So the poor active manager is crippled by "institutional factors" forcing him/her into being a closet indexer, and holding too much cash in a rising market? This causes scores for active managers to get punished by so many failing to match indexers?

Let's face it -- it's greed and cowardice at work. Saving their jobs and bonuses means the stock pickers are too afraid to put their judgment fully on the line, and they hold cash due to cowardice in putting all this liquidity to be fully invested. Both factors totally within their control, and if they fail to do so, their lower-alpha results cannot be excluded from being innocent victims of the SPIVA scorecard.

So, in addition to finding the top-decile advisor who is going to earn the fees by repeatedly beating the indexers, you need to exclude all the closet ones who are too chicken to stake their reps on their stock-picking, and do so more than once?

Self-serving alibi at work here.