When we (Stevens) made the Final 4 in 2008, you have no idea how frustrating it was for me to find out that the NCAA sends some boring shills to do the broadcast.  I would have gladly done it.  I'd still do it now.  NCAA sign me up, I've even kept a demo tape of the good old days!

And good god don't get me started on Twellman.  Let's just say the days of the MLS having credible announcers are sadly gone.  I had hope for the Arlo White generation, and then they moved him to EPL coverage.

Ugh.  That's why you should never make assumptions about the game.  Sure a 75 yard free kick seems harmless... if you have no situational awareness.  It's OT, there is limited time separating your side from a PK shootout, and legs are tied.  Of course the ball is going to get pumped down into the box, and you need to be on your toes as a broadcaster.  It's as if he wasn't even watching what was happening and reading from a card or notes sheet or something.  Even if you're discussing something off visual topic you should still be capable of jumping back to live action at a moment's notice at all times.

You'd have to think given the state of the NJAC currently, Kean's recent performances in the league, and their recent troubles that they'd be looking outside.  If you still thought of Kean as a perennial contender, recruiting top talent in the region, etc. then you're on to a legacy setup.  Messiah of course obviously comes to mind.  In the end though, no disrespect of course to such a legendary career as Coach Ochrimenko's, but based on results/form -- the self-sanctioning of 2011, an ineligibility forfeit this season, and the fact that the team has not had a winning record in the past 5 seasons (best NJAC season 4-5), I'd suspect it will be a fresh face.

I really hope that wasn't the live call, that would be an incredible shame and a waste of a great broadcasting moment opportunity.

Just as a discussion point for the group, thought I'd look up and post the numbers for the NESCAC in the tournament since 2008 (can't find any older brackets to run the tally on).  The draws are matches that went to PKs, win or lose.

Overall:  15-9-2

Home:  6-1
Away:  4-1-2
Neutral (overall):  5-7
Neutral (w/shorter travel):  2-1
Neutral (w/ longer travel):  3-5
Not AMH,WIL,MID:  1-4-1

So, while certainly the NESCAC has performed overall quite admirably, there is some support for the pause from some members of the board.  In recent years, the non-traditional conference powers have struggled regardless of the opposition, and winning on a neutral field for all sides has proven a challenge. 

Frankly, we should probably all agree that using professional players isn't (and won't any time soon) be a good point for argument at the D3 level.  Not taking anything at all away of the players listed, but counting for instance Nick Armington's 2006 signing by Real Salt Lake's dev squad and making a career 0 starts is dubious at best, and we'll not even discuss the state of US soccer pre-1996.  That's not a knock on getting there, because everyone respects what it takes just to even get a look in, but I think recent times have told us that many players have a chance at a look in if they want it, but ultimately go the academic and workforce route which is a staple of the D3 game and rightfully so.

The problems I have are that:

1) As other users have further backed with additional supporting evidence as this thread has advanced, the NESCAC is not the only league that shows such depth, and in fact does not even demonstrate the best depth.  I would, in fact, unequivocally give that to the NJAC over the last decade for so many reasons already listed -- consistency of tournament performance, non-conference schedule willingness, success spread against multi-regional tournament opposition, and other factors.

2) I have no sympathy whatsoever, I'm afraid, for the "schedule excuse."  Not even entering play tournament play until 1993 is already a sad state of affairs to begin with, even recognizing the reasons, but ultimately the NESCAC would not be the only ones making sacrifices to play a full slate of games.  Did we not have the same discussions a few short years ago regarding trying to accommodate religious institutions' Sunday games?  There was some protest, but largely if needed schools will play on Sunday now.  This situation is no different to me.  The NESCAC should accept the modern state of the game and run an equivalent schedule. 

3) This is not a personal attack against you or any other NESCAC fan, player, coach, or league/institution representative, but your tone when discussing both sides of the issue is a very NESCAC/New England one.  It was pervasive growing up around me in CT, and it is pervasive in your explanations of why things are the way they stand in terms of scheduling.  "I don't believe they are ever afraid to play top-flight competition, but they definitely (despite having a ton of institutional wealth) have a very limited travel budget, so if reciprocity is part of the deal, it is unlikely to happen."  And why would they be eager to have reciprocity game deals?  When they can typically get 2 teams to the Elite 8 and 1 to the Final Four, expect to compete for national titles, dominate the Director's Cup due to sports most other schools can't even hope to field, etc?  Yet you're first dismissive of the NJAC national titles pre-NESCAC days to the point where one could read what you write as insinuating they never would have happened, offended of my admittedly selective non-use of the Middlebury 2007 title yet immediately claiming the Williams result this year to be a 1-off aberration (conveniently forgetting the 4-0 throttling of Amherst by Stevens in the same round in 2008), highly dismissively-toned of Loras despite their being a Final Four participant in 3 of the past 6 years, losing 2 of those games to Messiah and 2 in OT and having lost to an eventual Final 4 or Finalist-team every season in between, and making a baseless assumption that teams would have to have stipulations to travel to NESCAC schools if such games were available.  The September 2011 meeting between Messiah and OWU says otherwise, with that being their 4th meeting in 11 seasons.  I commentated for a match in 2008 between Redlands and Stevens in Hoboken, NJ.  Messiah competing in the Virginia Beach events.  Heck, the UAA has made their league schedule work despite near-impossible travel distances on a D3-comparative basis.  So it can and will be done.

No one is saying the NESCAC isn't a great league, with a history of great teams, coaches, and players.  But I think the Mountain West CBB example was very fitting.  For me, they've earned their situation by going out and aggressively taking on challenges, just today for instance New Mexico was visiting Kansas.  And I understand the economics and dynamics are vastly different.  But there is a recent trend, Middlebury aside, of out-of-region teams dispatching the believed elite sides from New England, sometimes in very convincing fashion.  I might sound harsh, but I don't think I'm unjustified in asking the NESCAC to get with the times and prove it, and the NCAA to oblige that fact and spread them out in the bracket.

You're right on ... that final 4 match was a 4-0 result.  Amherst were pretty thoroughly throttled

Apparently editing posts isn't allowed on the boards, so just a couple final pieces on this:

It's great to have parity.  The NJAC has parity, so too the UAA.  Yet the NJAC teams have historically and presently been very successful.  Surely you have to consider them the best conference, particularly based on consistency of tournament performance against spread of opposition and travel.  But there can be a problem with parity.  If you all play each other and beat each other up but don't really beat too much quality outside your group, it doesn't give much indication as to your overall talent level.  A great example of this is the Mountain West's RPI in D1 basketball.  They constantly have a conference RPI that people question as too high.  But they schedule aggressively out of conference and play high level games in conference.  Yet typically they underperform in the tournament.  One has to surmise that their conference level is lower than tournament teams they come up against, and this in my view is the case with the NESCAC.

On the travel side -- I remember the mid-2000s where NYU had established themselves as a force despite not necessarily posting a great overall record.  Heck, we (Stevens) ran into their buzzsaw a couple times in my college years.  Part of their advantage surely has to be attributed to location.  Part of why a side like Emory struggled in the tournament I definitely believe is the travel, so I can understand that keeping plane trips to a minimum is preferred.  But I also believe in an opposition spread.  An Amherst-Williams or other all-NESCAC elite 8 isn't necessarily a good thing for D3 soccer.

As a Stevens grad and commentator, I think we're definitely up there but unfortunately many times you see the difficulty of playing in a weaker schedule with respect to tournament time.  It will never happen, but I'd love to see us join the NJAC because we need that competition.  They do a good job of nonconference scheduling, but it only goes so far.

On a different thread, I wasn't sure I wanted to post this throughout the tournament but I'm going to put it in here for thought now because unfortunately my point was very well founded in the Messiah-Williams result.  How much longer can we continue to overrate the NESCAC, and by result, the New England region as a whole, while they continue to play a restricted schedule that rarely sees them engage challenging non-conference opponents?  We seem to have this theory that "The NESCAC plays extremely high quality football," yet many examples I remember from my college days and watching now post-graduation I remember a very obnoxious rough and tumble, old English-style game that simply tries to physically bully teams out of games.  Messiah badly outclassed them, and rightfully so.  Yet Williams, due to this respect, was given a pod host right with a 6 loss record.

Consider in the Mid-Atlantic Quadrant you had a pod setup that could have pitted 2 regional #1s and two Coaches top 5 teams together (regardless of the value you put in that ranking system) in the Sweet 16 (#4 RU-Camden and #5 Stevens) and also includes the South Atlantic #4/NSCAA #16 York PA Spartans.  One of Stevens and York will be going home in the Round of 32.  On the opposite side of that very same bracket, you have two regional #2s (Carnegie Mellon and Montclair State) potentially facing off in a Round of 32 game, and another regional #2 (Rochester) potentially awaiting a round later.  Already a pretty imbalanced bracket just looking within that group of 15.   Conversely, in the New England bracket, there was an Elite 8 appearance guaranteed for a team with a MINIMUM of 5 blemishes (That would have been #2 New England Brandeis, who lost to Williams), and St. Lawrence was able to storm through a pod scoring 13 goals. 

I understand that I will be seen as biased using Stevens as a example point, and I understand that the NCAA at the D3 level is trying to keep travel costs down.  But I'd much rather see them plane some teams around to balance the bracket, because to me you simply can't have a bracket with 1 regional #1 and 2 regional #2s where another bracket has 2 regional #1s, 3 regional #2s, and a regional #4 who would likely be a #2 in basically any other region (York).  Additionally, it's not just this season.  Amherst and Williams have met in the Northeast Quadrant Elite 8 match each of the last 2 years, having had to dispatch only St. Lawrence outside of region.  In 2011, no NESCAC team (out of 3) made it out of the Sweet 16, each losing to a New Jersey or in-region team (RU-C, SIT, Babson).  In 2010, again it was Amherst ousting St. Lawrence to meet Bowdoin, with Williams eliminated by Babson and Middlebury getting through William Paterson before falling to Bowdoin.  Of course, when you look to the final 4 matchup, the NESCAC team falls to the side considered the rank outsiders.  2010 saw Bowdoin fall to Lynchburg, 2012 saw Williams fall to Ohio Northern (who then lost to Messiah 5-1) conceding 3 goals.  Yes, one-offs are difficult for the purpose of statistical assessment, but we're building a trend of results and occurrences here.  At what point does the NCAA D3 soccer committee either have to start putting the pressure on NESCAC schools to play a larger non-conference schedule or simply start ranking them lower?