Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 01:16:54 PMSullivan and Johanik co-dpoy
Luke opoy

https://cciw.org/news/2024/11/19/cciw-announces-football-all-conference-teams.aspx

Pretty excited to see Jack Middleton get the freshman defensive player of the year.  Dude ran away with that award.  Happy for the other Bears on the list.  Lots of talent throughout the league.

For those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 06:19:43 PMFor those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Fascinating. Probably also speaks to the fact we need a better SOS metric to begin with. And then also need to turn the dial up a bit.

I have followed D3 football closely since I began playing at UW-Oshkosh in the mid-1990s. I've followed the WIAC (it was the WSUC when I played) for the past 30 years, but three years ago I became the most ardent North Park fan outside of the esteemed Greg Sager when my son transferred into the program (I already had a daughter playing tennis at NPU, so this gave me two reasons to spend a lot of time on campus). I've kept my distance when posting, because I never wanted to be critical of the players and coaches in the program I rooted so hard for. Now that my son's playing career is over, I just wanted to say thank you to Kyle Rooker and the NPU staff for a great three seasons. I've seen the last 30 NPU games in person, and the development of this program has been a joy to watch. What coach Rooker has done to develop a competitive program in this conference can't be understated. I can attest that those players in the locker room wanted to win one of their last three games more than anything to get to that 6-win plateau. But the fact that the program feels there is unfinished business after consecutive 5-win seasons shows just how far this team has come. In 2022, NPU needed a late TD against Elmhurst to avoid a winless season. Since that point, the Vikings have beaten every team in the conference not named North Central, Wheaton, and WashU (and they had the Bears on the ropes). In 2022, the team didn't believe they could win. Now they do, and that is a testament to Coach Rooker and his staff. This year's team trailed in the 4th quarter in NINE games. But they believed. Late comebacks against Ripon, Augie, Carroll, and IWU only happen when a team believes in themselves and the coaching staff. They lost some close games (Elmhurst, Carthage, and WashU) that they could've won and those games sting, but that's why you play the games. Lesser teams would've folded after the Elmhurst loss. But this team came back to win at Augie in OT and beat Carroll in comeback fashion. After a tough loss to North Central, this team came back from a two-score deficit to IWU and rallied to win. After a devastating loss  to Carthage, this team played maybe its best game of the season against WashU. This team was resilient and it is a testament to the culture that has been built at NPU. The seniors will be missed! But they have done something at North Park that shouldn't be overlooked. They have made Saturdays matter at the corner of Kedzie and Foster. There will be continued growing pains as this program tries to take the leap from competitive to contending. But what has transpired at North Park has been amazing, and I'm a fan for life.

What happened at North Park in 1968 to have a season that was such an outlier?

Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 06:19:43 PMFor those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Poor Wheaton...

Quote from: UWO Titan 78 on November 19, 2024, 08:11:24 PM... This team was resilient and it is a testament to the culture that has been built at NPU. The seniors will be missed! But they have done something at North Park that shouldn't be overlooked....

Congratulations to your son. We're all happy that he and his NPU football brothers had such a profound experience.  That can be the beauty of football.

I believe this may be only place to watch Isthmus Bowl. $15 to watch.

https://www.isthmusbowl.com/

Quote from: ziggy on November 19, 2024, 10:01:46 PM

Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 06:19:43 PMFor those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Poor Wheaton...

The WIAC had 6 teams over .500, CCIW had 3. I'm guessing that's why 7-3 UWRF makes it with other options weighted more towards sos and 8-2 Wheaton doesn't. Plus UWRF has 3 non conference wins against opponents over .500.

If we switch to sos being weighed more, CCIW going to 9 teams might not be a bad thing. What you want to schedule for non conference games are 10-0 to like 8-2 teams from weaker conferences.

Quote from: deepthroat on November 19, 2024, 09:28:23 PMWhat happened at North Park in 1968 to have a season that was such an outlier?

It was just a moment in time that the Vikings happened to have a handful of truly outstanding players. That team had two future NFL football players on the roster, WR Paul Zaeske (who spent some time as a Houston Oiler around the time that the Oilers and the rest of the AFL merged into the NFL) and LB/P Chuck Burgoon (who was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings for a season or two), who last time I checked still holds a bunch of NPU tackling records. That 1968 team also had the gold standard by which all future North Park QBs would be measured in Bruce Swanson, who himself had a tryout with an NFL team (can't remember which one). He was the best QB in the league during his era, I'm told, although in 1968 it was clear that the baton would be passed to Augustana's freshman QB Ken Anderson, the future NFL MVP with the Cincinnati Bengals. The '68 Vikings had a veteran line, and a great freshman RB in Leroy Dicken (who unfortunately left the program after his sophomore season).

They were hardly invulnerable, though. North Park finished 6-3, 5-2, tying for second with Illinois Wesleyan -- which handed NPC its only serious defeat, 34-7. But the Vikings were the only CCIW team to beat league champion Augustana that season, a 48-42 shootout in Chicago in which Swanson threw for 420 yards and Zaeske caught 17 of his passes for 325 yards. And of course that was the season in which the Vikings staged the epic 104-32 beatdown of North Central that put a bunch of records in the NCAA record book that remain to this day. (You'll find them in the D2 edition of the NCAA record book, because that game predated the split of NCAA College Division into D2 and D3 in the early '70s, and D2's inherited all of the old College Division records.)

The Vikings went 3-6 the previous season, and in 1969, with Swanson, Zaeske, and a bunch of other veterans gone, the Park fell to 2-7 and never really recovered, as head coach Norm Rathje left NPC to take on a more lucrative job as a teacher and football coach at Buffalo Grove High School. (Yes, North Park was so poor back then that it wasn't unheard of to lose coaches to high-school jobs.) As I said, it was just a fleeting moment in which a lot of talent came together under a good coach who understood how to motivate them and knew how to use that talent properly.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on November 19, 2024, 01:48:42 PMA particularly big doff o' the chapeau to senior Juan Nieves for being a four-time member of the All-CCIW team. I'll have to check with Dennis Prikkel on this, but I'm pretty sure that Nieves is the first Viking ever to be named All-CCIW in each of his four seasons.

Turns out that, according to Dennis, Juan Nieves is the second 4x All-CCIW gridder that North Park has ever had. My classmate, Viking Hall of Fame RB Gary Cassady, was the first.

Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 06:19:43 PMFor those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Just slightly turn the dial and Lake Forest goes ghost.

Any idea who long the NPI is in place for? This needs to change ASAP.
Can't have teams rewarded for playing easy schedules and punish teams for playing stiff NC slates.

The NPI dial experiment would actually make the bubble sting a bit less for Wheaton, no? It wasn't the 40/60 split that did them in.

Quote from: SpartanHouse4 on November 20, 2024, 11:53:14 AM

Quote from: CarollFan on November 19, 2024, 06:19:43 PMFor those of you who got into the NPI calculations.
D3 Datacast did some analysis if they changed the weights for wins and sos.

https://d3datacast.com/2024/11/19/changing-npi-dials-change-2024-d3-football-playoff-field/

Just slightly turn the dial and Lake Forest goes ghost.

Any idea who long the NPI is in place for? This needs to change ASAP.
Can't have teams rewarded for playing easy schedules and punish teams for playing stiff NC slates.

it was put in place for 2 years, they can then revisit 40/60 current weighting after the conclusion of next season

Just noticed MHBU's schedule. How is the world did they make it in? Brutal.


MHBU Schedule