FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[continental]

Unitas never completed 60% of his passes in a season.  Brady has never completed less than 60% of his passes in a season.
Brady has 456 TDs to 152 INTs, Unitas had 290 TDs to 253 INTs.
Love Johnny U, but it's not even close. 

[westcoastDad]

Can't compare stats in different eras.

Brady is a dink and dunk expert.  Horrible first half but masterpiece 2nd half. 

Falcons?  So many mentals errors in 2nd half.  Matt Ryan proved again he's not good under pressure.  He really showed zero ......in 2nd half on two possessions on Patriots side of 50 yard line. 

James White was the real MVP of the game.  He never tired (be we knew Brady would get it). 

Lol, maybe Falcons should get a kick returner. 

Falcons 19 plays on offense in 2nd half? Smh

What a game.  Sports is a mutha

[JEFFFAN]

If we wanted to read about the Patriots we would buy the Boston Globe.  Let's stick to NESCAC.

[PolarCat]

If I wanted to read about Amherst all the time I would have sent my kid there.

If we want to impose censorship on what can and cannot be discussed, I propose an informal rule for the board:  For every 2 posts about Amherst, there needs to be one post about one of the under-discussed schools: Hamilton, Bowdoin, Bates, even (surprisingly) Wes and Trinity this year.

Or we could just be mature and hospitable in this hot stove season and talk about anything we damn well please...  Even Otto Graham, YA Tittle, Norm Van Brocklin, Bronco Nagursky, or anyone else Johnny Utes played with.  If nothing else, it will distract us from politics.

[westcoastDad]

Well Said PolarCat....we need diversions!

Jefffan......KMA!

#amherstrockslol

[JEFFFAN]

Strange site. Westcoastdad tells an Amherst fan to kiss his ass followed by amherstrocks. Weird.

This isn't censorship. This is asking for a degree of focus. This is a site for NESCAC football. There is another site for NESCAC basketball. And baseball. And lacrosse. Separate sites. Just curious why the NFL is of interest but to each its own.

We all have the right to tune out, right?

[westcoastDad]

Sometimes JEFF ya gotta take a minute to smell the roses.

By any chance did someone catch that a PK was inducted into the HOF and an all time pass receiver did NOT?  Progress!

Hey JEFF ol Bill is a Wesleyan Alum.  That gives the Pats being in the SB some connection to NESCAC I would think.

Thats prolly why ya got the KMA.  Who made u the soup nazi or subject censor Nark?

A few months ago it was living in the sticks versus the big city.  Was good banter.  Nothing to do with NESCAC football.  Where were ya then? 

Its the dead period.  Lighten up.

[amh63]

A reminder to all again!  Owner of Pats is a Williams alum.  Wonder where his son went...was on the platform with with his father;  when Dad got the trophy.  Also as some poster noted, the D.C. Of the champs was an assistant coach at Amherst...RPI alum.
Two very interesting articles wrt to the Super Bowl in the WSJ.....it is Football news and one that has dominated National media on every level.  Good writers...one a statistical analysis of why the Falcons SHOULD of won.  The other wrt Bean Town has won TEN professional sports titles...NBA, Hockey, Baseball and Football...in the new era of the 21th century..
In any case, I find possible football recruits in the NESAC boring.  Sorry posters here.  Off again to other sports boards....about two weeks before Lax practice starts!  Two Amherst basketball teams now leading the Nescac in National rankings and seeking Final 4 berths.   

[quicksilver]

A reminder to all again!  Owner of Pats is a Williams alum.  Wonder where his son went...was on the platform with with his father;  when Dad got the trophy.  Also as some poster noted, the D.C. Of the champs was an assistant coach at Amherst...RPI alum.
. . .

Actually Bob Kraft, the owner of the Pats, is a Columbia alumnus. It is his son Jonathan who is the Williams grad . .

[Jonny Utah]

A reminder to all again!  Owner of Pats is a Williams alum.  Wonder where his son went...was on the platform with with his father;  when Dad got the trophy.  Also as some poster noted, the D.C. Of the champs was an assistant coach at Amherst...RPI alum.
. . .

Actually Bob Kraft, the owner of the Pats, is a Columbia alumnus. It is his son Jonathan who is the Williams grad . .

And Jonathan's son is at Dartmouth....

[Bombers798891]

Just paraphrasing myself from the E8 boards since the SB came up.

Football is a stupid game and I hate it.

I don't really. I'm just a Falcons fan

[jumpshot]

Just catching up now having read the plague's president's report on athletics.

Several years ago I posted comments stating that it would not be too long before a backlash would take place with the plague's new emphasis on athletics at the time. My remarks (based on direct "inside" information on the pronounced change) coincided obvious "red flags" of hiring a "general manager in the Admissions Office, designating of "major" and "minor" sports, increasing  the number of recruits of all types for basketball, football, soccer, etc., enlarging rosters and recruiting classes, numerous transfers, expanded schedules (tennis, for example), greater tolerance of poor on-the-field behavior, etc.

As nescac1 pointed out, similar re-balancing has taken place at other NESCAC and Ivy League schools in the past.

In short, the academic faculty and the social and cultural mis-deeds at the plague have brought sufficient weight to curtail and reverse a poorly managed and unsustainable shift....

The plague, despite the protestations of the more rabid alums, will be better off in the long-run for returning to amateur athletics.

[JEFFFAN]

Just catching up now having read the plague's president's report on athletics.

Several years ago I posted comments stating that it would not be too long before a backlash would take place with the plague's new emphasis on athletics at the time. My remarks (based on direct "inside" information on the pronounced change) coincided obvious "red flags" of hiring a "general manager in the Admissions Office, designating of "major" and "minor" sports, increasing  the number of recruits of all types for basketball, football, soccer, etc., enlarging rosters and recruiting classes, numerous transfers, expanded schedules (tennis, for example), greater tolerance of poor on-the-field behavior, etc.

As nescac1 pointed out, similar re-balancing has taken place at other NESCAC and Ivy League schools in the past.

In short, the academic faculty and the social and cultural mis-deeds at the plague have brought sufficient weight to curtail and reverse a poorly managed and unsustainable shift....

The plague, despite the protestations of the more rabid alums, will be better off in the long-run for returning to amateur athletics.

Help me with the math here. Two years ago Amherst finished in fifth place with Williams again coming in first place. (Congrats to the Ephs.). Last year Amherst comes in seventh place with Williams, Tufts and Middlebury finishing ahead of them. (Congrats to the other three NESCAC schools.). The Ephs reign supreme again. Yet in a heavily regulated system of the NESCAC schools policing each other (see Bowdoin Orient articles, which were outstanding), Amherst is the NESCAC school that needs to return to amateur athletics"?

What am I missing when Amherst finishes solidly behind Williams every year and two additional NESCAC schools last year - and is having a comparatively weak 2016/2017 - yet it is the one who needs to rebalance???

[nescac1]

Jefffan, without commenting on jumpshot's comments, since I have no such "inside" information about Amherst, I will note that the Director's Cup is not the end-all-and-be-all.  I'm glad Williams wins it regularly (although seems unlikely to do so this year) but the sports that enable Williams to win are not sports that require dramatic recruiting concessions and/or impact transfers to succeed in, and also don't have the same sort of effect on campus culture / academic life as the sports that Amherst have experienced a dramatic uptick in success over the past 5-10 years .  Williams tends to perform extremely well, year in and year out, in men's and women's swimming, cross country, tennis and track and field (which are four different teams for purposes of the Director's Cup), and women's golf and crew.  That group of sports alone is responsible for a huge percentage year in and year out of the Ephs' Director Cup points, before you even get to team sports.  Only the Williams women's soccer team has been regularly dominant in NESCAC / nationally among Eph team sports. No one on campus is really going to notice that women's cross country is winning national titles because generally those students are indistinguishable from the rest of the student body in terms of GPAs, course selection, admissions criteria, and so on. 

Amherst's prominent success of late has been in a few sports that require the most recruiting concessions, and the Amherst report indeed (like the Williams report before it) singles out a few sports in particular for scrutiny, where the members of those teams cluster in particular majors and particular careers, etc. etc. ... football, and men's soccer/lacrosse/ice hockey/baseball, I believe.  Amherst is not alone -- Tufts, after years of mediocrity or worse, is suddenly a NESCAC power in football and winning multiple national titles in men's lacrosse and men's soccer. These sort of changes in those types of sports in particular don't happen by accident.  Amherst, for example, has had several impact transfers play a big role on its men's soccer team in recent years, has two current seniors on the basketball team who are D1 transfers, and a starting football QB who is also a D1 transfer.  Amherst also regularly takes D1 transfers on its men's hockey team, among other sports.     

I'm not opining whether any of this is good or bad.  I'm just making a prediction based on a similar experience at Williams -- after a period of athletic dominance in high visibility sports (football in particular) and a lot of whining by the faculty, Williams put together a report like this, and things changed fairly dramatically for a certain subset of campus athletic teams (again, not those that really factor much into the Director's Cup -- football for example can't even score any points).  After a few sports-related controversies at Amherst, a little **too** much success in certain high-profile men's sports, a similar type of report at Amherst, and (I'd be willing to bet) complaints from some faculty members, don't be surprised if things changes at Amherst, much as they did at Williams in the early aughts.  The margin for error in football, basketball, hockey etc. is not all that high.  If Amherst stops focusing so many transfer slots on impact athletes and just trims frosh recruiting a bit at the margins for a few sports, the results could change substantially.   Just ask Williams! 

[All NESCAC]

Spot on Nescac1..."the defectors" need to watch out...look what happened in Billsville....god forbid a NESCAC school has a successful run in Football....they may reduce the number of the Athletic Scholarships or worse actually make the football players go to class and graduate or actually become a contributing member of society....this tilting at the athletic windmills goes back decades in the NESCAC....it amazed me back then and continues today.