FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Mugsy]

That is a loss for Wheaton.  2 DC lost this off season.  However, this is what happens when you hire good coaches.  The best to Coach Langs and Coach Sears (outside of September 3).

He's not lost yet:  "Langs will remain at Wheaton for the 2016 season...  He will join Indiana Wesleyan following the completion of the Thunders' 2016 season."   So you can enjoy his company through November 12th.   

Hopefully without distraction.  Will the foundation & ground work required to setup a brand new program seep into this season?

Here's your money quote, Mugsy, from the same press article. It's from Eye Woo AD Mark DeMichael:

"We have great respect for the Wheaton College football program," said DeMichael. "Given the timing of our hiring of Jordan we felt like it was important for Jordan to stay and finish his responsibilities for this fall football season. During the season he will also be working with some of our staff to begin the recruiting process to bring in our first class of football players for the fall of 2017."

(emphasis mine)

The fact that this quote appears in Eye Woo's presser tells me that Langs's future boss has some immediate requirements for his new hire that definitely overlap with his current position. Given that he wants Langs to bring in a recruiting class for the fall of 2017 -- a full year before Eye Woo even takes to the field for the first time (it's an NAIA school, so presumably those 2017 recruits will all be redshirted) -- it's certainly not unreasonable for DeMichael to expect Langs to "work with some of our staff to begin the recruiting process" this fall.

I can appreciate that both schools think highly of Langs and want to accommodate him, but this doesn't appear to be a very good working arrangement. It seems to me that the best way to administer a coaching staff is to expect a coach to make a clean break when he changes schools. Yes, in D1 some coaches will stay on for a postseason bowl game after announcing that they're changing schools. But there's a vast difference between staying on the old job for two to four weeks in order to prepare for one game and staying on the old job for an entire season.

My immediate reaction is how much of this "arrangement" is due to the fact it is way to late to find an appropriate replacement?  Really puts Coach Swider in a bind.

[matblake]

That is a loss for Wheaton.  2 DC lost this off season.  However, this is what happens when you hire good coaches.  The best to Coach Langs and Coach Sears (outside of September 3).

He's not lost yet:  "Langs will remain at Wheaton for the 2016 season...  He will join Indiana Wesleyan following the completion of the Thunders' 2016 season."   So you can enjoy his company through November 12th.   

Guess my 20 years out of school have hampered the reading comprehension.........

[Mugsy]

That is a loss for Wheaton.  2 DC lost this off season.  However, this is what happens when you hire good coaches.  The best to Coach Langs and Coach Sears (outside of September 3).

He's not lost yet:  "Langs will remain at Wheaton for the 2016 season...  He will join Indiana Wesleyan following the completion of the Thunders' 2016 season."   So you can enjoy his company through November 12th.   

Guess my 20 years out of school have hampered the reading comprehension.........

My excuse is the number of undiagnosed concussions over a 12 year period.

[Gregory Sager]

My immediate reaction is how much of this "arrangement" is due to the fact it is way to late to find an appropriate replacement?  Really puts Coach Swider in a bind.

Yep. I read this as his making the best of a bad situation by retaining a DC whose energy and attention will both be divided this season, rather than letting Langs go and promoting from within at the last minute. I'm guessing that he did so because he either feels than none of his position coaches are ready for, or capable of, coordinator responsibilities -- veteran head football coaches tend to be pretty familiar with the Peter principle -- or because he's concerned about the possibility of leaving an instructional void at the position-coach level on the defensive side of the ball.

But it's not just about Wheaton. It's about Eye Woo, too. This is also a less-than-ideal situation for Mark DeMichael, who will not get the full use of Eye Woo's new head football coach during the primary evaluate-and-contact portion of his first recruiting cycle as head coach. Who knows why DeMichael and Eye Woo chose this particular moment in the college football calendar to hire the guy who is going to run their brand-new football program? I can't think of a worse time to solicit inquiries, conduct interviews, and make a hire than the weeks immediately preceding preseason camp, aside from the season itself. The school's board of trustees voted to add football all the way back on April 1. You'd think that a new head coach would've been hired long before August 2, although, of course, press releases don't tend to reveal all of the inner workings of a school's administrative mechanism. All I know is that the timing of this hire is not just a burden for Wheaton, it's a burden for Eye Woo, too.

And who knows how Langs himself feels about having one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train?

Compromise: a dirty but necessary concept.

[markerickson]

The 2016 Carthage roster lists, if my counting is correct, 90 freshmen on a team that has 171 players.  That is a whole lot of zero minutes for a bunch of student athletes.

Didn't Carthage have a huge freshman recruiting class for fall 2015?

[AndOne]

The 2016 Carthage roster lists, if my counting is correct, 90 freshmen on a team that has 171 players.  That is a whole lot of zero minutes for a bunch of student athletes.

Didn't Carthage have a huge freshman recruiting class for fall 2015?

A whole lot of zero minutes indeed. But also a whole lot of tuition dollars to enrich the Carthage coffers! 💰💰💰

Any way you look at it, I sense football is usually big business for small schools who can use the tuition dollars brought in by football to help finance the remainder of their athletic teams as well as to help support various academic programs.

I took a look at a few of the other 2016 conference football rosters to see just how the Carthage roster compares.

NCC--100 upperclassmen/returnees listed plus 58 freshmen/other recruits-158
ELM--70 upperclassmen, 60 recruits-130
IWU--75 upperclassmen, 48 recruits-123

[Gregory Sager]

The 2016 Carthage roster lists, if my counting is correct, 90 freshmen on a team that has 171 players.  That is a whole lot of zero minutes for a bunch of student athletes.

Didn't Carthage have a huge freshman recruiting class for fall 2015?

Carthage always has a huge freshman class, Mark. Every year the preseason camp at Keller Field looks like Times Square on New Year's Eve, only with football pads. It's as inevitable as death and taxes.

Carthage, like a lot of schools (including our alma mater), is a tuition-driven school. In order to make its annual budget, the school needs to hit its marks in terms of admissions quotas. And the athletic department is definitely a driver of those quotas. Carthage coaches, again just like their counterparts at many other D3 schools, are required by the school's administration to bring in a certain number of new players every year. What's different is that Carthage football's quota is massive when compared to football admissions quotas at other schools. It's certainly not for football reasons, because: a) it's very hard to coach that many players with a staff of eleven, only five of whom are full-time; and b) as you pointed out, a very large percentage of that horde of players will never see the field, either for varsity or for JV.

And that leads to the next point, which is attrition. Notice that of the 171 Red Men listed on the roster, over half are freshmen. It's that way every year. Carthage always has poor retention in its football program, and it's not because the Red Men are bad (they were 5-5, 4-3 last season). It's because of those huge numbers and the fact that most of those players never get a chance to play.

I'm sure that Mike Yeager has plenty of recruits that he really wanted and that he and his assistants worked hard to land. But he also had to bring in a whole brigade of warm bodies who are most likely not CCIW football material just to make his admissions quota, which I'm sure he considers to be a pain in the neck. I know that the late Tim Rucks certainly felt that way.

[Gregory Sager]

NCC--100 upperclassmen/returnees listed plus 58 freshmen/other recruits-158
ELM--70 upperclassmen, 60 recruits-130
IWU--75 upperclassmen, 48 recruits-123

I'll have North Park's numbers either tomorrow or on Friday, but I'm guessing that it'll be somewhere in the vicinity of 70 returnees and 50 to 55 recruits, so my guesstimate for total first-day-of-camp roster size is 120 to 125.

[AndOne]

That is a loss for Wheaton.  2 DC lost this off season.  However, this is what happens when you hire good coaches.  The best to Coach Langs and Coach Sears (outside of September 3).

He's not lost yet:  "Langs will remain at Wheaton for the 2016 season...  He will join Indiana Wesleyan following the completion of the Thunders' 2016 season."   So you can enjoy his company through November 12th.   

Hopefully without distraction.  Will the foundation & ground work required to setup a brand new program seep into this season?

For informational purposes, Coach Langs was responsible for recruiting in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. He also apparently handled a portion of Illinois which is shared among the staff.
With half a body in Illinois, and the other half in Indiana, it seems like there isn't enough left to cover the aforementioned territory, not to mention that he probably isn't going to be recruiting if he is leaving. The question then arises as to who takes over these areas.

[AndOne]

NCC--100 upperclassmen/returnees listed plus 58 freshmen/other recruits-158
ELM--70 upperclassmen, 60 recruits-130
IWU--75 upperclassmen, 48 recruits-123

I'll have North Park's numbers either tomorrow or on Friday, but I'm guessing that it'll be somewhere in the vicinity of 70 returnees and 50 to 55 recruits, so my guesstimate for total first-day-of-camp roster size is 120 to 125.

I also tried to check the Wheaton roster, but didn't see it listed yet. However, Coach Swider has been quoted as indicating he will have a roster of 117 players this season. Last year's roster numbered 126.

[LB40]

Any word on Carroll's incoming class? What's everyone's thoughts of them as they transition from the MWC? 

[USee]

Carroll will be decent this year. I have them finishing in the upper part of the lower tier of the CCIW. They have 4 of 5 OL returning who have started at least 2 games, an all conference QB in Kyle Burlingame who will look and play very much like Jack Warner at IWU except he is a lefty, and a very good RB in Bennet Kothe who averaged 5.6 ypg on 11 carries per game. Defensively they have an all conference DL Peter Menges who led the team in TFL with 10, joining all of the other DL who started last year as returners. LB is a question mark (they lose all 3 starters) but have a DB in Dillon O'Donoghue who led the team in tackles and interceptions.

I have Carroll finishing in 6th out of 9 teams in the CCIW this year.

[lmitzel]

Coaches' Poll just dropped. Wheaton picked to win by a hair over NCC, 61-60 (5 1sts for WC, 4 for NCC)

http://www.cciw.org/news/2016/8/9/FB_0809160316.aspx

[matblake]

Anybody else think that the Augusta Viking and Carroll Pioneer logos look like they could be relatives?  I wonder if they were created by the same person/company/computer program. 

[matblake]

Here's info on who designed the Viking logo.  http://www.augustana.edu/x36549.xml
Couldn't find info regarding Carroll's Pioneer.  But, you can request Pio Pete for a visit.  http://gopios.com/sb_output.aspx?form=31