FB: Presidents' Athletic Conference

[jknezek]

Sorry if this has been discussed in the past but I am not going to look up 221 pages to find the answer.  I live in the Pittsburgh South Hills but my work takes me to Columbus OH, Dayton OH, Cincinnati, OH, Florence KY, and all the small towns in between.  Last week I drove past a Thomas More bus on 70 heading to PA.  My question is how did a small college in NKY get in an athletic conference with other small colleges that are over 5 hours away?  Was there really no other closer options?  I can understand football to a degree after all it is 5 trips a year to make.  But all the other sports has to add up cost real quick.  Does anyone know the history on this?

Sorry if this is coming across as confertational or rude, I do not mean to do that.  But as a person who makes these trips 3-5 times a week with a Ford F-150, I am perplexed that Thomas More does not have better options to save travel time and money.

Mike

Sometimes it's about mission and values. The SAA schools stretch from Kentucky (Centre) to Georgia (Berry) and West to Arkansas (Hendrix). The UAA, depending on the sport, stretches from New York City (NYU) to Atlanta (Emory), to St. Louis (Washington U) and north to Chicago (Chicago).

Other times it's simply because those are the only available D3 schools. The ASC has an 800+ mile bus ride between Louisiana College and Sul Ross State. The USASC has a similar trip, although one that ends next year, between CNU in Virginia and Huntingdon College in Montgomery AL.

TMC might be closer to the OAC or HCAC, but they are a bit of a geographical orphan, especially for football. The only other DIII football school in Kentucky is Centre, a member of the SAA that is spread out everywhere. MSJ is close by, but they just ended the Bridge Bowl games after repeated spankings. I doubt the OAC wants another member, and the HCAC isn't as competitive a conference as the PAC. It's a two way street. You have to want to be in the conference, and they have to want you. TMC and the PAC may not be a perfect fit, but it probably is the best of a tough situation.

[ExTartanPlayer]

Sorry if this has been discussed in the past but I am not going to look up 221 pages to find the answer.  I live in the Pittsburgh South Hills but my work takes me to Columbus OH, Dayton OH, Cincinnati, OH, Florence KY, and all the small towns in between.  Last week I drove past a Thomas More bus on 70 heading to PA.  My question is how did a small college in NKY get in an athletic conference with other small colleges that are over 5 hours away?  Was there really no other closer options?  I can understand football to a degree after all it is 5 trips a year to make.  But all the other sports has to add up cost real quick.  Does anyone know the history on this?

Sorry if this is coming across as confertational or rude, I do not mean to do that.  But as a person who makes these trips 3-5 times a week with a Ford F-150, I am perplexed that Thomas More does not have better options to save travel time and money.

Mike

SaintsFAN will be your man for an answer here.  Thomas More used to be in the HCAC.  I know not their exact reason for moving to the PAC.

As D3MAFAN just pointed out, some conferences in more remote locations have quite a bit more travel than Thomas More does.  Division III football has teams slotted in a rather odd distribution around the country.  I wrote a post once with the # of teams in various states, but D3 schools are generally clustered in a few dense regions of the country (PA, NY, NJ, OH have a lot; Wisconsin/Minnesota/Illinois have a lot), with large regions having no D3 presence at all (i.e. no D3 schools in Florida, I think only one in Georgia, fairly few in the South in general, and no D3 schools currently in Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, etc).

Even once we leave the realm of the geographically-remote outposts of Division III, conferences are arranged for varying reasons, not all of which are geographic location and money.  Some conferences are all schools in the same state, or in a fairly small geographic footprint; sometimes that is for convenience, sometimes it's because the schools are all similar institutions and choose to align.

Thomas More is one of those schools that's in an area with relatively few Division III counterparts. 

Let's start by looking to the south from TMC's northern Kentucky location: Centre is the only other D3 team in Kentucky, 2 hours to the South.  Centre plays in the SAA, a conference with mostly teams that would be even farther away from TMC (i.e. Hendrix, Berry, Millsaps, etc are all 6+ hours from TMC, some much farther than that).

There are three D3 teams in Tennessee, the closest of which is Maryville, 4 hours away.  Maryville plays in the USA South conference, most of whose members are 6+ hours from TMC.  Rhodes and Sewanee are both even farther away (6-7 hours) and play in the aforementioned SAA.

So there's not really a logical conference of teams to the south of TMC.  Looking to the North:

Ohio and Indiana are teeming with Division III teams, mostly in the OAC, NCAC, and HCAC.  Well, they left the HCAC, I'll wait for SaintsFAN to chime in there, so let's cross off the HCAC.  The OAC is full, with 10 teams, all Ohio schools.  I suppose TMC would probably have less travel if they played in the OAC than the PAC, but it wouldn't be reduced by that much.  Many of the schools are 2-3 hours away, but the northernmost Ohio schools are going to be as far as 4-5 hours on a bus.  Besides, the OAC probably wouldn't take them anyway.

Same deal with the NCAC.  It's already playing with a pretty full deck, for one, and for two, you're just swapping out 4-5 hour bus rides to the PAC schools for 2-3 hour bus rides to Ohio and Indiana schools in most cases, whether you move to the OAC or NCAC.

If Thomas More's sole concern was minimizing travel, the OAC and NCAC schools collectively would be a little closer, but even that move is just giving them 2-4 hour bus trips instead of 5-hour bus trips.  There's not really a local conference that would keep everyone within a 2-hour span of them. 

*Edited to add: jknezek beat me to a couple of these points.  Kudos and +K.

[mikefln]

Thank you both for your reply's, it makes more sense now.  I didn't realize how few options they had.  Growing up in WPA I was just spoiled with both the PSAC & PAC being made up of a lot of local teams with short travel, just never put much thought that not everywhere is like that.  So when I saw that bus on 70 and I was on my return trip home after leaving at 5 am and paying $85+ to fill truck up, it got me thinking why they do it.

[SaintsFAN]

Very few options, as exTP and jknezek have stated.

Thomas More wasn't in the Heartland, per se.  Thats just something we said (below in my signature -- HCAC Champs) after TMC beat all of the HCAC Teams on their schedule in 2000 and 2001 as they prepared for what they thought was an entry into the HCAC.  This move was blocked by Hanover and MSJ Administrations who didn't feel like Thomas More College quite measured up to their supposedly superior institutions.  Interestingly, Thomas More played their first season as an Independent and then joined the AMC (Association of Mideast Colleges) prior to the 1991 season along with MSJ, Wilmington, Bluffton and Defiance.  For the 5 years that conference existed -- Thomas More won or shared the title every season. 

After the 1995 Bridge Bowl (a 66-27 TMC win), MSJ stepped away from the series for the 1st time and thus the AMC went away.  Thomas More was again competing as an Independent -- but as a result of their early success, it was hard to find opponents in the Region who would play Thomas More.  As a result, we barnstormed across the country -- playing teams like Albion (1994 National Champ), Alma, Maryville, CMU, Chapman, Howard Payne, UW-Osh Kosh, Merchant Marine Academy, Alfred, and Illinois Wesleyan in D3.  Teams like Gannon and Northwood (MI) in D2, teams like Kentucky Wesleyan, Campbellsville, Knoxville College and Mount Scenario College in NAIA, and teams like Morehead State in what was D1-AA. 

As you can imagine - playing a national schedule is not the cheapest way to run a program and being that MULTIPLE sports were in the same boat, Thomas More jumped at the chance to compete in the PAC.  It is expensive for the college to compete in a PA-based conference but they at least know where 80% of their games are going to be played and I do think it saves them money over what we were doing previous to the PAC. 

Thomas More has been blessed to have a new school President who values athletics as a means to increase enrollment and fundraising.  I'm not sure if they'll stay in the PAC but as was mentioned here, the options aren't numerous.  They don't fit in with the NCAC Academically and the HCAC won't take them because the perceptions of Thomas More's football program. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

Growing up in WPA I was just spoiled with both the PSAC & PAC being made up of a lot of local teams with short travel, just never put much thought that not everywhere is like that.

No sweat, man. 

I grew up in eastern PA and likewise followed the plethora of PA schools in both Division II and Division III; I went to an assortment of football & wrestling camps at PSAC schools (Kutztown, Lock Haven, Shippensburg, and Edinboro), and my father being a Muhlenberg College alum, I was pretty familiar with the D3 conferences in eastern & central PA (Centennial Conference and the MAC).  Once I came to Pittsburgh for college, I quickly learned much of the PAC because in my four years CMU played half the PAC (Grove City 4x, Bethany 4x, Thiel 2x, Westminster 1x plus a yearly scrimmage with Waynesburg).  So I've always been in an area that was pretty thick with D2 and D3 schools, as you mentioned. 

It's easy to forget that not everyone is so lucky...if I remember correctly, PA has the most D3 football teams (25) of any state in the country; obviously that's confounded by size and population of the states, but still, point is there are a LOT of D3 schools concentrated in PA compared to other states, and it's pretty easy to find a home for league games and find non-league opponents that are pretty close by. 

In contrast, Texas only has 9 D3 schools, split across two conferences, and some of them have 800-mile trips for conference games.  California only has 8, all in one conference; while most of them are close to one another in Southern California for league games, to play a non-league game they're either flying to Texas or driving/flying wayyyyy north to Oregon/Washington.

Sorry for the overkill of info, I just got fascinated by the topic and delved pretty deeply into it.

Oh, and SaintsFAN, thanks for the clarification on Thomas More and the HCAC...I always took that thing in your signature line at face value, lol. 

It sounds like TMC in the 1990's was in a position very similar to Wesley's recent run.  A powerful team without a home that had to look pretty hard to find games.  It's kind of remarkable, looking at that list you rattled off...over the years, comprised of teams currently in the MIAA, USASC, UAA/PAC, SCIAC, ASC, WIAC, NEFC, E8, CCIW...that's a lot of different conferences, and that's before we even got to the non-division games!  Yikes.

I think the PAC seems as good of a fit as they'll find in their current locale.  The OAC and NCAC would cut travel slightly but neither is likely to invite TMC anytime soon.  HCAC, as you said, seems unlikely to take them (given that MSJ just dropped them again, I can't imagine MSJ would allow them into the conference).

[GillCJ1]

In contrast, Texas only has 9 D3 schools, split across two conferences, and some of them have 800-mile trips for conference games.  California only has 8, all in one conference; while most of them are close to one another in Southern California for league games, to play a non-league game they're either flying to Texas or driving/flying wayyyyy north to Oregon/Washington.

Yeah, it makes it pretty hard for some schools to make those trips.  Not to mention, as a fan of a D3 TX school, I have to really commit myself when buying tickets for certain away games (I'm looking at you Sul Ross State).

[SaintsFAN]

Oh, and SaintsFAN, thanks for the clarification on Thomas More and the HCAC...I always took that thing in your signature line at face value, lol. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

Pat, with a comment in Triple Take that I happen to disagree with:

Which team put up huge numbers last week that it won't duplicate this week?

Pat's take: Thomas More. The Saints have been back on cruise control the past three weeks after W&J caused them to downshift out of the tie for first in the PAC and the Top 25. They will not be putting up a 42-3/49-7/64-7 score against Waynesburg, to be sure, and they might not even put up a winning score.

I don't think so.  I know that Waynesburg should be in playoff mode this week, and they're playing at home, and that they technically have more to play for than TMC does right now, so it's certainly possible that Waynesburg will make this a close game if TMC no-shows and/or the Jackets play their best game of the season.  But Waynesburg is a pretty flimsy 7-1, with several close (like, really genuinely close, not "35-14 with a window dressing TD" close) shaves against some of those teams that TMC has blown off the field.

[ExTartanPlayer]

Welp, I was wrong about that one

This week's PAC power rankings:

1. Washington & Jefferson (6-0, 8-0): has all but clinched the Pool A bid.  Would have to lose both of the next two games to fall out of it.

2. Thomas More (6-1, 7-2): outgained Waynesburg 478-266 and seemed comfortably in control of the gameplay most of the way, but didn't put the Jackets away for good until the final horn.

3. Waynesburg (5-2, 7-2): being a tough out against TMC is enough for me to slide them just ahead of Bethany in these rankings, despite the H2H loss, because of Bethany's bad loss to Geneva.

4. Bethany (5-2, 6-3): congratulations to the Bison on clinching their first winning season since 2001 with the win over Grove City.

Beneath that...oy vey, more turmoil.  Thiel and Westminster, the two teams that had been lingering near the bottom, beat teams that previously had marginally-better records to bring spots 5-10 back into a completely impossible cluster:

St. Vincent (3-3, 3-5):
Case Western (3-4, 3-5):
Carnegie Mellon (3-5, 3-5):
Geneva (1-5, 2-6):
Thiel (2-4, 3-5):
Westminster (2-4, 2-6):

These teams have literally all beaten one another and I think it's pretty much impossible to disentangle which is actually the best of this group.

11. Grove City (0-6, 0-8): two more chances, guys.  Keep battling.

[SaintsFAN]

Welp, I was wrong about that one

I don't think you were WRONG, so to speak.  It very easily could have happened as you laid it out. 

Three drives in the 4th Quarter had promise but TMC didn't come away with points from them:

*A holding penalty on 2nd and 8 from the Waynesburg 48 yard line nullified a 13 yard completion.  TMC punted after Hayden got half the yardage on 2nd down and Gebhardt threw incomplete on 3rd and 9. 

*A failure to convert on 4th and 3 from the Waynesburg 14 (along a personal foul called after the play on TMC)

*A blocked FG on 4th and Goal from the Waynesburg 8

*Waynesburg's 71 yard "drive" included by far their longest pass play of the day.. a 34 yard pass play which was directly followed by a Pass Interference Penalty on TMC, putting the ball at the 4.  Waynesburg scored on the next snap.

In fact, Waynesburg's 1st TD was set up by TMC after another personal foul following a punt play which featured a 23 yard return.  They had the ball 1st and 10 at the TMC 21 yard line after that.

I don't think TMC played particularly well -- I feel like this is a good game to get out of the way before they play Case on Saturday.  I also don't feel like they earned 9 penalties for 95 yards, but they should be used to that when traveling to PA to play their games. 

I also think there's a very big gap between #2 and #3 in this conference right now.  I have no idea how Waynesburg would win 7 games in another conference.  There was no rushing attack from them (45 yards on 26 atts //without the sacks counted it was 28 attempts for 58 yards) and they averaged 5.4 yards on their 41 passing attempts.  Without penalties and the punt return, they don't even score in this game.   Why Waynesburg is 3rd best in the PAC this season is without a doubt because of their defense -- they held Hayden to a long run of 21 yards in this game, though they gave up some explosive passing plays as a result of their focus on #30.  But still, with 42 rushing attempts and 23 passing attempts -- Thomas More wanted to run the ball. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

Welp, I was wrong about that one

I don't think you were WRONG, so to speak.  It very easily could have happened as you laid it out...

I also think there's a very big gap between #2 and #3 in this conference right now.  I have no idea how Waynesburg would win 7 games in another conference. 

Meh, I was wrong because I expected TMC to win something like 42-13.  While TMC did have a big statistical edge, the game wasn't actually decided til the final gun, and Waynesburg deserves at least some credit for playing it closer than I thought they would.

While Waynesburg has enjoyed a season full of close wins against so-so competition, I try not to rain too much on anyone's parade when they're enjoying a winning season.  They deserve some credit for actually winning most of those close games (somebody has to come in third in the conference).  And, while it's easy to say that we have no idea how the Jackets could win seven games elsewhere...have ya seen the state of some other conferences?  The PAC is a dumpster fire after the top 2 (although that makes it fun because everyone is capable of beating everyone else), but so are most leagues.  The MIAC and Empire 8 are some of the only places that run very deep with real bona-fide contenders beyond the top 2-3 teams. 

[SaintsFAN]

I sent you a PM, ex-TP. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

I sent you a PM, ex-TP.

Received and replied.  LMK if it doesn't come through.

[SaintsFAN]

I sent you a PM, ex-TP.

Received and replied.  LMK if it doesn't come through.

Got it.

[D3MAFAN]

I don't know, but I got a weird feeling that the committee is going to do something unique this year and it involves Thomas More. I know the W&J result doesn't look to well, but they have a comparable (and yes I know that is a bad metric) win against a common opponent with that of  the #2N and IMHO played the #2S team the closest all season it was 28-14 with 5 minutes to go.