FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[matblake]

Merry Christmas to all! It's been kind of a rough year, so I thank you for the discussion, laughs, and friendship through this great site!

[Stagg Again!!]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

[NCF]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Calling dead horse, calling dead horse, come in dead horse.......  

[Stagg Again!!]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Calling dead horse, calling dead horse, come in dead horse.......

LOL NCF!!!  +k for you.  I couldn't resist the post after Pat's response last week.  It certainly does feel right though to see the coaches recognize that the Cardinals were a bit better than Linfield. 

[CardinalAlum]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Who cares?  I honestly don't.  If we weren't at the top of that list at the end of the year, it wouldn't matter.  The ultimate goal is not to finish 4th.  The past season was great, but we still lost our last game of the year. 

[02 Warhawk]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Who cares?  I honestly don't.  If we weren't at the top of that list at the end of the year, it wouldn't matter.  The ultimate goal is not to finish 4th.  The past season was great, but we still lost our last game of the year.

Better weather conditions = different result?

[emma17]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Who cares?  I honestly don't.  If we weren't at the top of that list at the end of the year, it wouldn't matter.  The ultimate goal is not to finish 4th.  The past season was great, but we still lost our last game of the year.

Better weather conditions = different result?

As I'm not ready for the season to be over I watched that NCC vs Mt game again, hoping to get an idea on who was more impacted by the conditions.
It's hard to tell and very speculative on my part I know.
If the theory is true that the offense has the upper hand in slippery conditions, I will say that NCC looked disadvantaged defensively in trying to tackle Mt's quicker players like Burke and Mitchell. The lateral cuts these two were able to make in the snow made it tough on the defense. It seems NCC's offense is a bit more north and south, which is better for a tackler I would think.

At the same time, I know NCC struggled to tackle the bigger back brought in late.
I was also curious to see the NCC pass rush on the last drive. I saw a 3 man line and on the second to last play no blitz and Burke had forever. On the TD, it was a 3 man line and then 2 backers came up. If they were blitzing it was soft. Burke was very comfortable in pocket tossing an easy td pass.
I didn't understand why NCC didn't go to their tall receiver on the last 2 point try.

No doubt the weather was an issue. Ultimately it seems though that there were enough opportunities for NCC to prevail that weren't necessarily weather related. 

[NCF]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Who cares?  I honestly don't.  If we weren't at the top of that list at the end of the year, it wouldn't matter.  The ultimate goal is not to finish 4th.  The past season was great, but we still lost our last game of the year.

Better weather conditions = different result?

As I'm not ready for the season to be over I watched that NCC vs Mt game again, hoping to get an idea on who was more impacted by the conditions.
It's hard to tell and very speculative on my part I know.
If the theory is true that the offense has the upper hand in slippery conditions, I will say that NCC looked disadvantaged defensively in trying to tackle Mt's quicker players like Burke and Mitchell. The lateral cuts these two were able to make in the snow made it tough on the defense. It seems NCC's offense is a bit more north and south, which is better for a tackler I would think.

At the same time, I know NCC struggled to tackle the bigger back brought in late.
I was also curious to see the NCC pass rush on the last drive. I saw a 3 man line and on the second to last play no blitz and Burke had forever. On the TD, it was a 3 man line and then 2 backers came up. If they were blitzing it was soft. Burke was very comfortable in pocket tossing an easy td pass.
I didn't understand why NCC didn't go to their tall receiver on the last 2 point try.

No doubt the weather was an issue. Ultimately it seems though that there were enough opportunities for NCC to prevail that weren't necessarily weather related.

The weather was the same for both teams. No excuses.

[NCF]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Calling dead horse, calling dead horse, come in dead horse.......

LOL NCF!!!  +k for you.  I couldn't resist the post after Pat's response last week.  It certainly does feel right though to see the coaches recognize that the Cardinals were a bit better than Linfield. 

Right back at ya, Stagg!

[emma17]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Who cares?  I honestly don't.  If we weren't at the top of that list at the end of the year, it wouldn't matter.  The ultimate goal is not to finish 4th.  The past season was great, but we still lost our last game of the year.

Better weather conditions = different result?

As I'm not ready for the season to be over I watched that NCC vs Mt game again, hoping to get an idea on who was more impacted by the conditions.
It's hard to tell and very speculative on my part I know.
If the theory is true that the offense has the upper hand in slippery conditions, I will say that NCC looked disadvantaged defensively in trying to tackle Mt's quicker players like Burke and Mitchell. The lateral cuts these two were able to make in the snow made it tough on the defense. It seems NCC's offense is a bit more north and south, which is better for a tackler I would think.

At the same time, I know NCC struggled to tackle the bigger back brought in late.
I was also curious to see the NCC pass rush on the last drive. I saw a 3 man line and on the second to last play no blitz and Burke had forever. On the TD, it was a 3 man line and then 2 backers came up. If they were blitzing it was soft. Burke was very comfortable in pocket tossing an easy td pass.
I didn't understand why NCC didn't go to their tall receiver on the last 2 point try.

No doubt the weather was an issue. Ultimately it seems though that there were enough opportunities for NCC to prevail that weren't necessarily weather related.

The weather was the same for both teams. No excuses.

I agree and I'm not trying to make excuses, just dialogue.
NCC had their chances and didn't execute in various ways.

As the season is over the interest may not exist for additional dialogue, but just in case I'll give it a try. IF in fact the weather impact was equal to both teams, then those that feel NCC should have been ranked higher than 5th by D3 don't have a whole lot of support.
No doubt UWW brought and played their A game at the Stagg Bowl- but the margin of victory wasn't just a matter of one team playing hot and another poorly. The Mt O and D lines were thoroughly dominated. As most agree that Line play is the main difference between contenders and champions, you have to ask- was NCC really that close to champion level?  Was Mt really that close to champion level? 
I'm a fan of NCC, but IMO their 1 point loss to Mt doesn't make me feel they are closer then they were one, two and three years ago. Unless of course, their game was more impacted by the conditions than Mt's game was.

[hazzben]

About All-Conference and All-American -- no, we are not obliged to agree with a conference's all-conference team. I've made many statements about that in the past as well.

You're not obligated to, but your AA teams lose respectability IMO and the eyes of other people close to and involved in D3 football, when you do this. It's one thing to disagree that a guy should have been 1st team All-ABCD instead of 2nd. It's another thing, and a little crazy, to think there's an All American player in the conference that the coaches didn't even think deserved 1st team All-ABCD.

It's even worse when you consider that the CCIW named 14 players to the 1st Team Defense. So the LB in question not only didn't make the 1st team, he didn't make an 'expanded' first team. (The MIAC does the same thing with expanded teams, so this is no knock on the CCIW) Or a DT that didn't get HM. Typically, to get HM, your coach just has to put you up for All Conference. So for a player not to get HM All Conference, it usually means his own coaches didn't see him as worthy.

I give you guys (Pat, Keith, et al) credit in terms of knowing the broader D3 landscape better than anyone else. You see the forest better than the rest of us. That said, I don't think you can claim to know an individual conference as well as, and especially not better than, it's actual coaches. These guys know their teams and the teams they play against far better than even fans of these conferences. Add to that, their players let them know who was toughest to play against as well.

It's simply not possible to be the expert or authority on the overall landscape as well as all the individual conferences. If a guy gets 1st team All-ABCD and then gets 1st team All Region and 1st team All American over another guy who was 1st team All-EFGH, I'll typically defer to you guys and your knowledge of the broader landscape. But when a conference names 5 1st team all conference players at a position and your AA isn't one of them, I think you've got an issue with your AA team. I'll hang up and listen 

[Pat Coleman]

Order is restored.  Congratulations to the #4 North Central College Cardinals.

http://www.afca.com/article/article.php?id=2439

Calling dead horse, calling dead horse, come in dead horse.......

LOL NCF!!!  +k for you.  I couldn't resist the post after Pat's response last week.  It certainly does feel right though to see the coaches recognize that the Cardinals were a bit better than Linfield. 

They also "recognize" that Mount Union is better than UMHB, so I'm not sure that recognition is that valuable.

Hazzben -- I didn't really speak to the specific instance in question because I haven't had time to look at it, but I appreciate that my two-sentence pre-holiday boilerplate statement drew a four-paragraph response. I can't speak to the Wheaton situation, except only to say that someone who isn't all-conference should not even be nominated for All-Region.

[hazzben]

@pat: what can I say, I'm already starved for offseason material! 

[USee]

I heard Wheaton stayed with an alum and internal staff member for the D-Coordinator job. This is the guy from what I hear:

http://athletics.wheaton.edu/staff.aspx?staff=130

Hope he is as good a coach as he was a player.

[Gregory Sager]

I heard that Mike Conway and his wife Beth Ann went to Hawaii over the holidays -- and that, at Mike's insistence, they took a detour to Samoa so that he could do some face-to-face recruiting. NPU had two Samoan freshmen on the roster last season that he really liked, one of whom finished the season as a starter, and he'd like to increase NPU's Samoan contingent.

I strongly doubt that his wife objected, but, still -- a 2,500-mile vacation detour in order to do some recruiting? That's my kind of coach!