University Athletic Association

[jknezek]

Out of curiosity, when should we expect for d3football's preview magazine to be available?

around mid-august I believe

[ADL70]

Later in August I'm pretty sure.

There will be plenty of promotion.

[Gregory Sager]

That said, I am concerned about the UAA's long-term viability without football.  Well, that, on top of the fact that the UAA isn't an AQ conference in baseball.  How common is it in Division III to have a conference without football?  How many such conferences are also non-AQ in baseball?  I'm guessing that D3 conferences that fit that profile are few and far between.

Very common actually.  In 2014 there were 24 football leagues that received automatic bids to the tournament, in basketball there were 43 such conferences.  So you've got about 20 conferences out there that don't sponsor football.

I got that.

But how many of those 20 conferences are ALSO non-AQ in baseball?

I'm guessing that that number is much smaller.

As I said, the number of conferences like the UAA which are BOTH non-AQ in baseball AND don't sponsor football is probably pretty small, I'm guessing.

Given how small that number likely is, I'm worried about the UAA's long-term viability.

With all due respect, DS, I think that you're being needlessly alarmist. Here's why:

* Let's start with the overall breadth of the UAA in terms of sports offered. You're focused upon the Big Three here (or, more precisely, two-thirds of it -- football and baseball), but the league also sponsors nine men's sports and nine women's sports aside from the Big Three. (I'm leaving out fencing, since the league's sponsorship of that sport, in which Brandeis and NYU are the only participants, is even more baffling than the UAA's declaration that, somehow, someway, it will remain a football league.) That's twenty different sports, aside from baseball/softball and football, in which the UAA's eight member schools have a congenial, historical, and fruitful common relationship.

* That common relationship isn't gonna change just because the UAA can no longer uphold the pretense that it's a functioning football league. Football is not the driver within the D3 polity that it is on the D1 level, because: a) in D3, football is not a revenue-producing sport (in the sense of ticket sales, merchandising, broadcast rights, etc., being used to fund the other sports, as is the case on the D1 level); and b) football is very much a low-participation sport in D3; fewer than 250 of the 440-odd schools in D3 field football teams. It's not the policy-making behemoth in D3 that it is in D1, and certainly no sport, including football, is a policy-making behemoth of any kind in the UAA. Jocks really don't call the shots in any D3 league, but they're even less equipped to do so in the UAA than in the other D3 leagues.

* You yourself have already stated two very important reasons why the UAA is quite healthy the way it is:

it's nice to have ONE conference in the NCAA that has ALL of its members as AAU schools (even the Ivy League and B1G can't boast of that!).

Every UAA school that has a football team (Chicago, Washington U., Case, Carnegie-Mellon, and Rochester) has an endowment well in excess of a billion dollars.  In fact, the only UAA member school that isn't a billionaire is Brandeis, and even Brandeis' endowment is over $700 million.

I'm guessing that only the Ivy League is richer, on average, among NCAA sports conferences.

The ability (or inability) to absorb travel costs has never been much of a consideration.

Add to that the fact that the UAA represents a very small and unique niche within the D3 member population -- private research universities -- that is otherwise not served by any specific conference, plus the ongoing relationships that've existed under the UAA aegis for almost thirty years now, and there's no good institutionally-based reason why the league should fold.

* I think that Jay hit the nail on the head regarding UAA baseball and UAA softball. Chicago, as ADL70 mentioned, doesn't participate in the UAA baseball or softball schedules because the U of C is on a quarter-based academic calendar rather than a semester-based one. But you can't fully lay the blame for the lack of a UAA automatic qualifying bid in those two sports at the feet of the Hyde Parkers; remember, Carnegie Mellon doesn't even offer either sport. Where there's a will there's a way, and the resources of the UAA allow the will to go a long, long way in terms of making things like an autobid for the D3 baseball and D3 softball tourneys happen, if that will really does exist. It may simply have to require some inspired creativity in terms of schedule-making, or the use of alternative strategies such as divisional play and/or adding associate members for those two sports (a strategy that the CCIW, for example, is using very effectively). But if the lack of baseball and softball autobids constitute that big of a crisis, then the league's braintrust will find a way around it.

Thing is, I'm not sure that it is such a crisis. Since the UAA started play in 1987, there have been six D3 baseball tourneys (1988, 1990, 1991, 1995, 2008, and 2010) in which the league failed to have a representative in the field. However, there have been ten D3 baseball tourneys that have included multiple UAA teams (including the last two, and three of the last four), and three of those ten tourneys included three UAA teams. UAA softball is in even better shape than its baseball counterpart when it comes to the national D3 scene in that sport. Since the turn of the century, the league has been represented in every single D3 softball tourney. Only two of those tourneys (2000 and 2005) included just one UAA representative. Nine times in those sixteen years the UAA has managed to place three teams in the D3 softball tourney (including the last two tourneys, and three of the last four), and in 2007 a whopping four UAA teams made the D3 tournament. In other words, the UAA appears to be doing quite well on the diamond as far as postseason participation is concerned, even without autobids.

The bottom line is that the UAA is not going to break up simply because the league no longer has an automatic bid to the baseball and football playoffs.

If the UAA is creeping out onto the thin ice, I really don't think it has anything to do with football or baseball or money.  My guess is that it has a lot more to do with time and travel.  We've seen the division condense itself geographically over the last handful of years.  The UAA seems to be the lone holdout as far as geographically expansive conferences go in D-III.  I'd like to see the league continue on as is- it's unique and it's no doubt a special collection of universities.  As long as the powers that be there don't mind the travel, time, and expense involved in being a league so vast, have at it. 

I think that you're right. Clearly, money is no object where UAA travel is concerned. But the travel has always proved to be something of an academic obstacle for the UAA. The presence of proctors and tutors on UAA plane-and-hotel road trips ameliorates that somewhat, but I'm sure that there are faculty members and administrators on UAA campuses who still have misgivings about their student-athletes spending that much time away from campus. At this point, though, I haven't heard of any serious rumblings from any UAA school about exiting the league because of time and travel.

[cush]

IF your flying is time/travel really that bad? 2-3 hours on a plans goes a lot further than a bus. I guess it does cost $ though but UAA school' have plenty of it + i thought they sold the cultural benefits of the travel. Heck, i like the UAA bringing in more far flung school's for the travel benefits. Trinity in Texas would be a great road trip and they have a huge endowment to cover travel. The other issue is where would UAA school's go if they dissolved the league?

[DagarmanSpartan]

If the UAA dissolved, then CWRU and CMU might try to join the PAC for all sports (CWRU used to be a PAC member; it is now just a football affiliate).

If the UAA added a school, it would NOT be Trinity, simply because Trinity isn't a member of the AAU, and as I already mentioned, the UAA is the ONLY NCAA Conference at ANY level of competition that can boast of having ALL of its member schools as AAU affiliates (the Ivy League can't because of Dartmouth, and the B1G can't because of Nebraska).

We'd love to have Johns Hopkins back if we could (they left the UAA several years back; the UAA is now the "Egghead Eight," as opposed to the "Nerdy Nine" because of that).

In lieu of that, MIT would be a DREAM addition.  The UAA would truly be the "Nerdy Nine" if that happened.  Sadly, MIT doesn't appear to mind being in a football conference with other local D3 schools, even though none of MIT's football conference mates is anywhere close to being MIT's peer academically.

If either Tufts or Rensselaer were ever to attain AAU status, then each would be an attractive addition.

In my mind, if those two schools became AAU, we could add them to the UAA together with MIT, and then call Johns Hopkins back into the fold as well. 

That would essentially put all of the comprehensive, urban private research universities in Division III together in one "super" conference.

Such a conference would undoutedly be AQ in EVERY sport, including football.

[Gregory Sager]

Trinity in Texas would be a great road trip and they have a huge endowment to cover travel.

If the UAA added a school, it would NOT be Trinity, simply because Trinity isn't a member of the AAU, and as I already mentioned, the UAA is the ONLY NCAA Conference at ANY level of competition that can boast of having ALL of its member schools as AAU affiliates (the Ivy League can't because of Dartmouth, and the B1G can't because of Nebraska).

The bigger issue with Trinity (TX) is much more basic than AAU membership, DS. Trinity (TX) isn't a research university; it's a small liberal arts college, just like its fellow SCAC members (and the vast majority of other D3 schools). It therefore isn't a good fit for the UAA for institutional reasons.

Johns Hopkins, Tufts, MIT, and RPI are all private research universities, and they thus fit the UAA model. I haven't heard that any of them are interested in joining the UAA, though, and I can speculate as to why. Even though JHU was a UAA member in the past, the thing about that school is that the athletic department is dominated by a sport -- men's lacrosse -- that the UAA doesn't offer. In fact, the Blue Jays were grandfathered in as a D1 men's lacrosse program when the NCAA rules were changed to force schools to play within their divisions in all sports that were sponsored by that particular school's division. JHU is a Big Ten men's lacrosse program, and it is now a Big Ten women's lacrosse program as well (I'm guessing that Title IX overrode the rule I just mentioned). I strongly suspect that lacrosse rules the roost at Johns Hopkins, including how the athletics budget is parceled out. Similarly, at RPI, another non-UAA sport -- hockey -- is king. The Engineers are D1 in both men's and women's hockey. As for Tufts, I can't imagine why the Jumbos would ever want to leave the NESCAC. Sure, the rest of the NESCAC members are small liberal arts colleges and Tufts is a research university, but they're great small liberal arts colleges; academically, they're easily on par with Tufts. In other words, Tufts is currently in very good company right where it is. For the Jumbos, the travel and expense of being a NESCAC member is much easier to handle than travel and expense would be in the UAA.

That would essentially put all of the comprehensive, urban private research universities in Division III together in one "super" conference.

No, it wouldn't. Caltech, a school that you didn't mention but which very much fits the UAA model, would be another ideal candidate for UAA membership. It's a highly-esteemed private research university, and it's an AAU member. The problem with Caltech, though, is that the school's administration is adamant about following an admissions model that makes it very difficult to recruit student-athletes of any competence. Caltech is a doormat (or very close to it) in every SCIAC sport, and the Beavers would fare even worse in the UAA, a league that is generally superior across the board to the SCIAC in terms of athletic competence.

MIT would be the ideal UAA candidate. But I haven't heard of any interest from that school in joining the UAA. (I've always been a bit surprised that MIT didn't try to follow in the path of Tufts by joining the NESCAC, seeing as how Tufts proves that a research university is welcome within that league's ranks.)

[Gregory Sager]

Incidentally, as you said, neither Tufts nor RPI are members of the Association of American Universities -- and that is not a club that readily expands. Only two schools (Texas A&M in 2010 and Boston University in 2012) have joined the AAU within the past decade -- a decade in which two schools (Nebraska and Syracuse) were dropped from the AAU's ranks, albeit controversially. One of the two reasons cited for Nebraska's expulsion -- the lack of a medical school (the UN Medical Center, which is in Omaha, is considered a separate campus from UN-Lincoln) -- would adversely affect RPI, for instance. So I wouldn't expect that it's imminent for Tufts or RPI to have the AAU's red carpet rolled out for them.

As of now, Caltech, JHU, and MIT are the only D3 institutions that are not in the UAA that are members of the Association of American Universities.

[wally_wabash]

I think it's also important to be aware of the difference between endowments and budgets.  That a school has a bottomless pit of money from which to tap into doesn't mean that they will (or necessarily should).  I don't know all of the ins and outs as to why JHU took all of their sports and went to the CC or why Rochester decided to keep their football activities in the Northeast exclusively.  There are probably a handful of reasons why those things happened, but I'd be shocked if one of those reasons wasn't cost. 

[Gregory Sager]

I think it's also important to be aware of the difference between endowments and budgets.  That a school has a bottomless pit of money from which to tap into doesn't mean that they will (or necessarily should).  I don't know all of the ins and outs as to why JHU took all of their sports and went to the CC or why Rochester decided to keep their football activities in the Northeast exclusively.  There are probably a handful of reasons why those things happened, but I'd be shocked if one of those reasons wasn't cost.

That's very true insofar as it goes, although the deep pockets of the alumni of UAA schools, which are a direct reflection of those huge endowments, would seem to indicate no lack of resources in that regard. I would have to think that at least a few UAA alumni have some sort of an interest in their alma mater's sports ... although perhaps I'm being optimistic in that regard.

[DagarmanSpartan]

Another UAA expansion possibility that I just thought of is Worcester Polytechnic.  It's also a Division III private research university, although it is not an AAU member.

If Tufts, Renneslaer, and WPI were to all become AAU, perhaps we could invite them together with MIT.

[jaybird44]

I can't speak for the other UAA members, but Wash-U has alumni that are very active and contribute to the athletic programs through the W Club.  Their generosity has paved the way for the Gary & Rachel Sumers Recreation Center...a 60,000 square-foot facility (completion date August of next year) that will tie into the existing Fieldhouse and greatly expand fitness opportunities for the entire student body and campus staff; along with providing more room for team locker rooms, meeting rooms, office space, and an expanded sports medicine suite.  In short, the W Club serves as the hub of the Department of Athletics...a very involved hub, reflected by Wash-U's nine straight years of finishing in the top-5 of the Learfield Cup standings.

I don't know anything about endowments, and how they are used or not used.  Those that grow into the billions of dollars don't do so by spending freely from them.  So, despite having a very healthy financial endowment, I suspect that Wash-U's administration pays close attention to its finances, and requires the Department of Athletics to stay within the constraints of a budget.

Therein lies part of the motivation to have the football program join the CCIW as an affiliate member.  Travel savings are a meaningful reason to seek a new affiliate arrangement beginning in 2018, along with the other reasons stated by the Wash-U press release that announced the future move of the football program to the CCIW.

[ADL70]

UAA preview.

http://uaa.prestosports.com/sports/fball/2015-16/files/15_UAA_Preseason_FB_Release.pdf

[ADL70]

Tough loss for the Spartans at Chicago, 31-30.  Missed PAT was the difference.

Cuda debuted with a line of 21-35-0-3-339 and led the team in rushing with 8-59.  He avoid the rush and was never sacked.`

WashU@StL beat CMU 45-24.

[DagarmanSpartan]

Heartbreaking loss, but at least I now feel a little bit better about our prospects this season. 

I suspect that we can get to the five win or better mark.

[mustang]

Tough loss for the Spartans at Chicago, 31-30.  Missed PAT was the difference.

Cuda debuted with a line of 21-35-0-3-339 and led the team in rushing with 8-59.  He avoid the rush and was never sacked.`

WashU@StL beat CMU 45-24.

Mark,

It was an entertaining game to watch. The offense seems much improved with good production from the QB position. It's unfortunate that the team couldn't put it away with a 2 TD lead going into the 4th quarter.