FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[maineman]

Does anyone know where the D-3 New England Football poll can be accessed on line?

[amh63]

My best man and wife just made a tour of NE to see family and old friends.  He moved to NC recently from near the Ct. shore.  Was once the Commodore of the Niantic Yacht Club and failed to teach me to sail....competitively...threw me off his crew finally.   Anyway, he stated that lobster was really expensive in Boston!  Cheaper further South.
Point is good food is not always a lure for recruiting .
My friend is trying to recruit a top football player and baseball player for Amherst.  Really smart kid...top student too.  The kid's grandfather...brother in law....is also trying.  Seems the kid's mother is the Big Hurdle.  She wants her son to go to a nearby school ...close to home.  They live in Fairfield CT.  Distance from home is another factor for recruiters of talent.

[PolarCat]

Fairfield to Amherst is too far?  Does she want to cook him dinner every night, chaperone him on every date, and tuck him in at night too?  Sounds like the Chinook of helicopter parents.  If I was the kid, I'd be applying to Stanford to get as far away from mommy's apron strings as possible.

[mariner75]

Yikes!  We traveled from the Jersey Shore to Medford for all the games when our son was a Jumbo and many of the away games.  The round trip one game to Williamstown was not fun but worth the effort. 

[P'bearfan]

Fairfield to Amherst is too far?  Does she want to cook him dinner every night, chaperone him on every date, and tuck him in at nighttoo?  Sounds like the Chinook of helicopter parents.  If I was the kid, I'd be applying to Stanford to get as far away fro mommy's apron strings as possible.

Oh, that is brilliant!!! +K

[P'bearfan]

She'll get no sympathy from me either.  1,200 miles door-to-door from our house to Bowdoin.  We made it work.

[amh63]

While trying to soften the topic of "recruiting", always a difficult one, imo, with secondary factors in my last post....I must point out a key factor that has NOT come up!  Money!
Yes, money has not been put in perspective wrt Football in the Nescac......the conference where a wise poster coined the phrase, "where you Pay to Play".  Football cost money; yet in generates money for the school.  It can generate money for Endownments, academic programs and carry other sports programs.  Look at the Big Ten schools like Michigan.  The Former HFC and now AD at Wes arrived and rebuilt a football program and helped turn the school's endownment around.  The father of a player on the Amherst football team gave Millions and his name on the football facilities. 
Amherst and Williams, both relative small Nescac schools are the richest schools based on endownment size.  They recruit students and student- athletes from around the World!  They provide the funds to attend college without the students needing to take out loans.  If a football player can be admitted based on the school's student body admission standards, then they often will get the player.
Amherst this year had a record breaking application pool and admitted around 13 percent....including transfers and Veterans I believe.  The Veteran program funding was the first in the CAC  as was the JC program started in the 70's to bring in talented older students, many married with families.

[maineman]

How will the rotating schedule work starting next year.  Williams played at Bowdoin played the first week.  Will the play week 2 in 2018 and week 3 in 2019?   Then when the two teams go for 8 years, they will flip back to week 1 because the Amherst-Williams game is a fixture at week 9?

[polbear73]

Is there a rotating schedule?

[lumbercat]

There was talk of some rotation of the schedule at some point in the future but I don't believe there was any confirmation of anything in that regard. Isn't the current 9 game schedule sequence in place permanently?

[maineman]

There was talk of some rotation of the schedule at some point in the future but I don't believe there was any confirmation of anything in that regard. Isn't the current 9 game schedule sequence in place permanently?

I thought I heard something about a rotation, but maybe I was wrong.  There was a lot of complaining by some teams that they always had to lead off against a perennial top team while others began the season with a lower tier team to warm up against.

[amh63]

Rotating schedule topic.....interesting.   My thoughts follows.
Besides the Amherst vs Williams last game of the season fixture, I believe the Trinity vs Wes last game is also a traditional one.  Others?
The only rotation in schedule is the number of home and away games.  This year, a team may have 5 home games and 4 away games.  Next season, the team will have only 4 home games and 5 away games.
It can be like Amherst's Homecoming arrangement....in the Little 3.  Wes will be Amherst's Homecoming game.  Next year, Williams will be the Homecoming game.  Amherst goes up to Willytown for Williams' s Homecoming. 
Are there other traditional games that scramble about.  I believe, the CBB games are a traditional of sorts held  every year. I am too lazy and too incompetent to figure out if all traditional games can be held in all possible rotational schemes.

[nescac1]

The bigger issue equity issue regarding schedule, by a factor of 1000, was that before this season, every team got to skip one other -- that truly made the schedules unbalanced.  Rotational issues seem harder to complain about because you still have to play everyone eventually, and because there will be at least SOME variation in quality of teams over time (in some cases dramatic, see, e.g., Tufts).  Seems like teams should have a lot less to complain about now! 

[Nescacman]

Does anyone know where the D-3 New England Football poll can be accessed on line?

http://static.psbin.com/i/0/xjq1tyhjwpo3sd/Grinold_Chapter_New_England_Division_III_Football_Poll_Release_-_11-14-16.pdf

No 2017 poll yet.

[JEFFFAN]

amh63 ... right now there are a few thousand parents, current and historic, who would saw off their left arm for a Fairfeld CT to Amherst MA commute!   Think of the folks, like my neighbor, who travel from all over the east coast and sometimes further up to the CBBM (Middlebury) games each week.   We knew a family who travelled 12 hours, via a small bus, from parts unknown in Canada to Harrisburg, PA, every single Saturday to watch their son sit on a bench for lacrosse games.

Sorry for the rant ... but this is an easy one!