>>[USMNT2014] Does the number of invitations really translate into championships?<<
Probably, but it would be a correlation only because CESA has issued so many invitations in the last few years [because they've had more teams than anyone else] and has won so many state championships. In other words, I think it's a weak correlation at best.
>>I would think that overall tryouts numbers would be a more accurate corelation.<<
If you assume a homogeneous distribution of talent, then either might show a correlation. Of course, there really isn't a homogeneous distribution of talent -- and perhaps even more importantly what the club does in terms of training and coaching makes a huge difference.
>>We probably don't have availability to the tryout numbers thus, the use of the invitation numbers?<<
You're right; the data is incredibly limited and we're using whatever data is available. Whether the data is valid as a predictor or not is a tremendous question. That's why I qualified using the term "by the numbers."
Last year someone talked about the odds of CESA repeating a "sweep" -- I noted that the probability was very small given the teams in the playoffs at that time. Sure enough, CESA lost two boys playoffs to Bridge and NECSA won the U18B bracket. The creation of CUFC and the number of teams and players they are sponsoring means to me that the issue is no longer how many state championships are "taken" from CESA; instead, the expectation has to be that CUFC will win as many as CESA in the 2006-2007 season. Anything else it seems to me would have to be a classified as a disappointment from a CUFC point of view.
