FB: Middle Atlantic Conference

[bill]

JM - and others

Your comments about academic exclusivity all have merit.  In fact, you said "I love all schools that give kid's a chance without flaunting their selectivity and exclusivity".

Without naming names, there IS a lot to be said about academic reputation and recruiting, but it still comes down to admissions and financial aid.

There are a handful of schools in the conference that simply do not have the standards of the others. On what do I base my statement?  I have personally seen dozens of young men who have been rejected at some of the schools in the conference, yet receive ACADEMIC scholarship money at others!

I would LOVE to see an IVY/Patriot model in place, where each school has to release the academic credentials (AI) to the other schools in the league.  Then we'll all see who's recruiting - and letting in - who!

[Knightstalker]

Gordon, I can't say about Del Val in particular but the MAC schools do or did recruit heavily in western NJ.  The financial aid packages offered by the MAC schools more than balances out the lower tuition of the NJAC schools in most cases that I know of.  I screwed up, I could have gone to Moravian and come out of school in less debt than I did coming out of JCSC.

[WUDLINE]

When it is all said an done at D3 most of the recruiting process comes down to the successfulness of the program ( wins and losses), the coaches selling the program, and aide packages. This is evident in the Del Val turn around. The financial aid and facilities really have not changed they just simply got into a quality pipeline of Widner coaches and have been rewarded for it. Mangus and Clemens are good X & O coaches which led to wins, and great salesmen on the recruiting trail which continued to bring in better players. This changed the entire atmosphere of the program. These factors coupled with a lack of success at Lyco and Widener made Del Val the best option to for alot of players in an area that led to the dominance of these (WU &Lyco) programs for along time.

[Lyco80]

Glad to see I shook things up a bit on this, mostly silent, board.

Lycoming gives financial aid to 92% of its students - that includes football players.

Jack Frost Mountain is not far from Williamsport - so Lycoming is close to skiing too.

The 1990s, in the MAC, not the Centennial or Ivy League, belong to Lycoming football.  No one else came close, particularly in the last half of the decade.  The turn around of Delaware Valley remains one of the biggest surprises of the last thirty years in MAC football as the balance of power and center of gravity shifted from Chester - to Willamsport - to Doylestown. 

It still remains a puzzle to me how Lycoming, at the very pinnacle of the Girardi era, could lose out on recruits in the Philly and NJ area.  Lycoming has financial aid, excellent facilities, and at the time, a superb and dominant program. 

The rest of the argument, based upon return on investment, academic stability and longevity, are not usually in the minds of young men - but they do have an impact.  Anyone talked to any Upsala alumni recently?

The other point made - the Warriors have a solid team this year and appear to be building in the right direction - generated little chatter or comment.  Funny, given this is a football posting site and that is a primary observation - the rest ancillary.

ATB

[WUDLINE]

Lyco
I beg to differ with your comment about Lycos dominance in the MAC during the later part of the decade as I recall numerous trips to the playoff and MAC championships being split between both of our schools. However, it was certainly a battle that has lost a little luster in the more recent years with the rise of Del Val. It looks like both programs are having better years. If you remember a lot of Lycos players came directly from the Philly catholic league and most of the players in the area were recruited by coach Curry. With Widener getting more of the public league kids and delco players

[dlippiel]

To dlip, Lyco is a solid team, and has broken into his ER top ten this week over the likes of an undefeated Endicott. Lyco's D has had some excellent series this season and dlip is becoming a believer that this is a pretty darn good football team down there at Lyco! The next two out of four games will be telltale for the Warriors. Obviously to stay at this level they must defeat Stevenson and FDU, but we shall see how they do against a team dlip is really high on in Del Val and a good football team in Leb Val. For the Warriors, it is right there for the taking. Can they take it?

[gordonmann]

I think Widener, Lyco and Del Val are all very solid teams. I wouldn't be surprised to see any of them win the MAC.  I have all three on my Lambert ballot which is the Top 10 teams in the East region plus Wesley plus the Presidents Athletic Conference (so Thomas More) and Centennial (so Johns Hopkins).

[jmcozenlaw]

Lyco - For every Upsala situation there are how many that don't turn out that way? Is the ratio about 1:500 or 1:1000?

When was the last time I talked to an Upsala alum? Several times a day with one (an international bond trader for Goldman Sachs) and every Saturday in the stands at Del Val (a very successful self-employed man).

You get out of life that what you work hard for and put into it. Some of the biggest crooks in the world (Wall Street and D.C.) have great degrees and pedigree..........but no honesty, decency and morality.

Give me the working class kid from a blue collar family hell bent on success vs. the spoiled rich kid 99 times out of 100. I've found it much easier (and much more rewarding) to build kids up who work hard for it........than reward the spoiled kids who expect it as an entitlement.

[rams1102]

Lyco - For every Upsala situation there are how many that don't turn out that way? Is the ratio about 1:500 or 1:1000?

When was the last time I talked to an Upsala alum? Several times a day with one (an international bond trader for Goldman Sachs) and every Saturday in the stands at Del Val (a very successful self-employed man).

You get out of life that what you work hard for and put into it. Some of the biggest crooks in the world (Wall Street and D.C.) have great degrees and pedigree..........but no honesty, decency and morality.

Give me the working class kid from a blue collar family hell bent on success vs. the spoiled rich kid 99 times out of 100. I've found it much easier (and much more rewarding) to build kids up who work hard for it........than reward the spoiled kids who expect it as an entitlement.

Don't you love the entitled youth of America. God forbid they work hard. +K

[jmcozenlaw]

Rams - Thank you very much. This middle aged man is heading out the door to have a productive and profitable day.............hopefully profitable enough to continue to share it with others.

If you've been fortunate enough while on this Earth, share it with others

[G-manWU]

Lyco80,

Considering your team just laid an old-fashioned whoopin' on my team last weekend, you get the upper hand to start this conversation But let me lend a few nuggets to your candy basket on this one...

I have always admired your school pride in the years that I have been reading and posting here. If I am not mistaken, you are/were a member of the board of trustees at Lyco...I can't get to that level quite yet, but I do return to the Wilkes campus in a variety of guest speaking and mentoring roles, and I am taking steps to explore involvement with the alumni board. So the feeling of blue & gold pride is mutual between us, even if for different institutions.

But when it comes to how Lyco can lose out in recruiting...well..there are some other great schools out there, you know

I think every D3 program has a certain makeup of students in terms of geography, academic major, etc.. Sometimes this changes based on a new head coach bringing in recruiting ties, the addition of a new academic course offering, etc.. At Wilkes we had lots of engineering majors, and many of those guys were from the eastern PA/ northern NJ region. Since they wanted to stick around a reasonable drive from home and play D3 football, that had them looking at Wilkes and TCNJ, Johns Hopkins, and one or two others. I know every school has specific majors and programs like that, and you can trace a pattern in recruiting that way for many players.

When it comes to majors that are offered at most D3 schools- education, business, criminal justice, and the like- I think you can get programs like Delaware Valley (and Lebanon Valley to an extent) that have become bigger players in the D3 recruiting wars with a combination of improved facilities and , more importantly, on-field results. Once a team starts winning, the success can keep rolling if the recruiting effort is there. You take a program that puts together a winning record for a few years, and the program starts looking attractive to recruits for a variety of reasons. Some may not have looked at the school if they wanted a winning program, but now they take a second look. Some may like the coaching staff, others may follow high school buddies already in the program....each recruit has his own unique pipeline to D3 U. But it all starts with winning, and with results comes the potential to recruit for more success.

I have all the respect in the world for Lycoming as a university, for Coach G and the history of the football program, and the many great Lyco people I met during four great years of working with two different sports program for the Colonels. I have no doubt that the Warriors will be a factor in the MAC for a very long time, but this is a competitive league, and there are lots of good football programs for recruits to pick from. I know that we would both like to see every player in our own shades of blue and gold...your alma mater will get some, mine will get others, and the rest of the MAC will get their fair share. It's just the way the system works. 

[jmcozenlaw]

G-Man - Some very interesting buzz is flying under the radar in the Doylestown area. Del Val just received a very highly publicized $30 million gift by a local family and the word is that a future gift/gifts will be topping that amount by quite a bit under the condition that X% goes towards the planning and construction of a comprehensive athletic complex. Word has it that the types of facilities under consideration include Muhlenberg, Albright and Lycoming. My guess is that the name Michener has something to do with the largess. 

Additionally, more majors might include nursing (growing regional Doylestown Hospital is right up the road) and engineering.......to go along with their newer majors in education and criminal justice and their long standing ag, science (pre-med and pre-vet) and business majors.

University status is just a couple of years away and the school has a ton of land to develop in the future......without taking away from the ag programs (we all have to eat don't we:) Could prove very interesting for those kids who want to escape the city, but stay a short train ride (the campus has it's own Septa station) away from the bright lights.

[gordonmann]

Interesting. I hadn't heard about about the fund raising for a new athletics complex. I'd really like to see that happen.

[wesleydad]

as long as they keep the size of the home stands, great place to watch the game and listen to gordon broadcast it.  the visitor side does need some work.  the soccer adn field hockey fields look pretty nice to me, but if they upgrade to turf than they will make great practice areas.

gordon, looks like the widener game could be for the title and aq bid if del val gets by lyco.

[jmcozenlaw]

Wesleydad - You're correct, the visitors side is quite the mess but even in nice complexes like Muhlenberg, FDU (at least the field is nice) and Wilkes, the vistors side is lacking as well. Albright did a nice job on the visitors side.

Word is that the track will be state of the art and the "complex" will be in the scoreboard side of the stadium with some type of turf practice field behind the complex. A little more money (what else:) is the only thing holding this up for now and the construction timeline would be pretty aggressive with some alums in the industry involved.

Could help a solid program get that much better along with university status and the addition of more popular programs.