FB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[wabashcpa]

And, before I incur the wrath of Bill Boone, Ed Summers (from Ladoga!) pitched for Wabash at the turn of the century and eventually for the Tigers World Series teams of 1908 & 1909.

Now back to football.

[sigma one]

Can we just say that neither of those players has anything to be proud of.  Talking smack/trash, whatever the current term, has become (largely unfortunately) part of the game.  Sounds like the language, and maybe the play, got out of hand.  Is not Wheaton a Christian school; does not Wabash have the Gentleman's Rule? 
     Looking forward============DIII opening weekend on the near horizon.

[fantastic50]

http://www.the-daily-record.com/local%20sports/2013/09/03/scots-hurry-up-offense-may-take-time-to-get-rolling

[wally_wabash]

36...wow.  That's quite a challenge.  I'm rooting for Oberlin though.  I have a ton of respect for that program and I hope they get through 2013 ok and tack on some more bodies this coming spring.   

As we inch closer to Division III football, I remain very curious as to how the targeting rule is going to be enforced at our level and without the benefit of replay to assist.  We saw a handful of ejections over the weekend in Division I, one of which was pretty dicey (the Texas AM kid I believe was wrongly disqualified).  I just hope we don't see a "when in doubt, throw 'em out" application of this rule in Division III.  I think this has to impact how long a coach should let his top line defense go in a game that gets lopsided in the second half.  My strategy would be to score as much as I can as fast as I can and get those guys out and safe for the next game. 

[waf56]

My strategy would be to score as much as I can as fast as I can and get those guys out and safe for the next game.

I do not know any coaches who will disagree with scoring a lot and quickly .

But seriously, if the officials are focusing on this as much in DIII as they were last weekend, I expect to see a alarming number of ejections in the first few weeks. I would not be suprised if the ejections drasticly decrease as the season wears on, whether due to player awarness or a evolving interpretation of the rule by officials.

[GRIZ_BACKER]

Player X may not be able to get admission into Wabash or DPU, but probably looks at Franklin as choice A instead of the pu pu platter of HCAC teams.

Now Player Y may be get admitted into all three, but I bet academics and finances will play a choice along with winning.

I think Wes's point was that some kids are going to get into all 3 and.........{gasp}........choose to go to Franklin over Wabash and DPU because they want to play football at Franklin. Who knows how often that happens? But we can't rightfully say it doesn't ever happen either can we?

It would interesting to find out exactly how many great players were actually turned away and had to settle to play at Franklin or Marian. Great anecdotal discussion though.

[wally_wabash]

My strategy would be to score as much as I can as fast as I can and get those guys out and safe for the next game.

I do not know any coaches who will disagree with scoring a lot and quickly .

Very true...I think what I was getting at is that I think there is incentive to really get after it on some of the teams that Wabash or Witt and maybe even OWU can overwhelm.  Whereas before you might have been happy to be really vanilla on offense and keep your cards close to your chest in the couple of weeks leading up to a big game, maybe now there is incentive to open it up and get your big margin so that you can get those guys on defense out as early as possible in the second half because once you get to the second half, you're one big hit and a confused official away from missing half of the next game.  I think you'll also see the margin at which guys come out in the fourth quarter shrink considerably. 

The whole thing just makes me nervous at the Division III level.  Our officials are what they are...some are good, some are not as good, and some are really not good at all.  That's all well and good when we're talking about missing holding calls for both teams all afternoon and it all evens out.  But this...man, if they screw this up, it has impact beyond just the game that they are in.  I don't want to see top line players miss next week's big game because the side judge thinks he saw some helmet-to-helmet 30 yards away from his position and disqualifies a player because of it. 

[sigma one]

What worries me is that some of the more phyical defensive players become the most vulnerable.  Not that they should be able to be vicious, but that hard hits may be interpreted as disqualifying fouls:  "When in doubt. . . "

[wabco]

So ... getting back to the results of the Wheaton game .... who is the #1 Wabash QB as of this minute (from that scrimmage information), who # 2?  Any Wabash unanticipated #1s at receivers? Did Buresh the younger get to play?  f so, how did he look?  How do the RBs stand up and did CP get some time?

[wally_wabash]

So ... getting back to the results of the Wheaton game .... who is the #1 Wabash QB as of this minute (from that scrimmage information), who # 2?  Any Wabash unanticipated #1s at receivers? Did Buresh the younger get to play?  f so, how did he look?  How do the RBs stand up and did CP get some time?

All tremendous questions.  Are we doing a Red/White intrasquad this weekend?  We might be able to firm some of that up if so. 

[sigma one]

I was told, but some time has passed, that there would be no Red?White this year.  Don't know if this still holds.

[ExTartanPlayer]

What worries me is that some of the more phyical defensive players become the most vulnerable.  Not that they should be able to be vicious, but that hard hits may be interpreted as disqualifying fouls:  "When in doubt. . . "

Anecdotally, I agree with this, if only because I've seen vicious-but-clearly-legal hits flagged in high school games because (kinda like what wally describes) an official saw a kid get laid out in the corner of his eye from 30 yards away and decided that it must have been a block in the back or helmet-to-helmet hit.  I can imagine something like this happening, as well, a physical player delivering a clean hit on a bang-bang play and getting tossed because the official saw his opponent's head take a shot (and to those of you who say this won't happen "much" - you may be right, but I've seen plenty of small-time officials with big egos that loooooove to get too involved in the game).  Even as a former player that strongly believes in taking measures to make the game safer, I still must say that this targeting rule rankles me.  I'm not a fan.

We had this discussion a few weeks back and someone made the point that odds are pretty long a key player is tossed from exactly the wrong game and misses THE crucial game of a season.  Maybe true.  However,  I encourage you to think of it from the PLAYER perspective.  Sure, maybe if Senior Player X gets tossed and misses the first half of the Wabash vs. Oberlin game, it doesn't change who wins, but it does cost that player a game from his senior season.  The worst thing you can do to a small-college player is take away one of his chances to play the game.  I absolutely loathe the idea of a player losing a half/game over a questionable hit.

[jknezek]

We had this discussion a few weeks back and someone made the point that odds are pretty long a key player is tossed from exactly the wrong game and misses THE crucial game of a season.  Maybe true.  However,  I encourage you to think of it from the PLAYER perspective.  Sure, maybe if Senior Player X gets tossed and misses the first half of the Wabash vs. Oberlin game, it doesn't change who wins, but it does cost that player a game from his senior season.  The worst thing you can do to a small-college player is take away one of his chances to play the game.  I absolutely loathe the idea of a player losing a half/game over a questionable hit.

Flip this around. Some kid gets tagged on the head because the defender wasn't practicing proper technique. Concussion symptoms so the kid is out for the rest of the game and, if the team and its med staff are smart, most likely out the next game. Dizzy so he misses class, maybe ends up with some make up work, maybe ends up with a down semester. Headaches so they keep him from practice... hey, 2 or 3 weeks just went by and the kid has been sitting out. I absolutely loathe the idea of a player losing multiple games over a questionable hit. I really loathe when it gets in the way of his education, the real reason he is in school.

Concussions are no joke and football is going to have to deal with this going forward. It's going to take some of the violence out of the game and maybe that makes it a bit less entertaining. But as evidence mounts and insurance gets more expensive for these programs, we're all going to be wishing we were more proactive in sorting the issue ahead of time.

[sigma one]

I can see it both ways:  the hitter gets tossed, misses part of a season; the hitee gets hurt, misses games, misses or is hampered in classes.  Maybe suffers down the road.  For all of this there is no simple answer.  Cleary, obvious blows to the head or launching the body are violations.  The margin of error is thin, just as is the margin on more mundane penalties like holding and passing interference (sometimes). 
     I don't know if there could be a middle ground.  I can't think of one that would work to penalize the player adequately.  Could he be forced to miss X-number of defensive plays--rough corollary to the hockey penalty box.  But would this really be enough when the hurt player cannot return. But, again, what if the hurt player trots back onto the field two playes later (or in the next quarter, etc.), while the hitter sits for a long, long time.  I don't think there is an obvious quid pro quo because no one knows how seriously the hitee could be injured at the moment the play occurs.
 

[Gregory Sager]

Here's an NCAC football human interest story from America's Finest News Source, The Onion.