positions. This indicates moderate predictive accuracy, with errors concentrated outside the top five.

In contrast, the 2025 championship results diverged more substantially from the final poll. Although Stanford University was projected correctly to win the team championship, Yale University outperformed its ranking to finish second. The University of Texas and the University of Washington, both projected to finish on the podium, placed third and fourth, respectively. Overall, the poll produced a lower mean absolute error of 0.89 positions, indicating stronger numerical accuracy

Similarly, the IRCA releases a poll series projecting the top collegiate men’s programs. In 2024, the IRA varsity men’s heavyweight eight championship concluded with the University of Washington finishing first, which was consistent with the final Week Six poll. Beyond the top position, however, the poll showed more variability. Notably, Harvard (second) was ranked sixth, and Brown (eighth) was ranked as high as second in the poll. Calculating the MAE across the top 10 crews yields an error of approximately 1.78 positions, meaning that on average the poll was 1.78 places off of the IRA championship results.

In the 2025 IRA varsity men’s heavyweight eight championship, the University of Washington, Harvard, and Dartmouth finished first through third, while the final poll had California ranked first and Washington second. While much of the top five remained similar in composition, several crews experienced notable positional shifts—most prominently, California, which was ranked first in the poll but finished seventh, and Brown, which outperformed an eighth-place ranking to finish fifth. The MAE was almost two positions, with California’s unexpected finish in the petite final after crabbing in a rough semifinal contributing significantly.

The ACRA polls and results reveal similar measures of error, with an MAE of 0.9 when compared to the final results.

In 2024, the women’s varsity eight ACRA medals were captured by Vanderbilt, Purdue, and Northwestern. The polls proved to be almost two spots off, with the average error 1.9 places from the actual finish. Improving only slightly in 2025, the polls were 1.7 places off in their predictions of the ACRA medal winners— Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and Bowdoin.

As the 2026 season enters its final weeks, historical comparisons suggest that ranking systems are most reliable in identifying the top-performing programs, while mid-tier placements remain considerably less predictable.

The upcoming ACRA, NCAA, and IRA championships will provide a further test of the pattern.

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