FB: Ohio Athletic Conference

[Pat Coleman]

Yes. It's devolved. My original point was only that Wisconsin state schools, in my opinion, have two big advantages to most division III programs. 1.  The sheer amount of students attending, we can extrapolate that you're naturally going to have more gifted athletes due to sheer sample size.

This one is valid ONLY if you're not recruiting your student-athletes to come there. How many D-III kids at legit programs (which includes the entire WIAC) are being recruited as true walk-ons out of the general population? WIAC teams are limited to 100 roster spots, so how many of them are really going to go to a kid who walks on, which means he misses the first week-plus of training camp at that?

This just doesn't happen. This isn't high school -- we don't just draw kids from a specific district and hang up signs in the hallways announcing open tryouts.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to grasp this. 

This stupid argument comes up every few months when posters think they have some ground-breaking revelation about why the WIAC is thriving. 

You want to know the biggest reason why the WIAC succeeds? Answer: Lack of DI and DII schools in the state of Wisconsin. It makes recruiting a helluva lot easier in WI than say Ohio. Especially football since there's only one scholarship-offering program in the entire state (Madison).

I agree.  I've always (at least, as long as I've bothered paying attention to this sort of thing) thought the lack of D1 and D2 presence had more to do with it than enrollment.

This I agree with. But that only took schools so far, in my opinion. This has been the case for decades, after all, even when WIAC teams started the last decade with a bunch of first- and second-round exits. I think that when there is one WIAC heavyweight, that tilts the scale in their favor because they get more of the top kids, because they want to play for a winner. In the 1990s, that was La Crosse. For a couple years, perhaps Eau Claire. Right now that is definitely Whitewater and getting more so every year (future mileage obviously may vary).

When the WIAC title changes hands a lot, frankly, I think it's a perpetuating cycle. Now that cycle has extended down to second place in the WIAC but we will see if it resets.

[sigma one]

I, too, agree about the lack of DI and DII schools in Wisconsin.  To cite one general parallel.  I grew up in western Pennsylvania, where they still play pretty good football, and where the population of the whole state is bigger than the population of Wisconsin.  PA does have a substantial middle tier of regional universities to dilute available talent, those players who do not want to leave the state, who can may be affected by lower tuition (partial scholarships being common at the DII level), and who are pleased to say that they are playing "scholarship" football:  Indiana, California, Slippery Rock, Lock Haven, and many others that play in Division II.  Additionally, PA has more DIII football schools than any other state.   There are myriad options.   
     I could go back decades to Allegheny's run, and I can still mention W & J as a highly successful program, at least regionally, and some years nationally.  No denying the ability of W & J to recruit western PA players.  Which, by the way, makes Allegheny's slide even stranger, though I've heard some close to the program say they lost several good recruiters a couple of years ago (and who knows the school's current commitment to football--it looks like its not as important there as it was years ago).
     Anyway the opportunities in Wisconsin are far more limited, and give credit to UWW and other schools for building on their successes at the national level in DIII.  They benefit by reason of geography, price, and commitment to excellence in many sports.  Just look at one other sport where there is objective information about the Wisconsin schools'  excellence--Track and Field.  Year after year, the UW universities post a high number of top marks at the national level, and again, in a sport where there is firm evidence of superiority as provided by times, heights, and distances.   

[Toph]

I think it would just be best to move on and focus on Mount Union.  That's why we have this forum afterall.  Let's get back to basics.

Agreed.  what the hell is wrong with everybody?

Agreed x2. The biggest OAC game in some years is two days away, and we're worried about why the WIAC/NESCAC is winning championships? I don't get it 

Best of luck to both teams....it should be a great game.

I guess you guys haven't heard. They NCAA has decided there's no purpose to playing.  They consulted a couple experts from this message board. The projected final score is

Mount Union: 10,684
John Carroll: -6

So to spare the embarrassment, Mount's just moving on.

[pradierguy]

Pat-

You can count football. That's the list. Preferably only Mount Union football if possible.

Oh heck, might as well throw JCU's national championships in there. Go ahead...I'm waiting. 


I'm only joking around here because I don't see any reason to have this conversation. This is mid-March football-less drivel.

[purpled]

I'm sure that this happened to a few of you last week at the W&J game. There was a Mount student telling W&J fans that they could sit anywhere they wanted. What happened was those fans started taking up seats reserved for season ticket holders.At one point there was a lot of yelling and a security cop was brought into it. I asked one gentleman if I could see his ticket stub but he declined...he said he was told he could sit anywhere. And yes, there was an announcement made however the music was so loud you couldn't hear what was being said with regards to seating. And even though there are signs posted that all seats are reserved I think the SID needs to make sure the students know what to tell visitors and make more announcements...it could have got real ugly last week.

ROLL RAIDERS ROLL!!

[Toph]

Pat-

You can count football. That's the list. Preferably only Mount Union football if possible.

Oh heck, might as well throw JCU's national championships in there. Go ahead...I'm waiting. 


I'm only joking around here because I don't see any reason to have this conversation. This is mid-March football-less drivel.

1970 Wrestling is in!

[shepherd]

Yes. It's devolved. My original point was only that Wisconsin state schools, in my opinion, have two big advantages to most division III programs. 1.  The sheer amount of students attending, we can extrapolate that you're naturally going to have more gifted athletes due to sheer sample size.

This one is valid ONLY if you're not recruiting your student-athletes to come there. How many D-III kids at legit programs (which includes the entire WIAC) are being recruited as true walk-ons out of the general population? WIAC teams are limited to 100 roster spots, so how many of them are really going to go to a kid who walks on, which means he misses the first week-plus of training camp at that?

This just doesn't happen. This isn't high school -- we don't just draw kids from a specific district and hang up signs in the hallways announcing open tryouts.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to grasp this. 

This stupid argument comes up every few months when posters think they have some ground-breaking revelation about why the WIAC is thriving. 

You want to know the biggest reason why the WIAC succeeds? Answer: Lack of DI and DII schools in the state of Wisconsin. It makes recruiting a helluva lot easier in WI than say Ohio. Especially football since there's only one scholarship-offering program in the entire state (Madison).

I agree.  I've always (at least, as long as I've bothered paying attention to this sort of thing) thought the lack of D1 and D2 presence had more to do with it than enrollment.  Even acknowledging that some kids choose a D3 school over a D2 school for any number of personal reasons so it's not like D3 just gets the "leftovers" - the 20+ Division III programs in Pennsylvania (I think it's 23) still have to share the pool of "good HS football players that don't get an FBS or FCS scholarship" with the 14 D2 schools in the PSAC and a handful of non-scholarship FCS schools.  Concentrate all of those "Not Quite D1" players on 10-12 teams and things would no doubt be somewhat more competitive.

(I only use Pennsylvania because that's where I live & what I am most familiar with, this is no doubt true elsewhere as well)

(since someone will no doubt interpret this the wrong way, I am not crying foul or demeaning the UW schools' success)

They are also good at recruiting good players from Illinois.    Jake Kumerow, Matt Behrendt etc... on this years team.

[Dr. Acula]

I'm sure that this happened to a few of you last week at the W&J game. There was a Mount student telling W&J fans that they could sit anywhere they wanted. What happened was those fans started taking up seats reserved for season ticket holders.At one point there was a lot of yelling and a security cop was brought into it. I asked one gentleman if I could see his ticket stub but he declined...he said he was told he could sit anywhere. And yes, there was an announcement made however the music was so loud you couldn't hear what was being said with regards to seating. And even though there are signs posted that all seats are reserved I think the SID needs to make sure the students know what to tell visitors and make more announcements...it could have got real ugly last week.

ROLL RAIDERS ROLL!!

That's Coach Hesse's job.  He's in charge of stadium ops and most of the students working are his players.  SID has his hands full on game days with SID stuff.  And as a former stadium worker I can assure you Hesse has told them all seats are reserved.  Hopefully just a silly freshman mistake.

[Spurrier]

I see the handle War Daddy has not been chosen yet...I therefore claim it for the polar bear nation

[BoBo]

I see the handle War Daddy has not been chosen yet...I therefore claim it for the polar bear nation

I'm confused, I could swear I just read you claimed that name for Spartan nation on the Iowa board.

[Dr. Acula]

I go out of town for the week leading up to The Rematch and catch up last night reading next to nothing related to the game!  Of course, it could be worse...it could the NCAC board!  Sheesh.  Thankfully Pat put the brakes on that discussion.

Quick thoughts on Rematch Eve:

I read in the Rep game story last weekend that Mitchell left the game with an undisclosed injury.  In his absence Johnson put up his 2nd straight 100 yd effort splitting carries with Nemeth.  I have to admit I kind of want to see Johnson get some more touches.  He seems to have some big play ability.  But I'm also greedy so hopefully Mitchell is fine and starting tomorrow.

I thought Burke looked very, very crisp against W&J.  That was one of the best performances I've seen from him.  Surgical.  If that Kevin Burke shows up tomorrow it's going to be very tough to stop the Mount offense.  But for that to happen we also need...

The biggest thing giving me cause for concern is the old familiar boogey man...the O line.  They absolutely have to play better than they did in round 1 for Mount to win, IMO.  Maybe "absolutely have to" is a bit much since they already did win playing that way, but you get my point.  The JCU defensive line did a good job putting heat on Burke, flushing him from the pocket and just generally disrupting stuff. 

Defensively it sounds like Usee thought Wheaton had good success dropping 8 into coverage and keeping the WR in front of them.  More or less making Myers check down and dink and dunk down the field.  I believe he also said that Wheaton was in zone?  As I mentioned earlier I don't know that dropping 8 and being conservative meshes with VK's fingerprint.  He's always run more of an aggressive, get pressure and force turnovers style of D.  Perhaps Kappas as the 1st yr DC will slide more toward what Wheaton did.  In that case I think some of us old schoolers may think we're watching a Monty D from back in the day!  Bend but don't break. 

Finally, I know it's been brought up about OAC teams playing Mount a second time and how they do.  I think one thing that jumped out to me is this:  When it was a coaching match up that severly favored Mount (e.g. LK vs. Kaz) then LK would go into the lab, rip apart the first game film and put a clown suit on the opposing coach in the rematch.  When the coach was actually pretty good (e.g. Collins) it wasn't nearly as bad.  Well, Arth has never coached against Mount twice and LK isn't the coach anymore.  So, IMO, past results are meaningless in that respect.  What I don't discount though is Mount's comfort level from years of playing playoff games.  That may be worth something.  I think it's another good game tomorrow with Mount pulling it out something like 35-28.

[Spurrier]

I see the handle War Daddy has not been chosen yet...I therefore claim it for the polar bear nation

I'm confused, I could swear I just read you claimed that name for Spartan nation on the Iowa board.

Spartan/Polar Bear...it's all the same

[HScoach]

.....
Finally, I know it's been brought up about OAC teams playing Mount a second time and how they do.  I think one thing that jumped out to me is this:  When it was a coaching match up that severly favored Mount (e.g. LK vs. Kaz) then LK would go into the lab, rip apart the first game film and put a clown suit on the opposing coach in the rematch.  When the coach was actually pretty good (e.g. Collins) it wasn't nearly as bad.  Well, Arth has never coached against Mount twice and LK isn't the coach anymore.  So, IMO, past results are meaningless in that respect.  What I don't discount though is Mount's comfort level from years of playing playoff games.  That may be worth something.  I think it's another good game tomorrow with Mount pulling it out something like 35-28.

This I agree with 100%.   

[USee]

I was very surprised the game against Wheaton turned into a defensive battle. More specifically, I was certain going into the game Wheaton was going to have to score 4-5 times to win and get some stops. JCU was 1-2 in the redzone and really didn't threaten to score. Wheaton was 2-5 in the redzone and couldn't make a field goal or extra point or you would be hosting the Thunder tomorrow.

All that to say I don't know what to think. JCU's Dline was the best we saw all year and yet didn't sack us once but held our QB below all his averageds.

[reality check]

Finally, I know it's been brought up about OAC teams playing Mount a second time and how they do.  I think one thing that jumped out to me is this:  When it was a coaching match up that severly favored Mount (e.g. LK vs. Kaz) then LK would go into the lab, rip apart the first game film and put a clown suit on the opposing coach in the rematch.  When the coach was actually pretty good (e.g. Collins) it wasn't nearly as bad.  Well, Arth has never coached against Mount twice and LK isn't the coach anymore.  So, IMO, past results are meaningless in that respect.  What I don't discount though is Mount's comfort level from years of playing playoff games.  That may be worth something.  I think it's another good game tomorrow with Mount pulling it out something like 35-28.

Not pretending we were in those games but gotta respond on the Kaz comment.  Mount/ONU had two rematch games.  In one year ONU closed the gap in the playoff game by a score.  In the other, Mount widened the margin in the rematch, winning by nine more points.  I wouldn't say that was "putting a clown suit on the opposing coach".  ONU put up as much points as just about anyone else did in those two years against the machine.  They just didn't have the answers on defense.