FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[79jaybird]

Would agree Greg that Augie's present day teams are nothing like the 80's and 90's versions.  The striking difference is just the way they "go to market" on the field. The great teams always seemed to "get it done" with precision.  These last few years, Augie has just been wandering cattle with the appearance of no shepherd to lead them.  IMO The difference with Augie's struggles vs. NP's struggles, is I think Scott is a leader, has the vision, and the personality. He just doesn't have the resources to work with at the moment.

[Gregory Sager]

IMO The difference with Augie's struggles vs. NP's struggles, is I think Scott is a leader, has the vision, and the personality. He just doesn't have the resources to work with at the moment.

There's a lot more involved with NPU's struggles than mere lack of resources. NPU's problems on the football field and Augie's problems on the football field are really apples and oranges and don't bear much comparison.

[79jaybird]

You would know much better than I.  Do you think NPU's programs are more player execution related or more on the coaching level?  IMO, Elmhurst struggled prior to the Journell/Lester era for (2) reasons. 1- Coach Krohn did not have a lot of help and resources are nothing like what Lester/Elmhurst has now.  (2) Other than a few solid players here and there. I.E. Till, Martino, Puleo, etc. the overall level of talent on the team was not very good.

[Gregory Sager]

You would know much better than I.  Do you think NPU's programs are more player execution related or more on the coaching level?

I wouldn't characterize the problem with the NPU football program as relating to either player execution or coaching. The players generally execute as well as they are able; their innate ability to operate at this level, however, is another matter. There's simply not enough CCIW-grade talent on the roster. As far as coaching is concerned, I share with you a deep respect for Scott Pethtel, not only for his personal integrity and for the way that he has elevated the program in terms of player retention and academic quality, but also for the way that he has been willing to innovate and think outside the box with regard to NPU's perennial football conundrum. He's much more creative in that regard than his predecessors had been.

I've spoken before in this room about what holds NPU football down, so nothing that I'm about to say is new. I'll restate it simply because there may be some newbies in here who haven't read it before.

There are three interrelated factors that continue to drag down NPU football. One is the long-standing tradition of losing, which is immensely hard to overcome in the recruiting wars. More than anything else, kids want to go someplace where they can win, and once a kid finds out how long it's been since NPU won a CCIW football game, or had a winning season, that's usually the end of his interest in North Park football. Another factor is the resource deficiency with which NPU is forced to deal in comparison to its CCIW peers, although this has been somewhat ameliorated in recent years due to the construction of Helwig Rec Center, with its fantastic weight room and indoor playing surface.

But the biggest factor that holds NPU back is one that the school's football program simply can't get around, and that is the fact that football is a suburban sport. Aside from an isolated program here or there (Mt. Carmel and St. Rita come to mind), urban high schools simply don't have programs that turn out CCIW-grade football players. The level of football competition among city high schools is dramatically inferior to that of the suburbs. There are relatively few city teams as a percentage of overall student population as compared to suburban schools; lots and lots of Chicago high schools don't offer football at all, and if they do it's only as a varsity sport. Every suburban school, by contrast, has football; what's more, most have JV and freshman teams as well to act as a farm system for the varsity team. City schools typically have anywhere from 35 to 50 kids on the team, and everyone who goes out for the football team gets a uniform and pads whether he's ever played the sport or not. (It's typical for city schools to have two or even three times as many kids try out for the basketball team than for the football team.) There is usually no weight room, or if there is it's very primitive and ill-equipped. The pads, uniforms, and practice equipment are all aged and worn-out hand-me-downs; practice fields are frequently mudpits adjacent to the school building, or public parks filled with broken glass; and there's often only two or three coaches to instruct and run the team. Add to that the fact that these are mostly blue-collar or impoverished kids we're talking about who don't have the benefit of being able to attend a football camp every summer. And as for the players themselves, either there are academic deficiencies that prevent NPU from recruiting them (as is true for most of them), or their skill level is not up to CCIW par. You simply can't build a college football team with urban kids anymore. In fact, it's been decades since it was possible.

That means that you have to go out to the suburbs, where 99% of Chicagoland's CCIW-grade football prospects are located, and there you run into the primary problem that NPU faces in all sports: Suburban kids typically don't want to go to school in the big city. Most of them view Chicago as an alien, hostile, and threatening environment, filled with people who don't look, think, or act like them. Some suburban kids (and their parents) see Chicago for what it is, which is an amazing laboratory for learning about the world and a fantastic source for job internships, or as a place for adventure and personal growth. But the vast majority of suburban kids either want to go to college in the familiar environment of a suburb or in a small town or modest-sized "city" somewhere. And that's fine ... to each his own. But it puts NPU at a competitive disadvantage when going head-to-head with most of the other CCIW schools for the same pool of student-athletes in places like Schaumburg, Deerfield, Bolingbrook, Glen Ellyn, Mount Prospect, or Tinley Park.

Good NPU coaches over the years have found various ways of getting around this. Back when the Park was a national power in men's basketball, Bosko Djurickovic had a pretty steady pipeline working for him from the Chicago Catholic League (good urban ballers who also got a decent high-school education and at least a modicum of instructional coaching, as opposed to the Chicago Public League) and the blue-collar inner-ring suburbs like Maywood, Cicero, Berwyn, Calumet City, and Dolton. The men's soccer team under John Born has developed both out-of-state networks and a pipeline from Sweden that's worked wonders for the program. Luke Johnson's found baseball players from just about everywhere in the upper Midwest and has brought them to NPU by sheer force of personality and by the reputation for excellence that the program has developed under his tutelage. And Scott Pethtel, to his credit, has sought to tap into heretofore-unexplored recruiting areas like small-town Illinois, as well as the Michiana region with which he's most familiar -- places where Chicago is seen as a recruiting asset among high-school kids rather than as a recruiting burden. If you're from someplace out past Rockford, or from somewhere in southwestern Michigan or northern Indiana, Chicago can seem like a pretty interesting place to go to school.

The problem is that the other NPU coaches only have to recruit a fraction of the number of players that Scott Pethtel has to recruit every year. Football rosters are gargantuan when compared to the rosters of other sports. Thus, any innate problem that the school has with the traditional pool of prospects (i.e., suburban high-school athletes) is magnified as far as the football team is concerned. Other NPU coaches can get around the suburban problem. Scott Pethtel can't. And, until and unless he (or somebody else, if North Park decides to hire someone else to run the football program) can develop alternative player pipelines that are generating 40-50 CCIW-grade recruits a year -- a massively tall order, as anyone who follows this league knows -- he's going to fall short of the competition. He'll either have to bring in kids who don't have the speed and quickness to handle opposing players from North Central or Wheaton or Wesleyan, or kids who aren't up to cutting the mustard in the classroom, or both.

What he has to overcome dwarfs the problems that any other coach in this league faces. As I said in here last week, anyone who thinks that he has the right formula for NPU, or who thinks that he can do better, has never tried to push a boulder up a hill before.

[NCF]

You would know much better than I.  Do you think NPU's programs are more player execution related or more on the coaching level?

I wouldn't characterize the problem with the NPU football program as relating to either player execution or coaching. The players generally execute as well as they are able; their innate ability to operate at this level, however, is another matter. There's simply not enough CCIW-grade talent on the roster. As far as coaching is concerned, I share with you a deep respect for Scott Pethtel, not only for his personal integrity and for the way that he has elevated the program in terms of player retention and academic quality, but also for the way that he has been willing to innovate and think outside the box with regard to NPU's perennial football conundrum. He's much more creative in that regard than his predecessors had been.

I've spoken before in this room about what holds NPU football down, so nothing that I'm about to say is new. I'll restate it simply because there may be some newbies in here who haven't read it before.

There are three interrelated factors that continue to drag down NPU football. One is the long-standing tradition of losing, which is immensely hard to overcome in the recruiting wars. More than anything else, kids want to go someplace where they can win, and once a kid finds out how long it's been since NPU won a CCIW football game, or had a winning season, that's usually the end of his interest in North Park football. Another factor is the resource deficiency with which NPU is forced to deal in comparison to its CCIW peers, although this has been somewhat ameliorated in recent years due to the construction of Helwig Rec Center, with its fantastic weight room and indoor playing surface.

But the biggest factor that holds NPU back is one that the school's football program simply can't get around, and that is the fact that football is a suburban sport. Aside from an isolated program here or there (Mt. Carmel and St. Rita come to mind), urban high schools simply don't have programs that turn out CCIW-grade football players. The level of football competition among city high schools is dramatically inferior to that of the suburbs. There are relatively few city teams as a percentage of overall student population as compared to suburban schools; lots and lots of Chicago high schools don't offer football at all, and if they do it's only as a varsity sport. Every suburban school, by contrast, has football; what's more, most have JV and freshman teams as well to act as a farm system for the varsity team. City schools typically have anywhere from 35 to 50 kids on the team, and everyone who goes out for the football team gets a uniform and pads whether he's ever played the sport or not. (It's typical for city schools to have two or even three times as many kids try out for the basketball team than for the football team.) There is usually no weight room, or if there is it's very primitive and ill-equipped. The pads, uniforms, and practice equipment are all aged and worn-out hand-me-downs; practice fields are frequently mudpits adjacent to the school building, or public parks filled with broken glass; and there's often only two or three coaches to instruct and run the team. Add to that the fact that these are mostly blue-collar or impoverished kids we're talking about who don't have the benefit of being able to attend a football camp every summer. And as for the players themselves, either there are academic deficiencies that prevent NPU from recruiting them (as is true for most of them), or their skill level is not up to CCIW par. You simply can't build a college football team with urban kids anymore. In fact, it's been decades since it was possible.

That means that you have to go out to the suburbs, where 99% of Chicagoland's CCIW-grade football prospects are located, and there you run into the primary problem that NPU faces in all sports: Suburban kids typically don't want to go to school in the big city. Most of them view Chicago as an alien, hostile, and threatening environment, filled with people who don't look, think, or act like them. Some suburban kids (and their parents) see Chicago for what it is, which is an amazing laboratory for learning about the world and a fantastic source for job internships, or as a place for adventure and personal growth. But the vast majority of suburban kids either want to go to college in the familiar environment of a suburb or in a small town or modest-sized "city" somewhere. And that's fine ... to each his own. But it puts NPU at a competitive disadvantage when going head-to-head with most of the other CCIW schools for the same pool of student-athletes in places like Schaumburg, Deerfield, Bolingbrook, Glen Ellyn, Mount Prospect, or Tinley Park.

Good NPU coaches over the years have found various ways of getting around this. Back when the Park was a national power in men's basketball, Bosko Djurickovic had a pretty steady pipeline working for him from the Chicago Catholic League (good urban ballers who also got a decent high-school education and at least a modicum of instructional coaching, as opposed to the Chicago Public League) and the blue-collar inner-ring suburbs like Maywood, Cicero, Berwyn, Calumet City, and Dolton. The men's soccer team under John Born has developed both out-of-state networks and a pipeline from Sweden that's worked wonders for the program. Luke Johnson's found baseball players from just about everywhere in the upper Midwest and has brought them to NPU by sheer force of personality and by the reputation for excellence that the program has developed under his tutelage. And Scott Pethtel, to his credit, has sought to tap into heretofore-unexplored recruiting areas like small-town Illinois, as well as the Michiana region with which he's most familiar -- places where Chicago is seen as a recruiting asset among high-school kids rather than as a recruiting burden. If you're from someplace out past Rockford, or from somewhere in southwestern Michigan or northern Indiana, Chicago can seem like a pretty interesting place to go to school.

The problem is that the other NPU coaches only have to recruit a fraction of the number of players that Scott Pethtel has to recruit every year. Football rosters are gargantuan when compared to the rosters of other sports. Thus, any innate problem that the school has with the traditional pool of prospects (i.e., suburban high-school athletes) is magnified as far as the football team is concerned. Other NPU coaches can get around the suburban problem. Scott Pethtel can't. And, until and unless he (or somebody else, if North Park decides to hire someone else to run the football program) can develop alternative player pipelines that are generating 40-50 CCIW-grade recruits a year -- a massively tall order, as anyone who follows this league knows -- he's going to fall short of the competition. He'll either have to bring in kids who don't have the speed and quickness to handle opposing players from North Central or Wheaton or Wesleyan, or kids who aren't up to cutting the mustard in the classroom, or both.

What he has to overcome dwarfs the problems that any other coach in this league faces. As I said in here last week, anyone who thinks that he has the right formula for NPU, or who thinks that he can do better, has never tried to push a boulder up a hill before.

Thanks for restating the problems that North Park has in recruiting. I thought your number one reason would be the losing tradition, but I can see how the other issues factor in. Just one comment-not every suburban kid has the money to go to football camp every year. Many suburbs are full of blue collar kids who have to work in the summers and whose parents are struggling to stay afloat. 

[newparker]

Greg I agree on all the recruiting problems but don't you think Scott got them up them up the hill last year won 3 non conference should of won the carthage game (heartbreaker) and maybe the augie game, so I think they were up the hill and just need to come over

[formerd3db]

newcardfan:
Check your PMs; I sent you a reply.  My apologies for the delay in replying as I only just saw today your PM that you sent the other day as I had not checked my PMs for several days.

[iwu70]

Many good posts, useful data here on the IWU-WC clash tomorrow.  Should be a great game with plenty of challenges for both defenses.  I do think IWU's overall defensive performance this year has been more consistent and quite outstanding.  Hope they can close down, intercept WC's passing attack to some considerable degree.  Much will depend, as several have mentioned, on who wins the TO battle.  And, IWU will have to get some decent running game going, too, IMHO.  Let's hope Stinde has a big big day.  I have IWU by a FG in this one.  Wish I could be there.

Go Green, GO TITANS!!!

IWU70

[Gregory Sager]

Greg I agree on all the recruiting problems but don't you think Scott got them up them up the hill last year won 3 non conference should of won the carthage game (heartbreaker) and maybe the augie game, so I think they were up the hill and just need to come over

So a 5-5, 2-5 record would've been your idea of getting up over the hill? I disagree. To me, a 5-5, 2-5 record is still well south of mediocrity.

Don't make a bigger thing out of last season's three non-conference wins than they were worth. Three non-conference wins per year is really not that hard to generate if you're willing to schedule down enough. If he approaches NAthCon, UMAC, MWC, and MIAA coaches with the plan to cherry-pick the teams that are likely to be losers in those leagues, an NPU head coach can always find three guaranteed wins per year for himself. Give Scott Pethtel credit for trying to prepare his players for CCIW play better than that; Benedictine's not good enough to hold its own with other CCIW schools on the football field, but it's still a solid enough program to give NPU a challenge (as it did this season), and the same can be said for Hope. Olivet was the only real cupcake that he scheduled for this season, and Olivet was actually not his first choice as far as a two-year contract was concerned.

Those near-win losses to Augie and Carthage would've been great morale-boosters for the Vikings last season, but let's not blow them up out of proportion. A 2-5 CCIW record will still get you sixth place, and sixth place is not respectable. It's not getting up over the hill. It's simply getting out of the ravine at the bottom of the hill.

[bluejay4ever]

You would know much better than I.  Do you think NPU's programs are more player execution related or more on the coaching level?  IMO, Elmhurst struggled prior to the Journell/Lester era for (2) reasons. 1- Coach Krohn did not have a lot of help and resources are nothing like what Lester/Elmhurst has now.  (2) Other than a few solid players here and there. I.E. Till, Martino, Puleo, etc. the overall level of talent on the team was not very good.

I wish we had the resources they have now. That terrible softball field to practice on and then the dirt game field. I feel like an old timer when we talk about it. Played uphill both ways!

North park reminds me of our teams. It's about retention. Our freshman class we came in with was solid but by the time we were seniors there were so few of us left. It's hard to win when you are starting 18 and 19 year olds each year. If if really talented like we were at the time the physical maturity of seniors is crazy compared to freshman. Especially on the lines.

[Gregory Sager]

North park reminds me of our teams. It's about retention.

You apparently haven't been following the discussion very closely. I said at the beginning of the season, and I've said several times since, that NPU's retention has greatly improved under Scott Pethtel. The Vikings have 21 seniors on this year's team, and lots of juniors as well.

Retention has always been a big problem for NPU, but it's not the problem now.

[Titan Q]

Pantagraph article on the IWU @ Wheaton game...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-wesleyan/undefeated-iwu-to-be-tested-at-wheaton/article_d98e5b90-1a62-11e2-835a-001a4bcf887a.html

Should be a great game.  Prediction...

IWU 28
Wheaton 24

IWU player of the game - T.J. Stinde.

[Titan Q]

"Most Likely Top 25 team to get upset" from Triple Take...

http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/2012/10/19/triple-take-the-final-4-weeks-that-is/


Pat's take: No. 12 Illinois Wesleyan. I admit Wheaton (Ill.) is not as strong as it has been in the past, but I think the jury remains out on Illinois Wesleyan at the moment until this game. The six teams the Titans have played so far are a combined 14-24, while the three other contenders in the CCIW are left on the schedule. And as we pointed out in this week's podcast, IWU hasn't won at Wheaton since 1996. This could well be the year, but until that happens, I'll wait and see.

Keith's take: No. 12 Illinois Wesleyan. I hate to pile on. I very nearly took No. 11 Hobart and No. 17 Rowan here, but I think they each have the defense necessary to hold off high-powered offenses from RPI and Cortland State. Both teams are on the road, making those picks even more intriguing. No. 24 St. John Fisher is on a two-game slide, but so is their opponent, Ithaca. I could have backed Ryan's pick as well, as Lycoming has a shot. Simpson, Gettysburg and Pacific Lutheran will give top 25 teams a game, but in the end, for reasons explained below under 180, this was the pick I felt most comfortable with. IWU has a great defense as well (No. 8 nationally) but Wheaton (No. 10) can match it, plus it can score. And yes I expect we'll hear a lot of chirping from Bloomington if the Titans do what they're supposed to do and play like the No. 12 team in the country. Whatevs. We can dish it out and we can take it.
----------

I have no beef with this at all.  The simple truth is that I don't think anyone quite knows what to make of the Titans right now - they really don't have a signature win yet.  Now I will say that, while I can't prove it, I think the Titans are a very good football team -- very talented and very balanced.  But until we see what happens tonight, questions about IWU are very fair.

I do question the following line by Keith: "IWU has a great defense as well (No. 8 nationally) but Wheaton (No. 10) can match it, plus it can score."  I may be reading too much into this, but I almost take that to mean he doesn't think IWU has a very good offense -- that the Titans are all defense.  While that was pretty much the case last year (especially after T.J. Stinde went down), it's absolutely not in 2012.  IWU is averaging 41.3 points and 404 total yards per game.  Granted the opponents to date have not been great, but it doesn't take too much analysis to see that IWU has a strong O line, a very good QB, an explosive RB, and a bunch a strong WRs.  Again, not quite sure what Keith meant there but he may be overlooking what is a very dangerous IWU offense.

But bottom line, picking Wheaton to win this game is certainly fair -- it doesn't even feel like it would be an "upset" to me.  We'll learn a lot about the Titans tonight.

[ncc58]

North park reminds me of our teams. It's about retention.

You apparently haven't been following the discussion very closely. I said at the beginning of the season, and I've said several times since, that NPU's retention has greatly improved under Scott Pethtel. The Vikings have 21 seniors on this year's team, and lots of juniors as well.

Retention has always been a big problem for NPU, but it's not the problem now.

I've wondered about this, because I don't see how NPU is going to recruit the caliber of players to be competitive in the CCIW. They make play one conference game each year that they have a chance to win, but they're losing decisively in most of the games. NPU is competitive in other sports, so is there something that those sports are doing that the football team can leverage? In my view, Wheaton attracts the players looking for a strong Christian school. NCC, IWU, and Elmhurst are getting the rest of the Chicago area players. The top teams aren't even taking NPU seriously - their biggest decision leading up to the game is which players to sit and how soon can they pull out the starters.

[USee]

Love the Pantageaph article.  Classic coach speak.  He mentions Morgan Cook as the teams leading receiver (which may be true statistically) when we know the best receiver on the field will be Hiben. But Coach Eash's comments at the end about IWU as the underdog is good stuff.

Wheaton 28
IWU 24