FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[gordonmann]

When I was at Trinity 10 years ago, they scrimmaged whichever NESCAC team they didn't play in the regular season.  Since that team was usually one of the Maine squads, they played at a neutral site. Not sure if that's still true.

[frank uible]

I believe that in recent years Trinity and Wesleyan have scrimmaged.

[met_fan]

When I was at Trinity 10 years ago, they scrimmaged whichever NESCAC team they didn't play in the regular season.  Since that team was usually one of the Maine squads, they played at a neutral site. Not sure if that's still true.

Similarly, I remember Hamilton scrimmaging Amherst in the mid-90's when they weren't scheduled to play that year.  No idea who they scrimmage now.

[frank uible]

As I recall, in the last year and/or two and/or three Hamilton scrimmaged the Cornell JV.

[amh63]

I guess the Whalen approach is spreading.  I too remember up to the 90's the scrimmage was against a team not on that year's schedule.  Oh well, new era!
Speaking of Fall sports and football practices.....when is the official start of Fall sport practice in general(if there is one date) and football practice in particular?  I ask this question in that there is a range of academic year start dates among the schools in the conference this year.  Though the majority of schools....Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Bates, Tufts, etc.  have a start date for classes during the first week of Sept., there are two outliners this year.  Hamilton's start is a week earlier it appears, while Midd.'s date is about a week later than the majority.  In football, the first game is the same for everybody....but having more or less days to practice can be critical for teams.  IMO, Hamilton can use all the days it can get....but Midd. would be hurt with fewer days.

[TheHerst2and4]

As an aside, I was attending Amherst when we switched from scrimmaging the off-schedule school to scrimmaging Williams.
Financial/budget benefits aside, the idea of playing your biggest rival before the season is just plain dumb. I remember talking on the field with Williams players as we walked away after a play both saying "this is weird". We clearly wanted to beat them, and they wanted to beat us, but we didn't want to show them too much of our offense/defense and that passion that came out of the season finale just wasn't present. Additionally when we met up for that season finale, something felt different.
Now by the end of the season both teams have a pretty good grasp on the other team's offense and defense, but it still remains that neither team wanted to really show everything they had. The scrimmage was sort of like going through the motions.
Could you imagine Auburn and Alabama having a preseason scrimmage? Just doesn't make much sense,
I hope they do away with that tradition, throw the one extra game on to play everyone in conference,  and start to scrimmage out of conference opponents (who knows, maybe that'll lead to NESCAC teams participating in the playoffs, sorry I know I shouldn't even mention such blasphemy)

[PistachioX]

FY football players at Trinity move in & report on 8/29.  Other FY's move-in 9/1 (not sure about other fall athletes).  Classes begin 9/6.

[frank uible]

Irrespective of what the players believe, a Williams or Amherst team of mid-September is very unlike the team of sustantially the same personnel in early the following November.

[TheHerst2and4]

Irrespective of what the players believe, a Williams or Amherst team of mid-September is very unlike the team of sustantially the same personnel in early the following November.

With all due respect, this misses the point of my post. The point was we were not getting the most out of the scrimmage opportunity.  I think we can all agree that teams improve during the season.

[frank uible]

What is a better alternative to a Williams-Amherst scrimmage?

[amh63]

How about going back to a conference team that is not on the schedule.....since Conn. doesn't have a football team and most of the schools have about the same start date for practices, whereas out of conference teams have earlier start dates....i.e. Cortland State starts football practices Aug. 13!
Thanks for the info wrt Trinity.  Surprised that the FY football players arrive earlier than their classmates.  I do not believe that is the case for Amherst.  All FY students arrive on campus for orientation at the same date.....when their rooms are availiable.

[Knightstalker]

Are the schools allowed to scrimmage out of conference or are they restricted on that also?  If they can it would seem a perfect opportunity to see something different.

[frank uible]

For reasons expressed on this thread earlier Whalen certainly and Mills and Kelton presumably prefer a Williams-Amherst scrimmage to scrimmages by their respective teams with whatever NESCAC team is not on their team's schedule in the given year. With respect to scrimmaging out-of- conference teams all out-of-conference teams play 9 or 10 game schedules and consequently have started playing their schedules by the time NESCAC teams are ready to scrimmage.

[TheHerst2and4]

I will not speak for Coach Mills, but having played for him, I would say that he would likely prefer an alternative to scrimmaging Williams. As we know there are administrative pressures that a coach may have to acquiesce to, and thus he may not have put up a fight.
Removing financial budgets from the situation, I find it hard to believe that any coach would prefer to scrimmage against a team who in all likelihood their job security rides partly on the outcome of that end of the year game (you seem to know Whalen's approach so I'll defer to you on that). Despite the competition level rising there are a number of negative aspects to those scrimmages. Again, to give an instructive parallel would Alabama want to scrimmage Auburn? (essentially the budget concerns go out the window for those big programs)
Having been there for the transition, its just my opinion, but it would be hard to find any of teammates (or likely Williams players) who preferred that set up.

[nescac1]

As a former player, how necessary is this intrasquad scrimmage, anyway?  Why not just replace it with a regular game vs. the ninth NESCAC team?  Everyone then plays the same schedule, you have a true conference champion, another game for fans and alumni (on a gorgeous September day, no less) and there are no added weeks to the season, seems like a win-win.   But maybe the scrimmage is really needed before live game action?