Around the Nation board

[smedindy]

Again, Mt. Union is Division III. They want to be in Division III. It makes no sense to cobble together a half-baked short-sighted playoff system for one team that in the future may not be the behemoth they are now.

They would NOT have moved. The OAC is their conference, Division III is their division for all of their athletics teams. ALL of them.

[AO]

Again, Mt. Union is Division III. They want to be in Division III. It makes no sense to cobble together a half-baked short-sighted playoff system for one team that in the future may not be the behemoth they are now.

They would NOT have moved. The OAC is their conference, Division III is their division for all of their athletics teams. ALL of them.

Tell the rest of the OAC teams 20 years ago that Mount can't possibly be a behemoth forever, right?

DIII does work well for the rest of their teams, true.  doesn't mean that's where the football teams finds consistent competition.

[smedindy]

Kenyon didn't win the D-3 swimming title this past year. Things come and go. Mt. Union is concerned with their entire athletics program, not just football. That's the D-3 way and the way it should be. They fit in D-3 and the OAC.

[AO]

Kenyon didn't win the D-3 swimming title this past year. Things come and go. Mt. Union is concerned with their entire athletics program, not just football. That's the D-3 way and the way it should be. They fit in D-3 and the OAC.

Do you really fit in when you've only lost one conference game since '95? The way it should be?  Do you also demand that the cleveland browns support a women's volleyball team and play in the league that the volleyball team is capable of playing in?

I'm not saying they should be forced to leave the conference in football, just that the ncaa shouldn't make it so hard to do if they wanted to just find a more competitive home league/division for the football program.

[K-Mack]

And lets not forget the incredibly obvious... having a championship D3 program is a great hook for getting 150 or so men on campus. Given the size of the school, that is a fairly large percentage of the student body. Sure helps to have a really good hook for getting those rears in the seats and paying the bills.

While I don't put a whole lot of credence on ranking, UMU ranks a very respectable but not outstanding #10 out of about 75 ranked schools in the US News Midwest Regional College Rankings. That is behind some of their competition for bodies, but obviously well ahead of most of it. Of course, a growing number of schools refuse to be ranked, including some that fall in the same category of UMU and are truly outstanding, as well as the fact that the Regional College Rankings are different from the Regional University Rankings, Regional Liberal Arts Rankings, National... well, you get the point. In other words, 10 of 75 doesn't even begin to describe the school versus all the possible competition for students, hence my reluctance to use rankings.

However, for our purposes, having an outstanding football team is a good sales pitch when lining up against some of the schools that fall higher up the list for athletes, and a nice scholastic home for an athlete looking to move up a few schools with the help of his h.s. game tape. Moving to D2, and possibly not having the same success, plus competing for athletes against state schools, seems like a really bad trade-off.

Strategically, I think UMU is right where they want to be to leverage the outstanding success of the program for the campus.

Yes ... I don't know if you read the Ashley Beck column that made the rounds on Twitter this week. As much as she resents Mount Union being known for football, being able to attract those students and attention probably benefits her educational opportunity quite a bit.

Re: AO's last point. I've never heard anybody from Mount Union say they wanted to find a more competitive home. It's always other people who want to get rid of them and have a chance to win championships that want to push them off to D2.

[Kira & Jaxon's Dad]

And lets not forget the incredibly obvious... having a championship D3 program is a great hook for getting 150 or so men on campus. Given the size of the school, that is a fairly large percentage of the student body. Sure helps to have a really good hook for getting those rears in the seats and paying the bills.

While I don't put a whole lot of credence on ranking, UMU ranks a very respectable but not outstanding #10 out of about 75 ranked schools in the US News Midwest Regional College Rankings. That is behind some of their competition for bodies, but obviously well ahead of most of it. Of course, a growing number of schools refuse to be ranked, including some that fall in the same category of UMU and are truly outstanding, as well as the fact that the Regional College Rankings are different from the Regional University Rankings, Regional Liberal Arts Rankings, National... well, you get the point. In other words, 10 of 75 doesn't even begin to describe the school versus all the possible competition for students, hence my reluctance to use rankings.

However, for our purposes, having an outstanding football team is a good sales pitch when lining up against some of the schools that fall higher up the list for athletes, and a nice scholastic home for an athlete looking to move up a few schools with the help of his h.s. game tape. Moving to D2, and possibly not having the same success, plus competing for athletes against state schools, seems like a really bad trade-off.

Strategically, I think UMU is right where they want to be to leverage the outstanding success of the program for the campus.

Yes ... I don't know if you read the Ashley Beck column that made the rounds on Twitter this week. As much as she resents Mount Union being known for football, being able to attract those students and attention probably benefits her educational opportunity quite a bit.

Re: AO's last point. I've never heard anybody from Mount Union say they wanted to find a more competitive home. It's always other people who want to get rid of them and have a chance to win championships that want to push them off to D2.

Tried to go to umudynamo.com and got this message:

NOTICE: This domain name expired on 12/09/2011 and is pending renewal or deletion.

Interesting due to the story by Ms. Beck this week.

[AO]

Re: AO's last point. I've never heard anybody from Mount Union say they wanted to find a more competitive home. It's always other people who want to get rid of them and have a chance to win championships that want to push them off to D2.

Maybe they would be talking about moving up if my ideas were implemented and all they had to do was check off a box before the season to pick between divisions.  They wouldn't have to start giving out scholarships if they didn't want to, making it easier to check the D-3 box the very next season if they weren't pleased with the higher divisions.

[smedindy]

Do you know how insanely difficult it would be to schedule in that scenario? Football schedules are two-to-four year deals, plus you'd be dynamiting the entire OAC schedule just for your misguided notion that Mt. Union would ever want to bolt up a division.

Again, they ARE D-3. Period. Paragraph. No one said Kenyon's swim team should be booted up to D-1. But what happened is eventually Denison caught them.

[AO]

Do you know how insanely difficult it would be to schedule in that scenario? Football schedules are two-to-four year deals, plus you'd be dynamiting the entire OAC schedule just for your misguided notion that Mt. Union would ever want to bolt up a division.

Again, they ARE D-3. Period. Paragraph. No one said Kenyon's swim team should be booted up to D-1. But what happened is eventually Denison caught them.

Under a different system maybe schedules wouldn't be determined 4 years in advance.  Maybe you could choose to play in the same conference but a different post-season tournament if you were able to qualify against some of the other independent teams.  Works better with basketball, but it would be possible for football. 

[Raider 68]

Pat,

Please check your PM!

[jknezek]

Under a different system maybe schedules wouldn't be determined 4 years in advance.  Maybe you could choose to play in the same conference but a different post-season tournament if you were able to qualify against some of the other independent teams.

... and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. Or how about about we set up the world so my kids will eat food and pump out gold bars so I can afford to send them to one of these fine institutions in 20 years? Something tells me the universe isn't going to rearrange itself just because I have a beef. Completely ludicrous. You are talking about totally revamping the category system based on the long-term success of one program in one sport. It hardly makes sense. Especially given the fact that UMU perfectly fits into their conference with like schools and into D3 with a large universe of similar schools. The only problem you have with them is they succeed. I don't know about you, but I try and celebrate success and make it an example, not point to and yell about how they should get out of someone else's way. But to each his own I guess.

[AO]

Under a different system maybe schedules wouldn't be determined 4 years in advance.  Maybe you could choose to play in the same conference but a different post-season tournament if you were able to qualify against some of the other independent teams.

... and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. Or how about about we set up the world so my kids will eat food and pump out gold bars so I can afford to send them to one of these fine institutions in 20 years? Something tells me the universe isn't going to rearrange itself just because I have a beef. Completely ludicrous. You are talking about totally revamping the category system based on the long-term success of one program in one sport. It hardly makes sense. Especially given the fact that UMU perfectly fits into their conference with like schools and into D3 with a large universe of similar schools. The only problem you have with them is they succeed. I don't know about you, but I try and celebrate success and make it an example, not point to and yell about how they should get out of someone else's way. But to each his own I guess.

again, I'm not knocking Mount.  Just pointing out a few odd things I see about the NCAA policies.  The football team does not fit in competitively with the OAC, the rest of the teams probably do, but I couldn't care less.  Many football teams have gotten along just fine without a conference.  This isn't complicated, if the players on the field are talented enough to play games against teams in the upper division, why not play in the upper division?  Let the kids play to their full potential and reap the rewards of that effort.

[smedindy]

See you don't care about the other sports. Mt. Union cares about the other sports, and the OAC as a whole. They'd never move, and the OAC doesn't want them to move. Football is not the be all or end all.

They are fulfilling their potential. How could they not be?

And you DO need a conference. Do you not understand scheduling? Yeesh.

[AO]

See you don't care about the other sports. Mt. Union cares about the other sports, and the OAC as a whole. They'd never move, and the OAC doesn't want them to move. Football is not the be all or end all.

They are fulfilling their potential. How could they not be?

And you DO need a conference. Do you not understand scheduling? Yeesh.

They'd get better by playing better competition every week, rather than just the upcoming week.  Especially in a sport like football, you can't replicate that sort of game experience against better competition.  --one of the reasons wesley and St. Thomas weren't able to get over the purple hump again. 

There are football independents without a conference, 5 of them in d3 this year.  If it was easier to move between divisions it would likely create more independents, making it easier to schedule against those other independents, or conferences would be easier to get into and out of, especially if we made another competitive move and got rid of the pool A bids.  If you're in bad conference and don't want to play any good teams during the regular season in order to be considered for a pool c, why do you want to go to the post-season and get killed in the first round by those good teams you wouldn't schedule in the regular season? 

[smedindy]

Why would any team move a division without moving their entire athletics program? That's the total antithesis of D-3. Do you  not get what D-3 is all about?

Yes, I know some programs have grandfathered programs in hockey and lacrosse (and maybe other sports) but in D-3 football or basketball or swimming or volleyball or tennis doesn't wag the dog. An entire athletics program is what is important.