FB: Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[bleedpurple]

SMH...I promise myself each time that I won't get suckered into these private vs. public school enrollment size debates. But I always take the bate. When will I learn?

02 Warhawk, as it usually does, I could tell that what you were saying was making those posters hyperventilate over their keyboards.

You weren't being suckered into anything - you were just doing what needs to be done. Thank you for inserting ongoing credible perspective into that debate. Some posters will simply never get it. Thanks for trying to educate them for the umpteenth time!

You know what Confucious said about this private vs public school debate (unbeknownst to most people, the Master actually had an opinion on this):

" The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat."
Unfortunately, jealousy requires them to continue debating it ad nauseam.

BTW, this ones on you - it's bait, not bate. As in "But I always take the bait." I also happen to have considerable knowledge in this area.  Bate, of course, is the Belarusian football team from the city of Barysaw. They're the reigning champions and the most successful club of the Belarusian Premier League. Of course!!

All of the reaction was to my point in parenthesis. As soon as I typed it, I thought "uh, oh".  Of course, the REAL reason UW-W is where they are is the vision, talent, hard work, and sacrifice of PEOPLE. Lots and lots of people for a long time.  Are those other factors helpful? Of course.  But not one of them is a REASON for UW-W's success. 

Anecdotally:

*Those bemoaning UW-W's low tuition (compared to their favorite institution) fail to mention that, almost without exception, their schools are not even competing directly for the same  athletes as UW-W. If UW-W were located near Crestview Hills, KY, I could see a Thomas  More fan complaining about the tuition differential.  But to get to the playoffs, UW-W competes against schools with similar "advantages" they have. Not exactly the same, but certainly similar in terms of tuition. We don't have D-II's in Wisconsin, but we compete against those other public schools that some believe "Should be D-II". Incidentally, UW-W is the only WIAC school of which I am aware that does NOT have a reciprocity agreement with Illinois.   So there is a conference DISADVANTAGE right there. Frankly, I could care less if Thomas More decreased their tuition to ZERO. We don't recruit the same guys they do.

*If UW-W has so much more money available than privates, why is UW-W bussing to Jackson, MS (an 11 hour 28 minute drive without traffic per Google Maps) while Wesley College is flying to Chicago (an 11 hour 32 minute driver without traffic per Google Maps)?

*While I understand fans of other schools being tired of the all-purple Stagg Bowls for almost a decade, would they really rather have Mount Union be 120-0 since 2007?  UW-W is 6-1 against Mount in a span the rest of D-III is 0-113.  In the meantime, UW-W has lost games and has also had a number of very close other games.  I think an argument could be made that UW-W has done more to inspire hope for bridging the "Mount vs the rest of D-III" gap than any other school.  UW-W has shown it can be done.  Maybe someone else should go ahead and beat Mount instead of crying like UW-W just beat up their big brother when we do.

[Gregory Sager]

Incidentally, UW-W is the only WIAC school of which I am aware that does NOT have a reciprocity agreement with Illinois.

They're not really "reciprocity agreements" in the same way that Minnesota and Wisconsin state schools have reciprocity agreements, because AFAIK no Illinois state schools offer in-state tuition rates to Wisconsin residents. In other words, there's no reciprocity. They're better described simply as Illinois-resident discounts. As for all of the WIAC schools except UWW offering them, I haven't heard that. I know that UW-Oshkosh and UW-Platteville offer those discounts. I haven't heard that UWSP or UW-LaCrosse offer them, and if someone from those schools could speak to that, I would appreciate it -- it would be highly relevant not only for discussions in this room but in the basketball, baseball, soccer, etc., rooms as well. As for UW-Stout, UWRF, UWEC, and the departing UW-Superior, I can't imagine why they would offer Illinois-resident discounts. Those schools are so far away from the Land of Lincoln that I would guess they've never drawn many Illinois students and would probably not view Illinois as a prime recruiting ground. Minnesotans are the outstaters that interest them.

*If UW-W has so much more money available than privates, why is UW-W bussing to Jackson, MS (an 11 hour 28 minute drive without traffic per Google Maps) while Wesley College is flying to Chicago (an 11 hour 32 minute driver without traffic per Google Maps)?

That's a reasonable question, but it really doesn't prove anything in isolation. To really address this point, one would have to look at the football budgets of the two respective schools in their entireties.

(I'd add, though, that round-trip flights from Philly International to O'Hare are direct, plentiful, and cheap, while none of those three things are true about round-trip flights from Dane County or Mitchell to Jackson-Evers.)

*While I understand fans of other schools being tired of the all-purple Stagg Bowls for almost a decade, would they really rather have Mount Union be 120-0 since 2007?  UW-W is 6-1 against Mount in a span the rest of D-III is 0-113.  In the meantime, UW-W has lost games and has also had a number of very close other games.  I think an argument could be made that UW-W has done more to inspire hope for bridging the "Mount vs the rest of D-III" gap than any other school.  UW-W has shown it can be done.  Maybe someone else should go ahead and beat Mount instead of crying like UW-W just beat up their big brother when we do.

That is a fair point. The Lesser Purples in particular (Linfield, UMHB, and St. Thomas) have no cause to complain about UWW's success, since they themselves have come close enough to Purple One and Purple Two on occasion to be taken seriously by D3's two bully boys. But there's no denying the truth that UWW is better set up to present a consistent challenge to Mount Union than are the vast majority of other D3 football schools, and it can't be denied that cheap tuition is a part of that setup. And 02 Warhawk doesn't deny that; he merely downplays it. I think that the true argument lies in the question of how big of a UWW advantage cheap tuition is. Given the relative lack of Pool C berths in D3 football and the fact that in D3 football the percentage of non-conference contests is much smaller than it is in other sports, one could argue that the cheap tuition advantage for UWW is erased to a certain extent by the fact that all of its WIAC peers have the same advantage, and that just getting out of the WIAC and into the playoffs, either by the autobid or by one of those tiny handful of Pool C berths, presents its own set of difficulties for UWW. Personally, I think that the school's geographic location; the dearth of nearby D2s, NAIAs, and small D1s; and the astute hiring of high-quality coaches by the athletic department are what separate UWW from the rest of the D3 pack across the spectrum of sports (since UWW football is not an isolated case; the Warhawks have been collecting Walnut & Bronze trophies in a number of different sports in recent years) just as much as, if not more than, the cheap tuition factor. But it's hard to quantify those various factors, so this argument isn't going to go away.

(Enrollment size is irrelevant, as 02 Warhawk rightly pointed out to Toph, and, much more than the tuition issue, it's a tedious waste of time to have to refute it whenever these arguments show up. If you really think that D3 coaches draw their football players from the already-enrolled student body at large instead of recruiting specific high-school seniors to enroll and play football, then you really don't understand anything about football on this level.)

[badgerwarhawk]

WHITEWATER and a CCIW school were in intense competition for a local baseball player.  The CCIW school offered all kinds of money to him even though he was an average, at best, student.  However when they learned that they were $500 more expensive than our instate tuition and he was likely going to be a WARHAWK they offered him a $500 "music" scholarship.  That was enough to get him.  The kid had never had anything to do with music in high school and never took anything even remotely music related at the CCIW school.  He used all his eligibility but did not graduate.

My daughter attended a CCIW school to play volleyball and paid considerably less than she would have at WHITEWATER.  She ended up transferring after a year because she just didn't like being in the Chicago suburbs.

I'm really tired of the tuition argument.  My experience tells me when it comes to tuition that when the privates have the will they find the way. 

[Pat Coleman]

WHITEWATER and a CCIW school were in intense competition for a local baseball player.  The CCIW school offered all kinds of money to him even though he was an average, at best, student.  However when they learned that they were $500 more expensive than our instate tuition and he was likely going to be a WARHAWK they offered him a $500 "music" scholarship.  That was enough to get him.  The kid had never had anything to do with music in high school and never took anything even remotely music related at the CCIW school.  He used all his eligibility but did not graduate.

My daughter attended a CCIW school to play volleyball and paid considerably less than she would have at WHITEWATER.  She ended up transferring after a year because she just didn't like being in the Chicago suburbs.

I'm really tired of the tuition argument.  My experience tells me when it comes to tuition that when the privates have the will they find the way.

A couple of stories on one side or the other of a conversation don't really make for established facts, right? One or two student-athletes out of how many? Out of how many students? Doesn't really make for a compelling argument, just message board fodder.

[Gregory Sager]

WHITEWATER and a CCIW school were in intense competition for a local baseball player.  The CCIW school offered all kinds of money to him even though he was an average, at best, student.  However when they learned that they were $500 more expensive than our instate tuition and he was likely going to be a WARHAWK they offered him a $500 "music" scholarship.  That was enough to get him.  The kid had never had anything to do with music in high school and never took anything even remotely music related at the CCIW school.  He used all his eligibility but did not graduate.

My daughter attended a CCIW school to play volleyball and paid considerably less than she would have at WHITEWATER.  She ended up transferring after a year because she just didn't like being in the Chicago suburbs.

I'm really tired of the tuition argument.  My experience tells me when it comes to tuition that when the privates have the will they find the way.

A couple of stories on one side or the other of a conversation don't really make for established facts, right? One or two student-athletes out of how many? Out of how many students? Doesn't really make for a compelling argument, just message board fodder.

Exactly. And the old "privates give away so much financial aid that they're actually cheaper than WIAC schools" charge fails to take into account the fact that much of the financial aid money given out by private schools is in the form of grants and school-backed loans that need to be paid back.

[bleedpurple]

Incidentally, UW-W is the only WIAC school of which I am aware that does NOT have a reciprocity agreement with Illinois.

They're not really "reciprocity agreements" in the same way that Minnesota and Wisconsin state schools have reciprocity agreements, because AFAIK no Illinois state schools offer in-state tuition rates to Wisconsin residents. In other words, there's no reciprocity. They're better described simply as Illinois-resident discounts. As for all of the WIAC schools except UWW offering them, I haven't heard that. I know that UW-Oshkosh and UW-Platteville offer those discounts. I haven't heard that UWSP or UW-LaCrosse offer them, and if someone from those schools could speak to that, I would appreciate it -- it would be highly relevant not only for discussions in this room but in the basketball, baseball, soccer, etc., rooms as well. As for UW-Stout, UWRF, UWEC, and the departing UW-Superior, I can't imagine why they would offer Illinois-resident discounts. Those schools are so far away from the Land of Lincoln that I would guess they've never drawn many Illinois students and would probably not view Illinois as a prime recruiting ground. Minnesotans are the outstaters that interest them.

*If UW-W has so much more money available than privates, why is UW-W bussing to Jackson, MS (an 11 hour 28 minute drive without traffic per Google Maps) while Wesley College is flying to Chicago (an 11 hour 32 minute driver without traffic per Google Maps)?

That's a reasonable question, but it really doesn't prove anything in isolation. To really address this point, one would have to look at the football budgets of the two respective schools in their entireties.

(I'd add, though, that round-trip flights from Philly International to O'Hare are direct, plentiful, and cheap, while none of those three things are true about round-trip flights from Dane County or Mitchell to Jackson-Evers.)

*While I understand fans of other schools being tired of the all-purple Stagg Bowls for almost a decade, would they really rather have Mount Union be 120-0 since 2007?  UW-W is 6-1 against Mount in a span the rest of D-III is 0-113.  In the meantime, UW-W has lost games and has also had a number of very close other games.  I think an argument could be made that UW-W has done more to inspire hope for bridging the "Mount vs the rest of D-III" gap than any other school.  UW-W has shown it can be done.  Maybe someone else should go ahead and beat Mount instead of crying like UW-W just beat up their big brother when we do.

That is a fair point. The Lesser Purples in particular (Linfield, UMHB, and St. Thomas) have no cause to complain about UWW's success, since they themselves have come close enough to Purple One and Purple Two on occasion to be taken seriously by D3's two bully boys. But there's no denying the truth that UWW is better set up to present a consistent challenge to Mount Union than are the vast majority of other D3 football schools, and it can't be denied that cheap tuition is a part of that setup. And 02 Warhawk doesn't deny that; he merely downplays it. I think that the true argument lies in the question of how big of a UWW advantage cheap tuition is. Given the relative lack of Pool C berths in D3 football and the fact that in D3 football the percentage of non-conference contests is much smaller than it is in other sports, one could argue that the cheap tuition advantage for UWW is erased to a certain extent by the fact that all of its WIAC peers have the same advantage, and that just getting out of the WIAC and into the playoffs, either by the autobid or by one of those tiny handful of Pool C berths, presents its own set of difficulties for UWW. Personally, I think that the school's geographic location; the dearth of nearby D2s, NAIAs, and small D1s; and the astute hiring of high-quality coaches by the athletic department are what separate UWW from the rest of the D3 pack across the spectrum of sports (since UWW football is not an isolated case; the Warhawks have been collecting Walnut & Bronze trophies in a number of different sports in recent years) just as much as, if not more than, the cheap tuition factor. But it's hard to quantify those various factors, so this argument isn't going to go away.

(Enrollment size is irrelevant, as 02 Warhawk rightly pointed out to Toph, and, much more than the tuition issue, it's a tedious waste of time to have to refute it whenever these arguments show up. If you really think that D3 coaches draw their football players from the already-enrolled student body at large instead of recruiting specific high-school seniors to enroll and play football, then you really don't understand anything about football on this level.)

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Greg. I agree with most all of what you said.  I appreciate the insight regarding the non-reciprocity of the agreements by UW-Platteville and UW-Oshkosh. Now that you mention it, I'm not sure what the other schools have or don't have with Illinois. I'm not sure, but it may well be that the Illinois tuition-breaks I have heard discussed only involve those two schools. 

You are definitely right about the plane/bus ride comparison not really establishing a point in the overall argument. In fact, including this point was the reason I used "anecdotally" in introducing those points.  And you make a great point about the difficulty in making a UW-W to Jackson, MS an even somewhat direct flight.  Even personally trying to find a flight that worked for me was pretty nightmarish.   I mostly included this example for the benefit of anyone who is under the impression that "everything is easier for UW-W".  While I'm guessing UW-W's football budget is higher than most D-III schools, there are definitely limitations there.

[bleedpurple]

b]I'm really tired of the tuition argument.[/b]

I find the whole discussion really odd.

I don't belong to any other message board of any kind (sports or non-sports), so I concede i have no "nature of message boards" context. But I find the endless discussions of "advantages" and "uneven playing fields" as really odd. In which aspect of life does there exist an "even playing field"?  Certainly in the world of sports I don't see any. Is it equally challenging to win an NBA Championship in Miami and Milwaukee? Do fans of the San Diego Padres feel their team has an "equal playing field" with the New York Yankees?  Does the University of Kentucky offer more impressive basketball facilities than California State, Bakersfield? Does Northwestern have the same opportunity to win a National Championship in football as the University of Alabama?

Non-sports.  Does a third party candidate enjoy an "even playing field" in running for political office against Republicans and Democrats? Does a small hardware store have an even playing field with a Home Depot?

Maybe all message boards have these types of discussions.  But I just don't understand the focus on it. Just where does this mythical "level playing field" exist and why do people seem to rue it's absence so deeply in D-III football?

[AO]

I find the whole discussion really odd.

I don't belong to any other message board of any kind (sports or non-sports), so I concede i have no "nature of message boards" context. But I find the endless discussions of "advantages" and "uneven playing fields" as really odd. In which aspect of life does there exist an "even playing field"?  Certainly in the world of sports I don't see any. Is it equally challenging to win an NBA Championship in Miami and Milwaukee? Do fans of the San Diego Padres feel their team has an "equal playing field" with the New York Yankees?  Does the University of Kentucky offer more impressive basketball facilities than California State, Bakersfield? Does Northwestern have the same opportunity to win a National Championship in football as the University of Alabama?

Non-sports.  Does a third party candidate enjoy an "even playing field" in running for political office against Republicans and Democrats? Does a small hardware store have an even playing field with a Home Depot?

Maybe all message boards have these types of discussions.  But I just don't understand the focus on it. Just where does this mythical "level playing field" exist and why do people seem to rue it's absence so deeply in D-III football?

Blame the pro leagues who created all sorts of rules to add more parity into the league.  There is no draft, no luxury tax or academic scholarship limit.  It's worthwhile to discuss the differences between schools to get a sense of the odds being overcome.  Just how big of an underdog story is it? 

[D O.C.]

Just love the never ending story....

I would be most interested if d3football.com were able to nail down an interview with Daryl Agpalsa now that he has appeared to have left the Whitewater staff (I did not find him listed) on the subject of life at the LINFIELD and  Whitewater programs.

[BoBo]

Just love the never ending story....

I would be most interested if d3football.com were able to nail down an interview with Daryl Agpalsa now that he has appeared to have left the Whitewater staff (I did not find him listed) on the subject of life at the LINFIELD and  Whitewater programs.

D O.C. - he moved on to Buffalo with those other guys 

You can get your Private Detectives to find him there.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I find the whole discussion really odd.

I don't belong to any other message board of any kind (sports or non-sports), so I concede i have no "nature of message boards" context. But I find the endless discussions of "advantages" and "uneven playing fields" as really odd. In which aspect of life does there exist an "even playing field"?  Certainly in the world of sports I don't see any. Is it equally challenging to win an NBA Championship in Miami and Milwaukee? Do fans of the San Diego Padres feel their team has an "equal playing field" with the New York Yankees?  Does the University of Kentucky offer more impressive basketball facilities than California State, Bakersfield? Does Northwestern have the same opportunity to win a National Championship in football as the University of Alabama?

Non-sports.  Does a third party candidate enjoy an "even playing field" in running for political office against Republicans and Democrats? Does a small hardware store have an even playing field with a Home Depot?

Maybe all message boards have these types of discussions.  But I just don't understand the focus on it. Just where does this mythical "level playing field" exist and why do people seem to rue it's absence so deeply in D-III football?

Blame the pro leagues who created all sorts of rules to add more parity into the league.  There is no draft, no luxury tax or academic scholarship limit.  It's worthwhile to discuss the differences between schools to get a sense of the odds being overcome.  Just how big of an underdog story is it?

Bingo - plus newbies who haven't already exhausted the topic.

EVERY d3 (or any other level) school has pluses and minuses for recruiting.  UWW just happens to have two of the real biggies for pluses: low tuition and the only low tuition school centrally located to Milwaukee, Chicago, and Madison.  As some have noted, they had those advantages for many, many years before they ever became a power.  But add in great leadership and (now) a winning tradition, it may be VERY difficult for anyone else to catch up to them.

[D O.C.]

So BoBo does not disagree with a professional, so to speak, assessment by a guy who's experience covers both private and public in recent years?

[BoBo]

So BoBo does not disagree with a professional, so to speak, assessment by a guy who's experience covers both private and public in recent years?

...you got me stumped there boss. A professional assessment of what? From who? About what? From where?

[Pat Coleman]

Listen, Whitewater has the biggest advantage imaginable: They win championships. All else is moot! Of course it's easier to get kids at Whitewater -- they have earned it by winning six of eight. You don't have to sell your program to a prospective recruit.

Similarly Mount Union has that advantage. Otherwise, what really differentiates that school from any of a hundred similar schools in Division III?

These are destination places. Recruiting a non-scholarship player (or a borderline scholarship player) to Whitewater or Mount Union is like recruiting tech people at Google.

[bleedpurple]

Listen, Whitewater has the biggest advantage imaginable: They win championships. All else is moot! Of course it's easier to get kids at Whitewater -- they have earned it by winning six of eight. You don't have to sell your program to a prospective recruit.

Similarly Mount Union has that advantage. Otherwise, what really differentiates that school from any of a hundred similar schools in Division III?

These are destination places. Recruiting a non-scholarship player (or a borderline scholarship player) to Whitewater or Mount Union is like recruiting tech people at Google.

I agree. I've always felt the biggest advantage UW-W has right now are the championships.  The facilities are phenomenal by D-III standards (and getting a major upgrade within two years).  The Athletic Department and football program are all filled with FANTASTIC people.  But it doesn't even seem right listing that as an "advantage" because I'm sure there are great people at other schools.  I'm guessing the championships validate everything UW-W does in a recruit's eyes. 

I remember someone (Maybe Warhawkdad?) saying one of the things LL would do with recruits is take them to the wall with the Stagg Bowl banners and let them look at them for a bit and ask something like, "How high do you want to aim? What do you want to play for?"