FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Next Man Up]

North Central exceeds 60 once again with a 64-13 blowout of Carthage. The Cardinals racked up 639 yards on offense. Luke Lehnen completed 18 of 25 pass attempts for 353 yards, and 3 TD's. He also ran for 2 scores. Terrence Hill also had 2 rushing TDs, and Ethan Greenfield, and Justin Lynch each added 1. Andrew Kamienski had a pair of TD receptions, and DeAngelo Hardy hauled in a 73 yard bomb. Sam Tavaini and Storm Simmons led the D with 5 tackles apiece.
As a bonus to this afternoon's festivities in Kenosha, the Cardinals may have finally found a consistently capable FG/PAT kicker 🏈.

Over the first 4 1/4 games of 2021 campaign, there have been very few players missed on the NCC sidelines as much as Magnus Meyer.  For those who don't recall, Meyer was 62/66 on PATs and 8/11 on FG attempts during the 2019 campaign (including 30/31 on PATs and 4/4 on FGs during the playoff run).  During the early part of this season, the Cardinal kicking game has been a "work-in-progress", to say the least, with at least one missed PAT against Aurora, Wheaton, Augustana, and Carroll.  Things took a noticeable turn for the worse during the 1st Quarter in Kenosha before Coach Thorne made a decisive move.  With 13:42 left in the 2nd Quarter against Carthage, young Tanner Rains was tapped for PATs (in addition to his regular kickoff and punting duties).  Since then, Rains has been 16/16 on PATs and 1/1 on FGs, and he has turned an area of opportunity into a possible strength for the Cardinals.

True, very true.

[matblake]

Good interview with Kyle Rooker this week on the podcast.  Guys were also positive but realistic with regards to North Park the rest of the way.  They also talked about North Park facilities in a way that I had never thought about, but kinda agree with after thinking about it.

[Pat Coleman]

Good interview with Kyle Rooker this week on the podcast.  Guys were also positive but realistic with regards to North Park the rest of the way.  They also talked about North Park facilities in a way that I had never thought about, but kinda agree with after thinking about it.

I think they maximize what they have to work with right now. Is it ideal? No, but it is functional.

[Gregory Sager]

Yep. It's all about using lemons to make lemonade, so to speak, and one thing that Kyle emphasizes that I think is different and good is that he talks about the ample space provided by the overlap with the baseball and softball diamonds at Holmgren Athletic Complex as a plus with regard to weekday football practices.

He doesn't evade the issue that the football team has to share Holmgren with four other sports, but there are ways to re-address that particular lemon. Realistically (unless you're talking about the off-season practice phase for each sport, which nobody ever talks about on the recruiting trail, anyway), he's only sharing Holmgren with two sports, not four: men's soccer and women's soccer, which are the other two fall sports that use the space. And that's really not that much of a disadvantage, because six of the nine other football programs in the CCIW also have to share their field with their schools' men's and women's soccer programs every fall -- and among those six field-sharing programs in CCIW football are the reigning national champions as well as a Wash U team that is the clear-cut #3 team in the league.

Outside the CCIW, while I've never taken the time to survey the landscape of D3 outdoor facilities, my impression as a follower of both D3 soccer and D3 football is that a fairly sizable percentage of D3 schools have the same sort of three-sport fall setup on their main rectangular stadium space as Carroll, Carthage, Elmhurst, Millikin, NCC, NPU, and Wash U have. I think that this multi-use setup bothers soccer fans more than it bothers football fans (or, more importantly, high-school football or soccer prospects). In fact, some of the more elitist fans on this website's soccer boards actually post gripes about it on occasion, because they say that football's yard markings ruin the aesthetics of a soccer game ... to which I say:



The flip side is that having separate fields for football and soccer isn't a guarantee of success. Norm Eash doesn't have the excuse of other Illinois Wesleyan teams using his practice space to spin his team's downturn this season, and the Augustana men's soccer team is currently in the throes of a ten-year string of losing CCIW seasons and is 0-6 in CCIW play in 2021 in spite of the fact that Augie has a separate stadium for soccer (and it's a nice one, I might add, that's located right next to some of Augie's main residential buildings).

Plus, as Kyle mentioned, the two NPU soccer teams can and do use the River Park soccer field (which is also a Field Turf surface), across the North Branch of the Chicago River from Holmgren, for practices on occasion to alleviate weekday scheduling problems for Holmgren. (The football team is lucky in that it never gets moved over to River Park, 'cause you can't easily haul the blocking sleds across the river using only the adjacent footbridge, and also because the football team needs to use the scoreboard and play clocks as part of practice and the soccer teams don't.)

Kyle doesn't make excuses and he sees the bright side of things, and that's part of what I like about him.

[Gregory Sager]

I would also be remiss if I didn't give a doff of the ol' chapeau to Pat and to Greg Thomas, not just for having Kyle on the Around the Nation Podcast but also for their astute observations about NPU football. Pat's been to Holmgren Athletic Complex to see a game at Hedstrand Field, as he mentioned on the podcast, but Greg reached all the way back to North Park's 2013 coaching transition from Scott Pethtel to Mike Conway and referenced the flexbone triple-option offense Pethtel used in order to make a point about the specifics of overhauling a college football program. That level of deep-background homework impresses me, regardless of whether or not my alma mater is the subject matter.

[matblake]

I would also be remiss if I didn't give a doff of the ol' chapeau to Pat and to Greg Thomas, not just for having Kyle on the Around the Nation Podcast but also for their astute observations about NPU football. Pat's been to Holmgren Athletic Complex to see a game at Hedstrand Field, as he mentioned on the podcast, but Greg reached all the way back to North Park's 2013 coaching transition from Scott Pethtel to Mike Conway and referenced the flexbone triple-option offense Pethtel used in order to make a point about the specifics of overhauling a college football program. That level of deep-background homework impresses me, regardless of whether or not my alma mater is the subject matter.

There's not another network that is so successful in covering the entirety of its members as D3sports and its subdivisions.  Plus, they've been at it with largely the same core since 1999.  Do you think any other executive might come up with a story on how many games can be seen in a region in one weekend (still one of my favorites) and then regularly attempt it?   I just get such a better picture nationally because of the information on the site.   

[Pat Coleman]

I would also be remiss if I didn't give a doff of the ol' chapeau to Pat and to Greg Thomas, not just for having Kyle on the Around the Nation Podcast but also for their astute observations about NPU football. Pat's been to Holmgren Athletic Complex to see a game at Hedstrand Field, as he mentioned on the podcast, but Greg reached all the way back to North Park's 2013 coaching transition from Scott Pethtel to Mike Conway and referenced the flexbone triple-option offense Pethtel used in order to make a point about the specifics of overhauling a college football program. That level of deep-background homework impresses me, regardless of whether or not my alma mater is the subject matter.

Greg's point in particular was a great pull and not something I had remembered.

[jknezek]

I think that this multi-use setup bothers soccer fans more than it bothers football fans (or, more importantly, high-school football or soccer prospects). In fact, some of the more elitist fans on this website's soccer boards actually post gripes about it on occasion, because they say that football's yard markings ruin the aesthetics of a soccer game ... to which I say:

I gripe about this. But for me it's less about the markers than it is about ball speed and feel. Football is one thing, the ball is hardly ever on the ground, soccer is another. Good soccer is played mostly on the ground. And dirt and natural grass are slower, softer, and more amenable to the beautiful game, when the turf is able to be properly maintained. A crowned natural grass field plays so much different than a crowned artificial turf field. The ball simply runs away on turf. Much too fast, much too hard on the bounces.

That being said, I do understand in colder climates there just isn't an option come November unless you have insane money to spend on keeping natural grass playing well. And I will admit that today's artificial turf, even at the h.s. level, is way better than 20 years ago. So it's not as much an issue, but it's still not the same.

[Gregory Sager]

I think that this multi-use setup bothers soccer fans more than it bothers football fans (or, more importantly, high-school football or soccer prospects). In fact, some of the more elitist fans on this website's soccer boards actually post gripes about it on occasion, because they say that football's yard markings ruin the aesthetics of a soccer game ... to which I say:

I gripe about this. But for me it's less about the markers than it is about ball speed and feel. Football is one thing, the ball is hardly ever on the ground, soccer is another. Good soccer is played mostly on the ground. And dirt and natural grass are slower, softer, and more amenable to the beautiful game, when the turf is able to be properly maintained. A crowned natural grass field plays so much different than a crowned artificial turf field. The ball simply runs away on turf. Much too fast, much too hard on the bounces.

That being said, I do understand in colder climates there just isn't an option come November unless you have insane money to spend on keeping natural grass playing well. And I will admit that today's artificial turf, even at the h.s. level, is way better than 20 years ago. So it's not as much an issue, but it's still not the same.

These are valid points, although I'd argue that soccer players are taught to adjust for field conditions, so that playing on Field Turf vs. playing on grass becomes just one more permutation in adjustments such as playing on long grass vs. playing on short grass, playing on a dry field vs. playing on a wet field, etc. CCIW soccer guys talk about it all the time in the context of playing Illinois Wesleyan, the one school in the CCIW that still plays on grass. The "more amenable to the beautiful game" part of it doesn't enter the conversation, though, since IWU's Neis Field is perennially a horse paddock even at the beginning of the season.

Incidentally, jknezek, I don't think of you as being one of the elitists. The NESCAC guys? They're another matter. Heaven forbid that football lines, or anything else, should ruin the look of a freshly-mowed pitch, with the leaves changing color on the trees beyond the stands, on a crisp autumn New England afternoon.

And now back to your regularly-scheduled fall sport. 

[jknezek]

I think that this multi-use setup bothers soccer fans more than it bothers football fans (or, more importantly, high-school football or soccer prospects). In fact, some of the more elitist fans on this website's soccer boards actually post gripes about it on occasion, because they say that football's yard markings ruin the aesthetics of a soccer game ... to which I say:

I gripe about this. But for me it's less about the markers than it is about ball speed and feel. Football is one thing, the ball is hardly ever on the ground, soccer is another. Good soccer is played mostly on the ground. And dirt and natural grass are slower, softer, and more amenable to the beautiful game, when the turf is able to be properly maintained. A crowned natural grass field plays so much different than a crowned artificial turf field. The ball simply runs away on turf. Much too fast, much too hard on the bounces.

That being said, I do understand in colder climates there just isn't an option come November unless you have insane money to spend on keeping natural grass playing well. And I will admit that today's artificial turf, even at the h.s. level, is way better than 20 years ago. So it's not as much an issue, but it's still not the same.

These are valid points, although I'd argue that soccer players are taught to adjust for field conditions, so that playing on Field Turf vs. playing on grass becomes just one more permutation in adjustments such as playing on long grass vs. playing on short grass, playing on a dry field vs. playing on a wet field, etc. CCIW soccer guys talk about it all the time in the context of playing Illinois Wesleyan, the one school in the CCIW that still plays on grass. The "more amenable to the beautiful game" part of it doesn't enter the conversation, though, since IWU's Neis Field is perennially a horse paddock even at the beginning of the season.

Incidentally, jknezek, I don't think of you as being one of the elitists. The NESCAC guys? They're another matter. Heaven forbid that football lines, or anything else, should ruin the look of a freshly-mowed pitch, with the leaves changing color on the trees beyond the stands, on a crisp autumn New England afternoon.

And now back to your regularly-scheduled fall sport. 

I will say that any multi-sport field is uglier than a single sport field. When you have a single field that is showing lines for football and soccer it's uglier than one specific to either of those. When it is lined for football, soccer and field hockey it gets worse. And then add in the faint reminders of a fall lacrosse game or two and... well, it's visually unappealing whether you have 22 soccer players flowing around the pitch, 22 football players smashing into each other, or 22 field hockey players running at unnatural angles to keep the sticks on the ground.

[kiko]

I dunno, it's no different to me than having lines* for multiple sports on what is used for a basketball court.  The overwhelming majority of D3 schools are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

* - a running track surrounding the court is a different conversation... 

[Gregory Sager]

I will say that any multi-sport field is uglier than a single sport field. When you have a single field that is showing lines for football and soccer it's uglier than one specific to either of those. When it is lined for football, soccer and field hockey it gets worse. And then add in the faint reminders of a fall lacrosse game or two and... well, it's visually unappealing whether you have 22 soccer players flowing around the pitch, 22 football players smashing into each other, or 22 field hockey players running at unnatural angles to keep the sticks on the ground.

Oh, I agree. It's just that the griping from certain people seems to faintly echo a sense of entitlement. As someone more familiar with the overall breadth of D3 sports and the national sweep of D3 institutions, it seems to me that such an attitude is either ignorant or dismissive (take your pick) of the fact that a huge swath of D3 schools don't have the insane money of which you spoke to both build a separate facility for soccer and to maintain the upkeep of a prime-condition grass field in it.

For me, it's more about the utility than the aesthetics. There's no doubt that, all other considerations aside, soccer is less attractive on a multi-sport field than on a soccer-only pitch, but that's well down my list of things to care about. The primary aesthetic value of soccer lies more with the players than with the playing surface. I'd much rather see good soccer played on a field with football, lacrosse, and/or field hockey lines than mediocre or bad soccer played on a field with only soccer markings on it. But where the lines bother me is when there's so many of them from various sports that they actually interfere with your ability to distinguish at a glance what's relevant to soccer and what isn't. I never have that problem with a football/soccer field. But Swarthmore's Clothier Field, on the other hand, which is lined for soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey -- I hate trying to follow a soccer game there, and I keep wondering if it's a headache for players to keep track of as well. I have to remind myself that Swarthmore doesn't sponsor a 43-man squamish team every time that I look at Clothier Field.

I dunno, it's no different to me than having lines* for multiple sports on what is used for a basketball court.  The overwhelming majority of D3 schools are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

* - a running track surrounding the court is a different conversation... 

I doubt that anybody blinks an eye at seeing volleyball lines on a basketball court anymore. If you've got perpendicular side courts for basketball painted in as well, or indoor tennis, or squash, or badminton, or Arthur Murray painted dance steps ... well, that's another matter.

[Pat Coleman]

I doubt that anybody blinks an eye at seeing volleyball lines on a basketball court anymore. If you've got perpendicular side courts for basketball painted in as well, or indoor tennis, or squash, or badminton, or Arthur Murray painted dance steps ... well, that's another matter.

This is also where I ... ahem ... draw the line.

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to NPU's A.J. Harris and Juan Nieves upon being named OPOW and DPOW.

[USee]

While I'm fine with NPU getting the POW honors due to their historic win, the idea that anyone had a better day on defense than Jake Holaday for Wheaton, with his team leading 10 tackles and 3.5 sacks vs Carroll is far fetched and illustrates that these awards are not (and never have been)based on merit across the league.

At least we aren't talking about soccer anymore.