FB: Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[KitchenSink]

Oh, the Lord - he does work in mysterious ways.

Aside from the fact that I think college football belongs on Saturday afternoons, I especially dislike Friday night games because I officiate high school football and Friday night is varsity night.

Except that this week my game was just cancelled due to heavy attrition within one of the programs, so Friday night just opened up.  Well, well, well. 

A bummer to lose a game, but at least the timing has a positive bounce.   

Are you a WIAA official in Wisconsin?  If so, just because I'm curious and if you don't mind saying, which school had to cancel.

Yes - WIAA licensed in football and baseball (Master level)

Shoreland Lutheran - Racine/Kenosha area.

[bleedpurple]

Oh, the Lord - he does work in mysterious ways.

Aside from the fact that I think college football belongs on Saturday afternoons, I especially dislike Friday night games because I officiate high school football and Friday night is varsity night.

Except that this week my game was just cancelled due to heavy attrition within one of the programs, so Friday night just opened up.  Well, well, well. 

A bummer to lose a game, but at least the timing has a positive bounce.   

Are you a WIAA official in Wisconsin?  If so, just because I'm curious and if you don't mind saying, which school had to cancel.

Yes - WIAA licensed in football and baseball (Master level)

Shoreland Lutheran - Racine/Kenosha area.

It's not so mysterious. The Lord allowed a bunch of Lutheran kids to get hurt so you could watch the Warhawks. Sounds simple to me. 

[KitchenSink]

Ok. Hope they weren't hurt too bad!!   

[Pat Coleman]

Speaking of recruiting Wisconsin... The following was tweeted today by Travis Wilson of Wisconsin Sports Net...
Minnesota State (Mankato), the new #1 team in Division 2 has 31 of 96 players on roster (32%) from Wisconsin high schools. 13 of the Wisconsin players are either starters or heavy contributors

Ranked #1 in D1-FCS is defending national champion North Dakota St. – the Bison have 18 players on its roster from Wisconsin.

For those who say the reason why WIAC teams are so good is because there are no D-II football programs in the state, see the above.

[bleedpurple]

Speaking of recruiting Wisconsin... The following was tweeted today by Travis Wilson of Wisconsin Sports Net...
Minnesota State (Mankato), the new #1 team in Division 2 has 31 of 96 players on roster (32%) from Wisconsin high schools. 13 of the Wisconsin players are either starters or heavy contributors

Ranked #1 in D1-FCS is defending national champion North Dakota St. – the Bison have 18 players on its roster from Wisconsin.

For those who say the reason why WIAC teams are so good is because there are no D-II football programs in the state, see the above.

I always thought that was overplayed. We often see D3 rosters with a significant percentage of players from states other than the state of the school. Why wouldn't D-II or FCS schools be capable of the same thing. In recent years, I think distance recruiting is enhanced with the video technology available for both recruits and the schools. When states bordering Wisconsin allocate their recruiting resources, you can be sure they are keenly aware of the fact that Wisconsin has no D2 schools. And it's not just kids in the northwest part of the state. I live 20 minutes from Milwaukee and we have had multiple kids go to D2 schools recently from our conference.

[retagent]

Not quite sure of how this makes the point.  If you can't get a scholarshio to a D-I school, you would then consider D-II or D-III. There is probably a percentage of young players who would like to stay close to home, just as there is a percentage that would like to broaden their horizons by going a longer distance to college. That is a fairly high percentage of players at a D-I school, but it is still only a paltry percentage of all the good high school football players in the state. What am I missing?

[02 Warhawk]

Speaking of recruiting Wisconsin... The following was tweeted today by Travis Wilson of Wisconsin Sports Net...
Minnesota State (Mankato), the new #1 team in Division 2 has 31 of 96 players on roster (32%) from Wisconsin high schools. 13 of the Wisconsin players are either starters or heavy contributors

Ranked #1 in D1-FCS is defending national champion North Dakota St. – the Bison have 18 players on its roster from Wisconsin.

For those who say the reason why WIAC teams are so good is because there are no D-II football programs in the state, see the above.

I wonder what percentage of those players actually finish out their college careers at those scholarship offering schools? I know a lot (if not most) of UWW's transfers over the years came from these types of programs, and played their high school ball in WI.

It's almost like the thought of receiving a scholarship to play football appealled to them at first...even though it was out of state. Then after a year or two they realized it wasn't a good fit, so they moved back home to play DIII.

[02 Warhawk]

Sorry, this is off topic...but Whitewater never did come out with a 2013 Media Guide did they? I see the 2012 one is still up on their website.

[bleedpurple]

Not quite sure of how this makes the point.  If you can't get a scholarshio to a D-I school, you would then consider D-II or D-III. There is probably a percentage of young players who would like to stay close to home, just as there is a percentage that would like to broaden their horizons by going a longer distance to college. That is a fairly high percentage of players at a D-I school, but it is still only a paltry percentage of all the good high school football players in the state. What am I missing?

I'm not sure what you are missing, but I think Pat made his point pretty clearly. He didn't say that WIAC schools don't get ANY players because they want to stay close to home instead of going away to a D-II school. He simply said for those who think that's WHY WIAC schools are so good, they should take that information into account. I know we disagree on the advantages/disadvantages of public private. But I think even you would agree that the absence of D-II schools isn't WHY the WIAC schools are so good would you? Unless I am mistaken, I think  you have even acknowledged that vision, leadership, and commitment of folks at UW-W, for example, were the biggest reasons for their success. Or am I mistaken about that?

[02 Warhawk]

Not quite sure of how this makes the point.  If you can't get a scholarshio to a D-I school, you would then consider D-II or D-III. There is probably a percentage of young players who would like to stay close to home, just as there is a percentage that would like to broaden their horizons by going a longer distance to college. That is a fairly high percentage of players at a D-I school, but it is still only a paltry percentage of all the good high school football players in the state. What am I missing?

I'm not sure what you are missing, but I think Pat made his point pretty clearly. He didn't say that WIAC schools don't get ANY players because they want to stay close to home instead of going away to a D-II school. He simply said for those who think that's WHY WIAC schools are so good, they should take that information into account. I know we disagree on the advantages/disadvantages of public private. But I think even you would agree that the absence of D-II schools isn't WHY the WIAC schools are so good would you? Unless I am mistaken, I think  you have even acknowledged that vision, leadership, and commitment of folks at UW-W, for example, were the biggest reasons for their success. Or am I mistaken about that?

I hate to play devils advocate here, but even with those stats I still think the WIAC is successful largely impart of the lack of scholarship offering schools. But yes, the WIAC's vision, leadership, and commitment in athletics has played a part in their success as well.

I understand there's a chunk leaving the state to play under a scholarship...but I think even a larger chunk just choose to stay home and play DIII.

[hazzben]

Speaking of recruiting Wisconsin... The following was tweeted today by Travis Wilson of Wisconsin Sports Net...
Minnesota State (Mankato), the new #1 team in Division 2 has 31 of 96 players on roster (32%) from Wisconsin high schools. 13 of the Wisconsin players are either starters or heavy contributors

Ranked #1 in D1-FCS is defending national champion North Dakota St. – the Bison have 18 players on its roster from Wisconsin.

For those who say the reason why WIAC teams are so good is because there are no D-II football programs in the state, see the above.

I think the word for this is anecdotal 

[hazzben]

Pulled over from the ATN board last year so the numbers are a year old, but still gives a picture:

Places like MN, IA and WI are not recruiting hotbeds. They produce a limited number of HS football players that can legitimately play college ball. States like Illinois, Ohio and Michigan simply produce a far greater number of legit college football talent. It's really just a population thing. Then you factor in the number of colleges (especially FBS, FCS and DII) and you get a sense of what kind of talent the population can support.

Population Numbers
IL: 12.9 mil
OH: 11.5 mil
MI: 9.8 mil

WI: 5.7 mil
MN: 5.3 Mil

IA: 3 mil

SD: .8 mil
ND: .7 mil

States like IL, OH and MI have multiple FBS, FCS or DII schools. They've also got 2-4 times as many people as WI, MN and IA. There's plenty of talent to go around.

Wisconsin has a slightly larger population than MN and only 1 FBS, FCS or DII football playing school. Lower population, but fewer schools competing for the resources. And as others have noted, Whitewater has a great location to Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago (so they can even dip into the IL talent pool). 02 Warhawk is right, it's either DI or DIII.

MN has 1 FBS and multiple DII's. IA has 2 FBS, 2 FCS (Drake is a weird one in that they don't offer scholarship) and several DII's.

Another factor that I think gets overlooked with MN and IA is that they are bordered by two states, South Dakota and North Dakota, with tiny populations and 2 FCS schools a piece, plus a smattering of DII's. These boarder states have to raid talent from MN and IA to fill their rosters due to their lack of instate talent/population.

Case in point, NDSU (Defending FCS National Champs) has 33 MN kids on their roster to 20 ND or 14 WI kids. SDSU has 17 MN kids and 15 IA kids to 5 Wis & 22 from SD.

Personally, I think the population to FBS/FCS/DII ratio is a much more significant factor than any of the others listed.

But bottom line, a school still has to recruit and ultimately coach up and develop the talent. You can have all the population ratio advantages, but junk coaching will kill you. Or you can have the disadvantages and close the gap through very good coaching. What's lethal is when you've got situations like UWW and historically UWL, who've taken advantage of both.

And then there's this breakdown (again, last years numbers, I'm not recounting this and doubling down on the time wasted!)

Finally, here are the numbers of MN and WI recruits at DII, FCS, FBS schools in the area:

Duluth: 44 WI, 46 MN
Winona: 29 WI, 33 MN
Mankato: 29 WI, 26 MN
Southwest: 12 WI, 52 MN
Concordia: 19 WI, 34 MN
Augustana: 1 WI, 39 MN
Sioux Falls: 4 WI, 14 MN
Northern St: 3 WI; 18 MN
Bemidji: 21 WI, 51 MN
St. Cloud: 2 WI, 17 MN
Crookston: 6 WI, 25 MN
Morehead: 2 WI, 43 MN
Total: 172 WI v. 398 MN

NDSU: 14 WI, 33 MN
SDSU: 5 WI, 17 MN
UND: 13 WI, 29 MN
USD: 3 WI, 5 MN
UNI: 5 WI, 17 MN
Total: 40 WI v. 101 MN

So yes, Northern Sun and NoDak/SoDak FCS schools do recruit some Wisconsin athletes. But they far and away recruit more MN athletes. Which given proximity and population factors just makes sense.

Given the population numbers above, I think this is pretty telling information for explaining the quality of teams and depth in the WIAC. That, and schools having a 100 man roster limit means top to bottom more teams get access to the good players.

UST and SJU probably total close to 350 players between the two of them. I think Concordia tends to have similar numbers as well.

[NewHawk]

Keep in mind that a lot of D2 recruits get partial scholarships, not full.  Often financial aid at a D3 can match a partial athletic scholarship at a D2.  With some private D2's a partial still leaves more owed than a public school full tuition.  There is also the factor I mentioned before, playing for a winning D3 vs a mediocre D2
 

[retagent]

bleed. I don't think I ever said what you recall me saying - doesn't mean I didn't, but as we age..... where was I?

However, I don't disagree with your points. I do believe that there are many factors that contribute to a successful athletic program. It is the totality of those circumstances that determine that success. I'm not sure how to rank them in terms of importance, but one of the factors is that success breeds success, and UWW has had that in spades over the past decade. I still however think that a lower cost of attending a public school is a factor, along with the fact that being a state school means that admission standards are not as stringent as those of most private schools. That is as a result of the different missions of those two types of institution. Mt Union is more of an outlier than representative of a private college.

That being said, there is obviously a new recruiting emphasis at St John's than in the past. A few years ago, there might have been a dozen out of state players on the football team. Now there's at least that number from California and Arizona alone. The willingness to recruit, and the effectiveness of those efforts doesn't necessarily follow. UWW (as well as other UW schools) has been very successful in recruiting quality players, and just being less expensive, or more lenient doesn't, in and of itself, explain the success. There has to be other elements, which is what you are emphasizing, and which I can't argue against.

[badgerwarhawk]

If you're paying more to attend a private school than you would at a corresponding public school then the private school isn't competing with a public one for your services.  When there is a will my experience is the private schools seem to find a way when it comes to cost.