They couldn't have gotten the SCIAC more wrong if they'd tried. Guess the committee realized how powerful the top four teams are.

I don't have the numbers right now but I'm guessing that would be Caltech before they gave up football.

Great podcast as usual this past week. I thought Coach Deere of Adrian was a bit of a Pollyanna regarding to playing this fall. Other than Trine on Oct. 3 (Finlandia SID assured me their season was postponed) he's got an empty schedule. He was talking about finding NAIA schools to play but the Mid-State Football Association, the only NAIA conference with schools near him, has clearly said it's moving to spring. Seems to me his only shot at finding games would be if Heartland Conference school were willing to go rogue and play; five of their schools are within 180 miles of Adrian. D2 conferences have shut down as have the FCS conferences. Maybe Adrian and Trine can play a four-game home-and-home Series.

Cal Lutheran coach Ben McEnroe was disqualified in the first quarter of Saturday's Homecoming game with Claremont-Mudd-Scripps for consecutive unsportsmanlike conduct penalties while objecting to a no call on pass interference in the end zone. Players have to sit out half of the next game, right? What a out coaches? BTW, can't tell you how disappointed I am with two taunting calls against CLU in the game; that should not be part of Kingsmen football.

Kean is 2-3 against the SCIAC this year, while Linfield is 1-1 with four games down here this weekend (three with Pomona-Pitzer, one with La Verne), Trinity (Texas) is 2-1 and George Fox is 3-3. All are ranked higher in the D3.com than SCIAC leader Cal Lutheran and No. 2 Pomona-Pitzer. Overall, the SCIAC is a solid 46-38-1 in nonconference play; take out the two dreadful bottom feeders (Claremont-Mudd-Scripss and Caltech), plus subpar Chapman and Whittier (all below .500), and the top five are 36-12-1.

Linfield's No. 1 nationally and in the West, but only 1-1 vs. the SCIAC. I'm looking forward to their trip to SoCal next weekend for three games with 19-7 Pomona-Pitzer on April 12-13 and a game with 15-9 La Verne on April 14. La Verne beat 'em, 6-0, in the season opener in Arizona.

Amazing! I never seriously believed in parallel universes before. That's until I reviewed this week's two D3 baseball polls.

I've followed polls at a lot of levels, and there are always differences, but never they way they are between the D3 poll and the ABCA poll.

Biggest case in point: George Fox (Ore.),  the Northwest Conference leader, is eighth in the ABCA poll but didn't get a a single vote in the D3 poll. The same is true for Centenary (La.), 25th in ABCA, and Texas Lutheran, 30th in ABCA. The other way around, Wisconsin-Stevens Point is 20th in the D3 poll but got only three votes to rank 50th in ABCA. Those running the polls should be embarrassed if this is the bast they can do.

Kind of amusing how the voters know about the SCIAC, which has certainly held its own nationally over the years (two titles, three seconds among Cal Lutheran, Chapman and La Verne since 1992). While I'm not sure either team is a Top 25 yet, the fact that Pomona-Pitzer (10-5, 15-5) is just outside the Top 25 with 52 points while Cal Lutheran is down the line with 18 (9-3, 13-5-1) tell me no one is paying much attention. The Kingsmen hammered the Sagehens in two of three meetings and is 9-3 against the conference, taking at least two of three each time, without yet facing either of the dogs (Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Caltech). Pomona-Pitzer is 5-0 nonconference against teams with a cumulative 21-23-1 record and Cal Lutheran is 3-21 against clubs with a 34-18-1 cumulative mark. Things to think about. (Just saw the ABCA poll: Cal Lutheran 11, Pomona-Pitzer 18 makes more sense.)

Comments on Matthew Biggers' performance vs. CLU: He's a fine back, but note that he carried the ball nine times for 50 yards in the first half when the Kingsmen built up a 31-0 lead,and had 25 carries for 254 in the second half when the coaches were substituting freely (if you don't believe that, check the tackling chart and the play-by-play).

Good to see that the coaches' poll moved Cal Lutheran to 10th.

The polls are out and -- yawn! -- Cal utheran is eighth again. Doesn't matter who loses ahead of us, the voters will find somebody to jump. Yeah, I know North Central pounded Illinois, 52-0, but Wesleyan was forced to use a freshman who had thrown exactly one collegiate pass. The results were predictable: 40-16-3 for 130 yards with one INT returned fpr a score and five sacks. I know North Central's a fine team; it's my belief that if we'd have beaten Linfield, 33-30, instead of the other way around, we MIGHT be seventh this week. Also, Illinois Wesleyan is 1-9 in the past decade; they were beaten before they took the field.

Also, don't know what Ben McEnroe's going to do at QB with Ramay is back, but the numbers say Shultis: 119-84-0, .706, 1,195 yds, 5 TDs to 129-78-6, .605, 901 yds, 8 TDs. Two-QB systems almost never work.

Oxy Bob,

Chapman's in the SCIAC now, remeber?

Good luck to the Poets -- after this week, of course. Kingsmen, Kingsmen, go Kingsmen, fight on to victory! 

  It's really a shame what's happened to Whittier football in the past 23 years. At one time, the Poets were among the league powerhouse: 405-268-19 with 24 league titles from 1907 through 1989 (335-206-13 with 22 title from 1929 though '89 under five coaches -- Wallace Newman, George Allen, Don Coryell, John Godfrey and Hugh Mendez). From 1957 through '64 they won eight straight titles. Since 1990, Whittier has gone 54-150 under seven coaches. I would be worse, but Bob Owens (now at Chapman) managed back-to-back winning season and league titles in 1997-98. Even Owens was only 20-43 in seven seasons. I don't know if the administration decided to de-emphasize football after Godfrey, or Mendez, or what. Unfortunately, the Whittier newspaper doesn't cover them much. If they can get another win, this would be the first winning year since '98.

As a former SID, I was amused by the headline about the CLU-Oxy game on the Occidental website: "Tigers hang with No. 8 Cal Lu in first quarter."