FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[wally_wabash]

If Wheaton wins, IWU is in the driver seat for the CCIW title with a 3 way tie a real possibility (can you say point differential!). If NCC wins then IWU v NCC becomes the defacto 'chip game. for the better part of this century this game has been the marquee game in the CCIW. I don't have any problem playing it early. In fact, both teams appear to be healthy and playing well so it's our best matchup possible. The end of the year brings injuries into play for the outcome. NCC not having Ryan Kuhl last year was a huge factor in NCC's season IMO.

More importantly, this game is big for the CCIW if the champion makes a deep run in the post season. As an example, if Wheaton wins and goes on to get the AQ and then makes the Stagg Bowl, it raises the profile of the CCIW significantly. IWU's loss in the playoffs last year was very damaging to the CCIW.  Just look at the Mt Union v JCU game. Mt Union's place in national pecking order has been secure for a couple decades. When any OAC team upsets, or almost upsets, Mt Union then the OAC is perceived to be a stronger conference. So who the CCIW beats in the post season goes a long way to examining the strength of the conference.

I don't think I agree with this for a couple of reasons.  First, it's just one game.  It takes more than one game to undo the league's reputation.  Second, IWU wasn't the automatic qualifier from the league.  They were an at-large team playing in what amounted to a 4-5 seeded game against an undefeated team.  Yes, they were very poor in that game, but I don't think reasonable people think significantly less of the entire league because of that single result.

From Kickoff conference rankings:

College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin
Regardless of the weather, champ gets shut out at home in the first round of the playoffs ...

Maybe you think the guys who run d3.com are not reasonable?

Kickoff conference rankings!  Fun. 


2017 Kickoff conference rankings:
CCIW - 7th

2018 Kickoff conference rankings:
CCIW - 7th

IWU got shut out in the tournament.  Oh, the humanity. 

[Gregory Sager]

Nothing puts the sting in the needle better than a strategically-placed gif. Kudos, Wally.

[thunderdog]

Speaking of the bell and with regards to the context of the earlier passage... when we upset Wheaton 22-16.  We kept the score on the scoreboard all night.   A few of us with a little bit of Mary Jane in us,   were ringing that bell in the middle of the night.  Campus police finally came by and escorted us back to the dorms (thankfully not the Police Station).  It was arguably our biggest win since 1980 when the Jays last won the conference. 

IMO,  it's not about injuries, depth, etc. for Elmhurst on the large scale.  There are some visible gaps right now that expose how we have dropped a few rungs on the ladder, since their predecessors.

I remember this vividly 79jaybird... still haunts my dreams. A very good, talented Wheaton team (7-0) loses on the road to Elmhurst (0-7) in 1999. This is arguably one of the biggest upsets in CCIW history, not just Elmhurst history.

[79jaybird]

We were struggling to get 3 wins a year and Wheaton, highly ranked and a very good team, just well,  it just wasn't their day.   Plus, if I remember right we (Elmhurst ) actually played pretty well.  Between playing and broadcasting, there are a few games that vividly stand out.  This one  and then a HC game vs. IWU which I refer to as the "Monsoon Game"  (2001?)  which prompted Elmhurst to invest in the AstroPlay turf, etc.   really stand out.   

Thunderdog- I am good friends with Coach Swider and Peltz.   I have never brought that game up, but I KNOW that still haunts them.   Any given Saturday right?    

[USee]

Wally,

The discussion is about perception. It's subjective and impossible to prove. That said, your statement was "...I don't think reasonable people think significantly less of the CCIW as an entire league because of that single result"

Are you supposing you know what the d3.com ranking team thought about when they posted that comment or that no one reads that and thinks anything less of the CCIW because of that? They didn't say "NCC beats St Johns so maintains their #7 ranking, nor did they say IWU beat UWW so stays at 7". None of that happened. Out of all the possible comments on the headline ranking page they chose to mention the CCIW Champ getting shut out at home. I would submit most people only read the headline page of conference rankings and the summary line forms a very real current perception as a result.

Your post proves nothing. The reality is the top 7 hasn't moved much at all in the past 7 yrs. CCIW has been between 5-7.  You are right that one game doesn't mean much over a longer period of time I definitely think IWU's playoff pooper affects the short term perception of the league.

[wally_wabash]

Dude, if you wanted some way to measure how the CCIW is perceived AND also brought up the Kickoff conference ranking all on your own, then why should we ignore the year over year delta in those rankings?  My entire point was that, yes, IWU losing that game the way they did wasn't a great look BUT it also doesn't impact significantly (really key word there) the way the league is viewed by people that follow the division.  The rankings bear that out, no?  7th before that IWU loss, 7th after the IWU loss.  I just don't see how you can claim that that result was...hang on, checking my notes... ah yes, "very damaging" to the league's reputation.  It wasn't.  The evidence is dispositive. 

When I looked this up, I fully expected to see that the CCIW got dropped one, maybe two places in the rankings and I STILL would have argued that the result wasn't very significant to the overall perception of the league.  But the ranking wasn't affected at all!  So my post proves exactly what I thought, only more emphatically than I expected. 

[jamtod]

Dude, if you wanted some way to measure how the CCIW is perceived AND also brought up the Kickoff conference ranking all on your own, then why should we ignore the year over year delta in those rankings?  My entire point was that, yes, IWU losing that game the way they did wasn't a great look BUT it also doesn't impact significantly (really key word there) the way the league is viewed by people that follow the division.  The rankings bear that out, no?  7th before that IWU loss, 7th after the IWU loss.  I just don't see how you can claim that that result was...hang on, checking my notes... ah yes, "very damaging" to the league's reputation.  It wasn't.  The evidence is dispositive. 

When I looked this up, I fully expected to see that the CCIW got dropped one, maybe two places in the rankings and I STILL would have argued that the result wasn't very significant to the overall perception of the league.  But the ranking wasn't affected at all!  So my post proves exactly what I thought, only more emphatically than I expected.

Maybe I'm not the target audience of brilliant D3 minds y'all are discussing, but when I think about the 2017 CCIW, the first thoughts that come to mind are the North Central win over SJU (obviously, I'm a MIAC guy) and IWU beating Whitewater. I had to look at the playoff results to remember who IWU lost to (CWRU) but that one result doesn't really sway me too much one way or the other.

[New Tradition]

Just because you've never heard it ring doesn't mean that it's easy to miss.

I've seen Buddhist shrines that were less conspicuous.

Ha!  Guess I never noticed...I should be more observant.

[New Tradition]

We were struggling to get 3 wins a year and Wheaton, highly ranked and a very good team, just well,  it just wasn't their day.   Plus, if I remember right we (Elmhurst ) actually played pretty well.  Between playing and broadcasting, there are a few games that vividly stand out.  This one  and then a HC game vs. IWU which I refer to as the "Monsoon Game"  (2001?)  which prompted Elmhurst to invest in the AstroPlay turf, etc.   really stand out.   

Thunderdog- I am good friends with Coach Swider and Peltz.   I have never brought that game up, but I KNOW that still haunts them.   Any given Saturday right?   

I was just starting to pay attention to the CCIW in 2001 as I was checking out NCC, Elmhurst and IWU as potential places to further my education.  I didn't know about the game in question, but I DID see the aftermath.  Coach Krohn had me out to see the last game of the season.  It was a HECK of a barn burner between Elmhurst and NCC.  NCC needed some late game heroics to put it away and ended up winning by a field goal.  NCC had just installed their field turf and I had seen them play a very good first half against Augie 2 weeks prior (which was something during a 23 year losing streak).  It was a warm, dry, sunny, breezy afternoon, but Langhorst Field was a complete dust bowl.  Sometimes it was hard to see what was happening on the field from all the the dust blowing around.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  Somewhat unrelated, but my memory of this is very vivid because it was at halftime of this game that my Dad and I switched sidelines and I watched the second half from the visitors stands as that's the exact moment I decided I'd be going to NCC.

[79jaybird]

GS- I remember you telling me at Fitz's Pub you were tossing Elmhurst around as a possible school to attend.   To this day, I tell people, "you can't really go wrong choosing any of the CCIW schools"  However, athletically, there are definitely a couple of schools that seem to value athletics much more than the others.

When I played and first started broadcasting we had grass.  That made for some interesting terrain by mid-late season, and susceptible to the elements.   

[USee]

Dude, if you wanted some way to measure how the CCIW is perceived AND also brought up the Kickoff conference ranking all on your own, then why should we ignore the year over year delta in those rankings?  My entire point was that, yes, IWU losing that game the way they did wasn't a great look BUT it also doesn't impact significantly (really key word there) the way the league is viewed by people that follow the division.  The rankings bear that out, no?  7th before that IWU loss, 7th after the IWU loss.  I just don't see how you can claim that that result was...hang on, checking my notes... ah yes, "very damaging" to the league's reputation.  It wasn't.  The evidence is dispositive. 

When I looked this up, I fully expected to see that the CCIW got dropped one, maybe two places in the rankings and I STILL would have argued that the result wasn't very significant to the overall perception of the league.  But the ranking wasn't affected at all!  So my post proves exactly what I thought, only more emphatically than I expected.

Dude, So you now know the thinking of reasonable people to know why they ranked people where they did?  You seem to know why the NJAC (after they cake-walked to the quarterfinals) jumped over the CCIW despite 2 marquee wins over teams ranked high in conferences #1 and #2 but those reasons have nothing to do with the headline on the rankings page referencing the CCIW champs loss at home in round 1. Kudos.

I'm glad you are excited you proved your point to yourself. Again, I don't pretend to know the thinking of d3.com and the subjective exercise of ranking conferences. I believe IWU's shutout loss at home significantly affected the perception of the CCIW in the short term. You don't. Neither of us can prove it, despite your attempt.

[Pat Coleman]

Not sure about how it affects my thinking on the CCIW, but I can definitely say that I know IWU has gotten bounced at home on multiple occasions, and monkey stomped the past two times.

[wally_wabash]

Dude, if you wanted some way to measure how the CCIW is perceived AND also brought up the Kickoff conference ranking all on your own, then why should we ignore the year over year delta in those rankings?  My entire point was that, yes, IWU losing that game the way they did wasn't a great look BUT it also doesn't impact significantly (really key word there) the way the league is viewed by people that follow the division.  The rankings bear that out, no?  7th before that IWU loss, 7th after the IWU loss.  I just don't see how you can claim that that result was...hang on, checking my notes... ah yes, "very damaging" to the league's reputation.  It wasn't.  The evidence is dispositive. 

When I looked this up, I fully expected to see that the CCIW got dropped one, maybe two places in the rankings and I STILL would have argued that the result wasn't very significant to the overall perception of the league.  But the ranking wasn't affected at all!  So my post proves exactly what I thought, only more emphatically than I expected.

Dude, So you now know the thinking of reasonable people to know why they ranked people where they did?  You seem to know why the NJAC (after they cake-walked to the quarterfinals) jumped over the CCIW despite 2 marquee wins over teams ranked high in conferences #1 and #2 but those reasons have nothing to do with the headline on the rankings page referencing the CCIW champs loss at home in round 1. Kudos.

I'm glad you are excited you proved your point to yourself. Again, I don't pretend to know the thinking of d3.com and the subjective exercise of ranking conferences. I believe IWU's shutout loss at home significantly affected the perception of the CCIW in the short term. You don't. Neither of us can prove it, despite your attempt.

You're really hung up on that one liner when the nuts and bolts of the thing is that the conference's ranking among all D3 conferences didn't change.  I'm not sure how that is disputable, yet here we are.  Also, I agree that the quick hitter there on the CCIW is odd given that the conference's ranking didn't change, but I think it's also worthwhile to remember that Kickoff is something like a 300+ page publication with (unofficially) 7,000,000 words and there is a really small team of people that curate, edit, and publish the whole thing.  Is that line wonky?  Sure.  Is it the end all?  Nah. 

[Pat Coleman]

I'll definitely try to be more careful writing the one-liners in the future; this isn't the first one that someone has called out this season. (Or maybe the CCIW is getting called out a second time -- I don't remember.) These one-liners are among the last things that get done in Kickoff.

[Pat Coleman]

By the way, we do have to consider the midseason ranking of the CCIW at 5 last season. I believe that's info I had in front of me while writing blurbs. Keith and I don't have any input on Adam's midseason conference ranking, but it does exist and we do publish it.