FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[GoIrish7]

Hearing Ron Planz is out as HC of Elmhurst. Another CCIW HC opening. Hopefully they move quick with recruiting in full swing.

[Gregory Sager]

He's still listed on the EC football coaching staff page.

I'm keeping an eye on it.

[SaintsFAN]

Saw it all over the news... North Central basketball has some players who can really jump, eh?

Glad the kid is ok.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaabk/college-player-jumps-face-first-into-backboard-takes-frightening-fall/ar-BBRK3vp?li=BBnbfcL

[Gregory Sager]

Mike Conway is out as NPU head football coach.

I am saddened by this news. I hate to see Mike go.

Gregory:
Sorry to hear that. I realize your were a great supporter of Conway. He seemed like a top notch coach and person from all touch have shared with us during his tenure.

Was this decision has it was it the administration's decision? I wonder if he will return to his PA roots.

He left of his own accord. He was burned out. In my weekly interviews with him in his office I could sense that the situation was wearing on him as the season went on. NPU lost a ridiculous number of players for the season to injury, and the program has just never been able to get to the point where it has a depth chart that can provide experienced upperclassmen who can step in during an injury wave. NPU, as always, was reduced to playing too many freshmen down the stretch.

Every head coach who takes the North Park job does so with the belief that he is the guy who can and will turn things around -- as he ought to, as it would not be right for the school to hire someone who is simply happy to be a paycheck-drawing timeserver -- but I think that Mike believed he could do it even more than his predecessors did. And with good reason; in his very first CCIW game the Vikings snapped an absurdly long conference losing streak that had run for almost a decade and a half. He tapped into new recruiting areas in American Samoa, Hawaii, and central Texas that produced a lot of good CCIW football players, if not in large enough numbers to turn the tide, and he brought about a culture change in NPU football that was palpable. Most of all, he really fit the ideal of what the school wants in a coach -- a strong Christian of high character with a tireless work ethic, a sense of perspective, and a fierce devotion to helping make his players successful as athletes, students, members of their communities, and as people in general.

But he kept bumping up against the invisible ceiling for North Park football, which is three wins in a season. NPU hasn't had a four-win season in over a quarter-century, which was also the last time that the program reached .500, and the last five-win season was also North Park's winning campaign, all the way back in 1968. That ceiling is pretty rock-solid, even more so now that the CCIW has expanded to ten teams for football -- leaving only one possibility per year to play a non-conference patsy such as Anderson (NPU's victim for three straight seasons now) to pick up a win. The hard truth of North Park football is that the demographics of high school football, the roster size required for a competent college football team, and the institutional particulars of North Park University pretty much cancel out any chance that the school could ever be more successful than 3-7. It's just the way it is. While NPU is not notably successful in other sports across the board (although it always has a standout sport or two, the current one being the hugely-successful men's soccer program), there's nothing holding the school back from being successful in any of its sports if the right coach came along, with one exception: football. In this one sport, unless some unforeseeable sea change takes place in the circumstances of the sport and/or the school, NPU is doomed to forever be a laggard.

Mike has accepted a job as the defensive coordinator of Lindenwood-Belleville, an NAIA school located in southern Illinois. The Lynx are coming off of an 0-11 season, so it's not as though he's stepping into a winning situation there, either. But perhaps LUB is a school that isn't encumbered by the sort of inflexible situation under which NPU football labors, and the Lynx might actually aspire to something higher on the gridiron -- or perhaps it's just better for Mike's peace of mind if he's not the guy who has to play Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. Life is a lot different when you're the guy in the big office rather than a coordinator or a position coach.

I wish Mike all the best at LUB. I think that just about everybody connected to NPU -- administrators, faculty, students, alumni --  echoes that sentiment. Mike is a terrific person. We will all miss him.

[formerd3db]

Mike Conway is out as NPU head football coach.

I am saddened by this news. I hate to see Mike go.

Gregory:
Sorry to hear that. I realize your were a great supporter of Conway. He seemed like a top notch coach and person from all touch have shared with us during his tenure.

Was this decision has it was it the administration's decision? I wonder if he will return to his PA roots.

He left of his own accord. He was burned out. In my weekly interviews with him in his office I could sense that the situation was wearing on him as the season went on. NPU lost a ridiculous number of players for the season to injury, and the program has just never been able to get to the point where it has a depth chart that can provide experienced upperclassmen who can step in during an injury wave. NPU, as always, was reduced to playing too many freshmen down the stretch.

Every head coach who takes the North Park job does so with the belief that he is the guy who can and will turn things around -- as he ought to, as it would not be right for the school to hire someone who is simply happy to be a paycheck-drawing timeserver -- but I think that Mike believed he could do it even more than his predecessors did. And with good reason; in his very first CCIW game the Vikings snapped an absurdly long conference losing streak that had run for almost a decade and a half. He tapped into new recruiting areas in American Samoa, Hawaii, and central Texas that produced a lot of good CCIW football players, if not in large enough numbers to turn the tide, and he brought about a culture change in NPU football that was palpable. Most of all, he really fit the ideal of what the school wants in a coach -- a strong Christian of high character with a tireless work ethic, a sense of perspective, and a fierce devotion to helping make his players successful as athletes, students, members of their communities, and as people in general.

But he kept bumping up against the invisible ceiling for North Park football, which is three wins in a season. NPU hasn't had a four-win season in over a quarter-century, which was also the last time that the program reached .500, and the last five-win season was also North Park's winning campaign, all the way back in 1968. That ceiling is pretty rock-solid, even more so now that the CCIW has expanded to ten teams for football -- leaving only one possibility per year to play a non-conference patsy such as Anderson (NPU's victim for three straight seasons now) to pick up a win. The hard truth of North Park football is that the demographics of high school football, the roster size required for a competent college football team, and the institutional particulars of North Park University pretty much cancel out any chance that the school could ever be more successful than 3-7. It's just the way it is. While NPU is not notably successful in other sports across the board (although it always has a standout sport or two, the current one being the hugely-successful men's soccer program), there's nothing holding the school back from being successful in any of its sports if the right coach came along, with one exception: football. In this one sport, unless some unforeseeable sea change takes place in the circumstances of the sport and/or the school, NPU is doomed to forever be a laggard.

Mike has accepted a job as the defensive coordinator of Lindenwood-Belleville, an NAIA school located in southern Illinois. The Lynx are coming off of an 0-11 season, so it's not as though he's stepping into a winning situation there, either. But perhaps LUB is a school that isn't encumbered by the sort of inflexible situation under which NPU football labors, and the Lynx might actually aspire to something higher on the gridiron -- or perhaps it's just better for Mike's peace of mind if he's not the guy who has to play Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. Life is a lot different when you're the guy in the big office rather than a coordinator or a position coach.

I wish Mike all the best at LUB. I think that just about everybody connected to NPU -- administrators, faculty, students, alumni --  echoes that sentiment. Mike is a terrific person. We will all miss him.

Gregory:

Thank you for your very insightful information. Indeed, it is a difficult situation at NPU.  Without question, you know the true inside/underlying parameters of the situation with regard to football there.  Olivet in our conference is an example that I would put forth in somewhat of a comparison.  The history there, while steeped in great tradition dating all the way back to 1884 and the early years of our MIAA, was a essentially a losing program for decades (similar to Kansas State,or Northwestern or even Eastern Michigan at DI as those programs used to be.) However, they found a way to make it work and now able to put forth a competitive, decent program-you are right in that it comes down to the right man to lead any program (with administrative support as well, of course.) I hope that they can find a way to make it work.  Do you think North Park would ever go the way of Swarthmore, Maranatha or Earlham?

BTW, I was surprised to hear that Conway is now at LU-B.  Although they fired their coach mid-season this year after not winning a game last year or through that time this past season, it seems like a good NAIA program (they have a great stadium also!).  My friend and former Alma College colleague, John Leister (former Alma College offensive coordinator, Head Baseball Coach and Athletic Director there) was the the QB coach at LU-B this past season, however, I do not see his name listed on the new coaching staff (which is not complete so far).  I haven't been able to get in touch with Leister so far-do you know where he went and/or could you possibly talk with Conway or someone who could let me know?  I would appreciate it.  Again, thanks for the further info regarding Coach Conway.

[Gregory Sager]

Gregory:

Thank you for your very insightful information. Indeed, it is a difficult situation at NPU.  Without question, you know the true inside/underlying parameters of the situation with regard to football there.  Olivet in our conference is an example that I would put forth in somewhat of a comparison.  The history there, while steeped in great tradition dating all the way back to 1884 and the early years of our MIAA, was a essentially a losing program for decades (similar to Kansas State,or Northwestern or even Eastern Michigan at DI as those programs used to be.) However, they found a way to make it work and now able to put forth a competitive, decent program-you are right in that it comes down to the right man to lead any program (with administrative support as well, of course.) I hope that they can find a way to make it work.

Olivet is not a valid comparison to NPU. To the best of my knowledge, NPU's situation is unique in D3 football. Believe me, I don't say that as a point of pride. I don't think that wearing an albatross around one's neck is a source of pride for anybody.

I also didn't say that "it comes down to the right man to lead any program (with administrative support as well, of course)." If anything, Mike Conway was the right man for North Park -- and he couldn't make it work, either. What I said was that North Park has a three-wins-per-year ceiling of success, and that it's a ceiling that appears to be rock-solid. There's no "right man" who can break a barrier that can't be broken.

I'll explain why. Other long-time CCIW football board readers have read it before, so I apologize for writing it again. But it's at least useful for those who do not understand North Park's football situation to see this. I spoke in my last post about the circumstances of high school football and the insitutional particulars of NPU as being the source of that rock-solid ceiling, or that insurmountable barrier (if you're more of a horizontal thinker than a vertical one )

Football is a suburban sport in the state of Illinois, as it is elsewhere within large parts of the United States. While there are several small exurban cities here and there throughout the state (Rockford, DeKalb, Bloomington-Normal, Champaign-Urbana, Rock Island-Moline-East Moline, etc.) that have the ability to field good high school football teams, in the higher classes the sport of high school football in the Land of Lincoln is utterly dominated by the Chicagoland suburbs. Population has something to do with that, but the biggest reason is money. Unlike soccer, basketball, and baseball, football is an expensive and resource-intensive sport. In order to run multiple and competent youth football leagues and summer camps, and to field solid high school programs with large rosters, feeder teams at the freshman and/or JV level, and all of the resources necessary in terms of equipment, stadiums, weight rooms, insurance, and the like, the families, schools, and communities involved need to be middle-class or upper middle-class. And, yes, there are exceptions here and there, but the main point is overwhelmingly true: Football in Illinois is a sport for those who have both means and the population size to make those means available to run a state-of-the-art high school football program -- and, for the most part, the places where those conditions exist is in Chicago's suburbs. And in Chicago itself, a city with almost three million people and who knows how many teenaged boys who could be playing high school football, aside from a tiny handful of well-resourced Catholic schools such as Mount Carmel, DePaul Prep, St. Rita, and DeLaSalle, there is an almost total absence of viable high school football. Comparatively few public high schools offer football, and those that do have to contend with tiny rosters, antiquated and constantly reused equipment, public park practice fields strewn with broken glass, litter, and what have you, and any number of other obstacles or lack of the basics. You've heard of a food desert, the sociological condition in which there are no supermarkets or places that offer fresh produce or meat within a certain radius within a city's more depressed areas? Well, Chicago is a football desert.

This is reflected in CCIW football. Take even a cursory look at the rosters of the CCIW's football teams and you'll see an overwhelming preponderance of young men who hail from the Chicagoland suburbs. Wheaton and Wash U are obvious exceptions due to institutional requirements that force the coaches of the various sports at those two schools to recruit nationally, and Carthage and Carroll are more Wisconsin-centric than they'd like to be because of the difficulty of matching Illinois state aid (something that Carthage has striven mightily to match in-house over the years) -- but, by and large, it's a league that's based upon Chicagoland suburban student-athletes. If you go to a football game at Glenbard West or Niles North or Bolingbrook or Hersey or Deerfield or Neuqua Valley (I'm just naming suburban schools, not necessarily identifying good football programs), you'll find a whole lotta CCIW coaches bumping elbows.

North Park's problem in this regard is that the school is located in Chicago. Now, don't get me wrong -- the Chicago location is a major asset for NPU, and the university advertises it as such. The school has had more than one opportunity over the years to move out to the suburbs (as did its sister school, Trinity International University, which relocated from the city to Deerfield in 1961), and it has always decided to stay put. But the urban location is a handicap for sports, because: a) the overwhelming majority of high school athletes within the city have neither the financial means nor the academic ability to attend North Park; and b) most Chicagoland suburban teenagers do not want to attend college in the city. For whatever reason, be it a fear of the city instilled by constant news reports of shootings on the West Side and the South Side and by the negative opinions of their elders, or a desire to attend college in a familiar setting that at least approximates leafy suburbia, most Chicagoland suburban kids won't even consider going to school in Chicago. (Ironically, a whole lotta young suburbanites move to the city's trendy neighborhoods after college and become yuppies or hipsters, but that's another story.)

This dual handicap -- very few viable prospects within the city in which the school is located, relatively few suburban prospects willing to consider education at an urban college -- isn't as much of an impediment in NPU's other sports, because those other sports have much smaller rosters than football's and thus don't require a large influx of new recruits every year. North Park can find, and has found, success in other sports. But football is a whole 'nother animal, because it requires so many players in order to make a football team a success -- 22 starters per team, not including specialists, and an attrition rate due to injury that frequently outstrips the rest of a school's varsity sports combined. The dual handicap, much more so than the year-after-year, decade-after-decade doormat status that it has produced, creates that insurmountable barrier. Football is not going to become a less expensive sport anytime soon, nor are Chicago-based high schools going to expand their football programs anytime soon (and youth football programs, which are almost nonexistent in the city, aren't going to spring up, either), which means that NPU is stuck in an ongoing situation of not being able to keep up with the CCIW Joneses in terms of recruiting.

[con't]

[Gregory Sager]

There's an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. To their great credit, North Park's last two head football coaches recognized that the reason behind NPU's perennial lack of success had nothing to do with the competence of their predecessors and everything to do with the circumstances that impede the ability of the Vikings coaches to recruit CCIW-quality football players. So both became creative and innovative outside-the-box thinkers when it came to recruiting. Mike Conway's predecessor, Scott Pethtel, installed the triple option offense, reasoning that there were vast numbers of high schools that ran the triple option whose players were by and large overlooked by colleges because the triple option doesn't lend itself well as a training ground for future collegians who will play in a more conventional offense where the forward pass isn't as rare as grass in Antarctica. While a few of the nearby triple-option high school programs are in the suburbs (Cary-Grove, a noteworthy example, produced such Pethtel-era Vikings standouts as Tyler Krebs, Kyle Leibforth, and Kenny Pistorius), most are in the state's rural areas, where the pool of high school boys is small and the number of lineman-size (225 pounds and up) boys is even smaller. Outside of the suburbs, the stigma of an education in Chicago doesn't seem to exist; in fact, there's some sort of a perimeter out past the Fox River and across the Indiana and Wisconsin state lines in which the school's location in Chicago stops being a liability and becomes an asset, so downstaters don't seem to be innately averse to the idea of Chicago as a college destination. And the only other midwestern D3 program that ran the triple option and thus sought these rural high school players was Ripon.

It was a great idea on Scott Pethtel's part, but the problem turned out to be that it's hard to induce rural Illinois kids to enroll at North Park, for completely different reasons. Families in farming communities don't tend to have a lot of financial liquidity -- their worldly goods are in land and equipment rather than bank accounts, stocks, and bonds -- and, also, the downstate economy has not been healthy for a very long time. And it takes several seasons before a triple option offense can successfully kick in, because it requires the right players on the college level to run it -- and the Vikings simply hadn't been at it long enough for Scott and his coaching staff to reap the benefits of success with it on the recruiting trail. All it took was one disastrous recruiting cycle in which the coaching staff was only able to bring in a couple dozen players for the adminstration to show him and his staff the door, because, since NPU is a tuition-driven school, the bottom line for the NPU administration is always going to be about enrollment.

So Mike Conway was hired. He immediately scrapped the triple option -- even if he'd liked it, it wouldn't have made much sense to keep it when he was bringing with him his two D2-transfer sons, one of whom was a standout WR and the other of whom was a 6'4, 220 QB with a rifle arm and limited mobility. Instead, he innovated by expanding NPU football's recruiting into new territory. While seemingly half of the coaching staffs in D3 football are now trying to work Florida and Texas as recruiting fields, Mike zeroed in on two metro areas in particular in those states, Austin and Miami, and attempted to develop some relationships with the local coaches down there. More notably, he expanded into new territories where nobody else in D3 operated, namely, American Samoa and Hawaii. One of his assistants, Bob Harmon, had helped conduct a couple of camps down in American Samoa, and the land they call "Football Island" quickly became a place where North Park had a very high profile in football circles. Since the Samoan diaspora far outnumbers the Samoans who live in the island homeland itself, and since the biggest population of Samoans outside of AS are in Hawaii, the Aloha State soon became another productive recruting field where it didn't seem like a lot of other small-college football coaches were competing.

Mike had great success in these new recruiting areas; a lot of very good players, and a few outstanding ones, came to NPU from Samoa and metro Austin and Hawaii and metro Miami. There just weren't enough of them. Perhaps, given a few years and the development of the sort of football alumni network that makes it possible for Mike Swider and his staff to recruit Wheaton football prospects from coast to coast, it could've worked. But there just weren't enough of these players to give NPU the necessary depth that, as I said in yesterday's post, the team needed to see it through a rough year of injuries.

So there you have it. To sum up, North Park football is trapped by circumstances beyond anybody's control.

Do you think North Park would ever go the way of Swarthmore, Maranatha or Earlham?

No. The CCIW's bylaws require that each full-member institution field teams every year in football, men's basketball, and baseball. Trust me, if NPU could wriggle out of this requirement, Vikings football would've vanished back in the late '70s or early '80s (and probably would've never returned). The North Park administration does recognize that football serves other purposes for the school in terms of tuition income and in redressing some of the gender imbalance among undergraduates. But the program hurts NPU's retention rate and costs a ton of money to run for no return in terms of on-field success. But the school is stuck with football, regardless.

The MIAC has a similar rule, and yet it finally relented and gave Macalester a waiver so that it didn't have to field a MIAC football team. While I'm not 100% sure why, I suspect that the waiver was granted because Macalester is such a renowned institution in terms of academic status that the MIAC presidents were afraid that they'd lose Macalester altogether, and the academic prestige that Macalester brings to the league as a whole, if they didn't give in regarding a football waiver. Macalester wisely used the waiver not to abandon football altogether, but to move the football program to a significantly lower league in terms of competition level (the MWC) starting in 2014, where the Scots have become a comfortable fit. I don't think that NPU really has a similar option as far as the CCIW is concerned. North Park simply doesn't carry the sort of heavyweight academic reputation that would make the other eight CCIW presidents think twice about losing NPU over football. If they ever did grant NPU a waiver, I could see the school moving to the NACC for football while retaining full-member status within the CCIW and having the Vikings compete there in all of the other sports (aside from rowing, which the CCIW doesn't sponsor, and men's volleyball, which the CCIW is still a year away from sponsoring). But I suspect that NPU's ever getting a football waiver from the CCIW is about as likely a scenario as is Benedictine's ever joining the CCIW as a full member, which is another way of saying that it ain't going to happen, no way, no how.

(North Park is not the only school that's wanted this mandatory-sport rule to go away; for many years Wheaton wanted a waiver from the rule or the elimination of the rule entirely, in order to get rid of its perennially poor baseball program. Wheaton finally realized about a decade and a half ago that the rest of the league was not going to budge and that the rule was thus not going away, and the WC administration finally decided to be proactive by refurbishing the stadium it rents from the American Legion in Carol Stream and by hiring a full-time head coach who had a bona-fide recruiting budget with which to work. As a result, Wheaton baseball is now at least competitive in the CCIW.)

BTW, I was surprised to hear that Conway is now at LU-B.  Although they fired their coach mid-season this year after not winning a game last year or through that time this past season, it seems like a good NAIA program (they have a great stadium also!).  My friend and former Alma College colleague, John Leister (former Alma College offensive coordinator, Head Baseball Coach and Athletic Director there) was the the QB coach at LU-B this past season, however, I do not see his name listed on the new coaching staff (which is not complete so far).  I haven't been able to get in touch with Leister so far-do you know where he went and/or could you possibly talk with Conway or someone who could let me know?  I would appreciate it.  Again, thanks for the further info regarding Coach Conway.

Sorry, I can't really be of any help in this regard.

[Gregory Sager]

Hearing Ron Planz is out as HC of Elmhurst. Another CCIW HC opening. Hopefully they move quick with recruiting in full swing.

Ron Planz watch: He's still listed both in the EC online athletic staff directory and on the EC football coaching staff page.

It's been three days now, GoIrish7. I'm beginning to think that you may have been the recipient of a false rumor.

[Pat Coleman]

Football Scoop also says Planz is out, FWIW.

One thing on Hawai'i -- you will find a significant number of islanders on the roster of (I believe) every school in the Northwest Conference.

[formerd3db]

Gregory:

Thanks again for your in-depth explanations and opinion regarding the NPU football situation and history.  Just for some clarification, I did not say that Olivet was an exact or specific comparison, I said "somewhat" and I was referring to some general terms.  First, Olivet might be similar to NPU (your statement..."North Park simply doesn't carry the sort of heavyweight academic reputation that would make the other eight CCIW presidents think twice about losing NPU over football") in that Olivet is not considered by a variety of people and other sources as among the upper academic tier of the MIAA schools (and that is not intended as any disrespect to Olivet.) Olivet is a tuition driven school also (it has to be due to the smaller size).  You are correct that NPU has a very unique situation with regard to football as you have extensively explained, however, while every DIII school facing tough situations with football have their own unique situations, there are some general similarities.  Each school and administration has to look at their own situation and come up with a plan that works for them and there are certainly many different circumstances that come into play for that for any particular school.  In a somewhat similar situation with regard to the enrollment issue, Adrian faced that challenge in their own way and made it work for them (which also helped the football program), although in the Olivet situation (and perhaps Kalamazoo also), it has been more of a football challenge alone (to help maintain the football program and enrollment).  As far as the "right man" aspect, you misunderstand my comment. I did not say nor imply that Conway or his predecessors were not the right persons-obviously they were in their own ways, as you have discussed. Certainly both Conway and Pethtel are great coaches and they had new approaches for NPU, a great vision for rebuilding the program (along with the right personal philosophy and Faith, of course), which the NPU administrators saw and were in agreement with.  However, sometimes it just doesn't work out for whatever reasons, as you have pointed out for NPU's particular situation. Things change over time (this happened at Hope 3 years ago with the decision to go in a different direction; Kreps was the right man for Hope, but due to several factors, that changed, he was out, and now Stuursma is the right person). There are a lot of good coaches available for colleges, however, not everyone is the right fit for some school and sometimes a great coach with all the right aspects and philosophy just can't make it work due to circumstances beyond their control (your statement..."All it took was one disastrous recruiting cycle in which the coaching staff was only able to bring in a couple dozen players for the adminstration to show him and his staff the door, because, since NPU is a tuition-driven school, the bottom line for the NPU administration is always going to be about enrollment.")

All I was sharing to the discussion in general is that there are a) certainly ways for any school to sustain/retain/maintain (whichever word we might wish to choose) a football program (including the financial commitment) if they really want to, they will find a way and b) indeed, some general similarities exist among schools that struggle to sustain their football programs, yet still recognizing that each situation is different in some specific aspects for that particular institution.  So in that regard, Olivet and some of these other schools are similar to North Park in that they are "trapped by circumstances beyond anybody's control" to borrow your phrase , whatever those particular challenges or circumstances may be at any given time.  Anyway, once again, thanks for your extensive perspective regarding the NPU football situation.  I wish your school well as it moves to the next chapter in its football history and, of course, hope they always keep the program regardless of the stipulations/rules or otherwise that are involved.

[Gregory Sager]

Not to belabor the point, but, again, I don't believe that Olivet is a valid comparison at all. The proof is in the pudding; the Comets have had winning seasons in five of the last six seasons, with the other season being the 5-5 mark in 2017. Included in that span are two MIAA titles and a D3 playoff appearance. You can't really compare Olivet to North Park when Olivet has demonstrably overcome its obstacles. The current head coach of the Comets and his immediate predecessor have resoundingly proven that you can not only win there, you can win league titles there.

Beyond that, while the Comets have mostly been at or near the bottom of the MIAA over the years since rejoining the MIAA back in 1953, there have nevertheless been some very good seasons for Olivet football: 6-3, 4-1 in 1964; 8-1, 4-1 in 1967; 7-2, 5-0 and an MIAA title in 1974; 7-0-1, 4-0-1 in 1991; 8-2, 5-2 in 2004, 6-5, 6-1 and another MIAA title in 2007; and then the current streak of success. Interspersed here and there were a few 6-3 campaigns as well.

Let's compare that legacy to that of North Park, which first began CCIW play in the fall of 1962. Know how many winning seasons the Vikings have had since then? One. In 1968 North Park finished 6-3. Know how many winning seasons within the CCIW it has had since entering the league? One. Again, it was 1968, as the Vikings went 5-2 in league play, good for a second-place tie that to this day remains the only occasion in which the Park placed within the league's top three. Since 1968, North Park has only avoided a losing season once, when it went 4-4-1, 2-4-1 under the late Tim Rucks back in 1994. North Park has only had three four-win seasons since joining the CCIW back when JFK was in the White House -- the two seasons already mentioned, plus the 1979 campaign in which it wen 4-5, 4-4. North Park's CCIW won-lost records, by decade, are:

1960s	10-41-1 (.202)
1970s	15-62-3 (.206)
1980s	11-69    (.138)
1990s	8-63-3 (.128)
2000s	1-69    (.014)
2010s	10-57    (.175)

Included in that lamentable tally is the 89-game CCIW losing streak that ran from the middle of the 2000 season until Mike Conway's Vikings snapped it in his CCIW head-coaching debut in 2013.

Now, I'm not saying that Olivet is Mount Union by comparison, but Olivet isn't even in the same ballpark as NPU when it comes to this kind of epic futility.

All I was sharing to the discussion in general is that there are a) certainly ways for any school to sustain/retain/maintain (whichever word we might wish to choose) a football program (including the financial commitment) if they really want to,

Have to, not want to, is more like it as far as NPU is concerned, but, yeah, North Park has managed to maintain its football program. As I said, it has no choice in the matter if it wants to remain in the CCIW -- which it certainly does.

they will find a way and b) indeed, some general similarities exist among schools that struggle to sustain their football programs, yet still recognizing that each situation is different in some specific aspects for that particular institution.

If by that you mean that there are other tuition-driven D3 schools that need to maintain their football programs for admissions purposes, then, yeah, I agree with that.

So in that regard, Olivet and some of these other schools are similar to North Park in that they are "trapped by circumstances beyond anybody's control" to borrow your phrase , whatever those particular challenges or circumstances may be at any given time.

I don't agree with that. Again, Olivet has resoundingly proven that it isn't trapped at all. It can, and has, triumphed over its obstacles to gridiron success. North Park? Not so much. And don't hold your breath that it ever will, because we're talking about forces at work here that are much, much bigger than the school and that are well out of the school's control.

Anyway, once again, thanks for your extensive perspective regarding the NPU football situation.  I wish your school well as it moves to the next chapter in its football history and, of course, hope they always keep the program regardless of the stipulations/rules or otherwise that are involved.

Thanks. I appreciate the sentiment. Again, North Park football isn't going away. Next fall as usual I'll be back behind the mic and keeping good thoughts about the Vikings' prospects for success on any given Saturday. Nobody who isn't a player or a coach wants the Vikings to win more than I do -- I'm pretty sure of that. I'm just being as honest and as realistic as I can right now in relating what the program is up against.

[formerd3db]

Gregory,
We just disagree on some aspects ( not all ) and that is fine. BTW, although this doesn't concern you personally, just some follow up that I was finally able to get in touch with my friend/ colleague Coach Leister that I mentioned to you about
and found out his current status-search solved.☺

[Pat Coleman]

Surprised that Gregory Sager would say "the proof is in the pudding" rather than the unbastardized line, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."

[Gregory Sager]

It was late, and I was sleepy.

[formerd3db]

It was late, and I was sleepy.

Surprised that Gregory Sager would say "the proof is in the pudding" rather than the unbastardized line, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."

That (what Gregory said) and plus that is not only the journalist in you Pat, but the writer, too!😀I have to give you both a +k for those explanations!☺