FB: American Rivers Conference

[OzJohnnie]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

[wildcat11]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

[Mr. Ypsi]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

[DBQ1965]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

[Pat Coleman]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

It's more about ice fishing, Aussie rules football and beer than smack talk these days. Well, 51 weeks out of the year it is.

[d-train]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

...and you seem to get annoyed when people are off-topic. So, yeah, it'll be awhile.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

I'm a CCIW guy (and MIAA secondarily), not a MIAC guy.  And you're more than 500 pages ahead of the CCIW, so you must enjoy talking about SOMETHING!

As Pat noted, much of their 5,000+ pages comes from non-football topics, and the smack-talk is probably at least 90% Johnnies vs. Tommies.  Posts used to be overwhelmingly Johnnies, but the Tommies have gotten a bit feisty since their Stagg Bowl appearance.  (Of course, any Johnnie worth his salt would ask, 'But how many Staggs have you WON?')

[OzJohnnie]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

No, I can see you're not very good at baiting.  Sugar beets?  Top notch.

[doolittledog]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

OzJohnnie, Jacko, Paul Hogan, and all 4 members of The Wiggles walk in to a bar ...nah, I don't have it in me. I'm in too good of a mood between my Hawkeyes beating the Gophers last week to move to 10-0 and my Spartans running the table in the IIAC to talk any smack. Maybe next year when the Johnies are traveling to defending National Champion Dubuque in the 1st round I'll consider some talking of smack

[OzJohnnie]

The problem with Dubuque supporters coming from a strong conference like IIAC, you know that the post-season is very difficult.

Best post-season week 1 ever?  2005 when Monmouth came to Collegeville.  Not since the blond chick walked into the darkened room in Friday the 13th Part IV did a more innocent babe get slaughtered.

[sjusection105]

I'm in too good of a mood between my Hawkeyes beating the Gophers last week to move to 10-0.

At least the Hawkeyes don't  have Glenn Mason's former student equipment manager from the University of Kansas days as their head coach. True story....that is Tracy Clayes.That is the sad state of the University of Minnesota Football program.So, go ahead and pound your chest for beating the former student equipment manager's team...

[Mr. Ypsi]

Sigh. I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for some smack talk from the unexpected champs. Oh well. Good luck. Play well.

E
I'm sure that won't be lacking next week!

You think Dubuque would be more willing to smack-talk UST than SJU??!!   (Well, after all, they didn't already suffer a smack-down from the Tommies!)

It will be awhile before we make 5000+ posts because we aren't very good at Jr. High locker room baiting.  Ergo ... no smack.

No, I can see you're not very good at baiting.  Sugar beets?  Top notch.

Hey, sugar beets are from the Michigan thumb.  Iowa is ALL corn!

The problem with Dubuque supporters coming from a strong conference like IIAC, you know that the post-season is very difficult.

Best post-season week 1 ever?  2005 when Monmouth came to Collegeville.  Not since the blond chick walked into the darkened room in Friday the 13th Part IV did a more innocent babe get slaughtered.

You lucked out.  When IWU hosted Monmouth (2011), they had Alex Tanney, easily the best QB they will EVER have.  It took them three OTs, but they finally beat us.  I'm still convinced we had the better team, but they had a senior QB (who got serious attention from NFL teams), we had an excellent sophomore QB, who fumbled at the Monmouth 1-yard line in that third OT.

Monmouth is probably less of an innocent blond babe now, but generally they are still not particularly good.

[Fannosaurus Rex]

Boo Hiss.  I stand my ground.  A team that wins its conference championship with an unblemished record should always get to host unless they are playing another conference champion.  You win the trophy, you get the bacon.  Sorry, St. John's, but you you didn't win your conference title.  So the MIAC has two teams hosting?  Boo Hiss.  The WIAC has two teams hosting?   St. Norbert is undefeated and won their conference championship, but they have to travel to Whitewater?  Boo Hiss.  Either it's a level playing field or it's not!  If the colleges with 10,000 students want to play with schools a fifth their size they already have a huge advantage.  They don't need a home field advantage, too.

This is ridiculous. Winning your conference gets you one thing, access to the post-season. Once all the teams have been selected and the field is set, the committee absolutely should do what they can to make sure higher seeded teams host. And seeding should be done with a lot more care than simply saying, all conference champs go to the top of the list.

Not to mention, UD isn't undefeated. They got blown out by the very team they're having to travel to play. That's not a guarantee of a repeat, but it definitely means SJU has earned the right to host that game again. I actually think UD could have a shot. They got way behind early, but their D line looked particularly tough from what I saw in the first game.

And I'm with Duff, road trips are a lot of fun. I coached for Bethel during the 2007 Semi-Final run and being road warriors was a big part of what made the run possible. You spend a ton of time together, bonding and have way fewer distractions.

I can't say that I agree with the point that home field advantage means little to nothing in the playoffs.  I was at all the Wartburg playoff games last year, and the crowd played a big part in helping the Knights get past both St. Thomas and St. John's.  The crowd got so loud at the St. John's game that the home stands were shaking and it unplugged the scoreboard.  I really thought that the intensity and noise in the crowd helped to ramp up the pressure on the opposing team.  Also, in the quarterfinals at Whitewater, although the crowd basically sat on their hands for the first 3 quarters, they were definitely loud and intimidating in the 4th quarter.  So in my book, home field advantage is a big factor.
As for who has to travel where in the playoffs, It seems that the field was set with regional rankings in mind.  It makes sense the committee would use the regional rankings as they seem to be viewed as the "bible" for the playoff committee...The regional rankings are one of the main things that kept both Platteville and Wartburg out of the playoffs...along with the fact that 3 of the last 6 semi-finalists took up half of the Pool C bids.

I think this is probably very overstated. I know fans love to think it matters a ton. And in stadiums where there are seats on only one side, I could see it being the case, as that can be a very sterile environment for the visiting team. But at the D3 level, the number of fans we're talking about just doesn't have as great of an effect as you think. It doesn't at all effect your ability to communicate with fellow players and coaches on the sideline (I played in the 2003 SJU v. BU game, probably double or triple the fans than were at the Wartburg playoff games, and an equally intense matchup.) The emotion comes with being in the playoffs. I've played an coached in playoff games with a few thousand fans that had immensely more intensity than BU-SJU games with 10,000+ on hand. The stakes doe the emotion, not the fans. And for those SJU and UST players, they'll have been in front of significantly more fans for Tommie - Johnnie. Not to mention, I'm sure SJU had a ton of its own fans on hand last year.

Granted, I've witnessed Wartburg's hostility for an opposing team. But that was more coaches coming onto the field and cussing out and taunting our players.  The drunk students hanging out of their dorm windows were annoying to the parents in the stands, but it had zero bearing on the team. Sorry, just couldn't resist 

Any team worth its salt and with the ability to make a run in the playoffs is going to significantly tune out d3 level crowd noise.

I feel just a little bad because this should be Dubuque's time, but admit it, the best part of the season was the trip to Pella.

[DuffMan]

Looks like IA is going to get dumped with snow today.  I'll take our cold over that.  Safe travels to any of you coming up to Collegeville!

[Spurrier]

Indiana wants me...lord can't go back there...go Spartans