FB: Ohio Athletic Conference

[Dr. Acula]

I find it amusing that Malone is searching for a level to compete in where they truly fit well. Their charter specifically prohibited football for decades. Come late to the game and struggle to catch up with other well established teams.....imagine that! Are they competitive in their other sports programs or is this football driven? Do you think Wilmington could beat them?

Malone is traditionally good at stuff like golf, track, CC, baseball.  They've been up and down in basketball.  They've been only down in football, but they'd still beat Wilm easily.  They're still a scholarship program so they do have some talent.  Just nowhere near enough to compete in the GLIAC every week.  I haven't seen them since they have been full blown D2, but my guess is they'd be BW-ish.

[formerd3db]

I find it amusing that Malone is searching for a level to compete in where they truly fit well. Their charter specifically prohibited football for decades. Come late to the game and struggle to catch up with other well established teams.....imagine that! Are they competitive in their other sports programs or is this football driven? Do you think Wilmington could beat them?

Malone is traditionally good at stuff like golf, track, CC, baseball.  They've been up and down in basketball.  They've been only down in football, but they'd still beat Wilm easily.  They're still a scholarship program so they do have some talent.  Just nowhere near enough to compete in the GLIAC every week.  I haven't seen them since they have been full blown D2, but my guess is they'd be BW-ish.

Rather than amusing, IMO, it is more appropriate to characterize the Malone dilemma as a difficult, tough decision.  Of course, they are/were going to have a big challenge in attempting to "catch up"-no question.  While the recruiting aspect in your Mount Union area is definitely a challenge, on the other hand, it isn't an impossible and/or situation that couldn't be in co-existence.

Recall that just a few (very recent) years ago, people were saying the same things about Wayne State and Ohio Dominican.  In fact, such comments to the extent of "trashing" those programs and the people who were trying to make them competitive and the ideal goal of being successful (even so far as labeling them "laughingstocks").  Well, you all know "rest of the story" as both have managed to become competitive-Wayne State losing the DII national championship game and Ohio Dominican beating the top-rated DII team Ferris State this year in the DII playoffs (after narrowly losing to them during the regular season).  While I obviously do not know the specifics at Malone, just from an "overview" perspective, I'd put them in the same category/situation in that regard as Ohio Domincan was in.  You/we might as well place schools like Lake Erie and perhaps even Hillsdale and Northwood in this discussion because those GLIAC schools are all in similar situations. 

So, again, I do not think it is impossible for Malone.  I hope that they are able to get through this tough self-assessment process smoothly (which I'm sure they are not taking lightly) and come up with the right decision i.e. the one that will best fit their aspirations/goals and vision.  I think that remaining in DII and the GLIAC for football is certainly viable.  I only wish them the best in whatever decision they end up making.

Finally, if they do end up dropping to DIII, what do you gentlemen see as viable options for them i.e. such as a conference affiliation vs. initially an independent?     

[Dr. Acula]

Malone would definitely be better if they had a HC who was an assistant at Ohio State for 20 years.  That probably helps with recruiting, especially in Ohio!

The bottom line is that to Malone's credit I don't think they place the emphasis on winning at all costs.  They're a different animal with the religious angle.  It takes a certain type of kid to embrace that culture and they seem to do a good job of finding those kids.  This isn't their rival, Walsh, where the religious affiliation is present, but not out of the ordinary.  Malone has expectations and rules for student conduct that most colleges simply don't have.  That's not for everyone.

I personally think they'd be a better fit in D3.  The problem is I don't know what conference they'd be a fit for as neither the NCAC nor OAC seem like they'd want them.

[hsbsballcoach7]

I find it amusing that Malone is searching for a level to compete in where they truly fit well. Their charter specifically prohibited football for decades. Come late to the game and struggle to catch up with other well established teams.....imagine that! Are they competitive in their other sports programs or is this football driven? Do you think Wilmington could beat them?

Malone is traditionally good at stuff like golf, track, CC, baseball.  They've been up and down in basketball.  They've been only down in football, but they'd still beat Wilm easily.  They're still a scholarship program so they do have some talent.  Just nowhere near enough to compete in the GLIAC every week.  I haven't seen them since they have been full blown D2, but my guess is they'd be BW-ish.

I'm pretty familiar with Walsh and Malone from growing up in Stark County and paying attention to them over the years. I also know a couple of recent Walsh graduates that played football. They both told me that they wouldn't be surprised if Walsh has to move to D3 as well within 5 years. Walsh has approximately 2,800 students, Malone has around 2,500 students and Mount Union is around 2,200. Now, thinking financially Walsh and Malone don't seem to get tons alumni donations or donations in general. How can they maintain full scholarships for these student athletes? I went to 4 Walsh games the past couple of years (they played Malone 2 of those times) and I would watch Mount the next weekend and there's no comparison and the players I talked to said the same thing. Walsh and Malone don't get the athletes and I'm afraid for their sake, that in the near future they will have a harder time when they won't be able to offer scholarships.

This is the way I put it when talking to my Walsh friends. Mount Union gets an average of around 3-4,000 per home game multiplied by $7 a ticket and you're around $20,000. You have 5 home games on average and that's around $100,000. This is why Mount CAN'T possibly move up to D2, we don't have the money. The donations that Mount does receive it goes into new facilities, and rightfully so with an amazing campus that now attracts many different types of students. When I went to the two Walsh/Malone games, there might have been a total of around 1,000 people there FOR THEIR RIVALRY!

Anyway, it looks like Walsh and Malone will be joining D3 sooner rather than later. Where could they possibly go?

[wally_wabash]

I can't imagine the NCAC adding these two for a couple of reasons- First, ten is the right size for a D-III conference.  Eight is fine also, but more than 10 and it starts to get cumbersome, particularly with respect to football.  Second (sorry to get snooty with this one), Walsh and Malone aren't PBK schools and the commonly held belief is that PBK a prerequisite for membership in the NCAC. 

I would think other options to be considered here would be to decide whether or not football is a thing they want to do (maybe they have to to be in the GLIAC?), maybe reconsider the NAIA (although I doubt you go through the trouble of not just reclassifying but changing associations just to go back a few years later)...formerd3db makes a great point- these schools both just kind of got to DII.  It might take a minute for them to find their legs as it were. 

[badgerwarhawk]

They could play as independents couldn't they?

[Mr. Ypsi]

They could play as independents couldn't they?

Sure, but ask Wesley guys about that!

[wally_wabash]

They could play as independents couldn't they?

Sure, but ask Wesley guys about that!

Exactly.  Who would they play after week 1-2?  There are a jillion schools within a pretty small geographic footprint there, but every single one of them play conference schedules from Weeks 3-11. 

[Pat Coleman]

If they kept football, the HCAC would probably be a good home for them. But 11 is awkward for football. If it's just Malone and they become a 10th HCAC football program, that would be a good fit.

[ExTartanPlayer]

Does Walsh offer the full complement of D2 scholarships?  I will admit that one thing that's always been a little fuzzy to me is the idea that scholarship athletes actually cost a school that much more money than non-scholarship athletes would.  Of course the cost of the facility and coaches and such is part of the cost of maintaining a football program, but those expenses exist whether the athletes are on scholarship or not, so (putting aside the gulf between D1 coaches' salary and D3 coaches' salary; I'll assume that most D2 coaches are paid similarly to D3 coaches) is there really that much additional financial strain of running a D2 program vs. a D3 program?  I understand that's 36 x (Walsh tuition) that the school is not receiving, but if they didn't have a football team at all, it's not as though the school would suddenly receive 36 x (Walsh tuition) in cold, hard cash; they'd have to replace all of the football guys with 36 warm, tuition-paying bodies to bring in that extra tuition money. 

Anyways, putting the economics aside, it seems a little hard to buy that Walsh would have to move down because they're not good enough to compete where they are.  Last year they won four games and led undefeated Ferris State for 50-plus minutes in the season finale.  If the finances are an issue, OK, I get that.  But the on-field product hardly seems to be reason that they have to move down a division.

[Pat Coleman]

The decision might be about something other than football.

[hsbsballcoach7]

The decision might be about something other than football.

It's all about the Benjamin's for sure in this case! I think if it were for competitive purposes, they would wait around 8 years to try to improve before making the move down to D3.

[Dr. Acula]

ETP, the other cost which I think both Malone and Walsh had to incur was that they had to hire additional coaches.  For example, Tim Mead was both the HC for baseball and the HC for men's soccer at Walsh.  For D2 you have to have separate coaches for each sport so they had to hire additional HC's.  In addition, they had to hire a full-time compliance person to meet D2 standards.  There was an article about it in the paper back when they were trying to get approved for D2 membership, but I don't recall the rest of the details.

I wouldn't think the scholarship angle would be as problematic for either of them as they were already giving scholarships in NAIA.  Not to the extent of D2, but still they were already awarding money for athletics so it wasn't a foreign concept to them so they should have had a pretty good idea of how tweaking the number of scholarships would effect them.

[Dr. Acula]

If they kept football, the HCAC would probably be a good home for them. But 11 is awkward for football. If it's just Malone and they become a 10th HCAC football program, that would be a good fit.

I didn't even think of the HCAC.  The ideal thing for Malone would be a hypothetical where Wilm returns to the HCAC and they take their spot in the OAC.

[formerd3db]

You all make great points.  As Pat said, perhaps there is an additional aspect rather than just the financial standpoint.  Yet as hsbsballcoach shares with us that he is "in the loop" as to underlying factors, which does include the $.  At the same time, I also agree with ExTP comments.  While schools like Grand Valley are state universities and as such, have a different tuition scale (i.e. lower) than schools the size of Mount, Malone, Walsh and other DIII schools, we have to keep in mind that the full scholarships are not a huge amount i.e. usually about $9,000 (or less).  I can't imagine that those students going to Malone or Walsh, if they weren't receiving the football stipend, would not then be receiving some type of non-athletic financial aid, just like other non-athletic students are at DIII schools.  While the latter schools obviously have extremely high tuitions as compared to most of the DII type schools, a great number of the DIII schools have an extremely high % of students who receive some type of financial need-based aid as well as many community based scholarships and academic scholarships.  Most of those, I dare say, add up to what many DII schools offer in fb scholarships (and/or their other sports).

So as ExTP mentions, the other costs are "fixed".  Some schools are able to raise the $ from support groups (like Michigan Tech did when its administration threatened to "can" the program back in around 2003).  Yet, perhaps, as hsbsball says, the support base for donations at Walsh and Malone might not be great enough to support that type of operation.

All that said, I also agree with Wally and hsbsball that, IMO, it would be best for them to give it a few years (reasonable timeframe) to see if it will work, just like Mich Tech and Wayne State did.  Anyway, great discussion you guys.  Keep us posted on what transpires.