FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[amh63]

The Nescac sports have begun!  Only one more week to the start of football .  Was on the Bowdoin website and noticed a minor but interesting thing.  Stats are not to be provided with video for home games.  Am sure it is not a money thing.....the Polar Bears have the third largest endownment in the conference. 

[lumbercat]

I will be surprised if Trinity losses a game this season. The culture of support in all forms from all sources is simply different from all other NESCAC schools.

No question about it- to their credit they do things differently down there, been saying that for years.

[JEFFFAN]

Sort of like Williams in sports then?

[lumbercat]

I believe Trinity makes a stronger commitment to Football in all areas of support than any other athletic program in the NESCAC in any sport.
Couldn't agree more with Jumpshot- he phrased it very well.

[JEFFFAN]

I believe Trinity makes a stronger commitment to Football in all areas of support than any other athletic program in the NESCAC in any sport.
Couldn't agree more with Jumpshot- he phrased it very well.

You have piqued my curiosity.   So do you believe that Trinity makes a stronger commitment to football than the other NESCAC schools that have won national championships - not NESCAC championships - make to their respective sports?   Keep in mind that those sports require national recruiting and national excellence, not regional excellence.

[PolarCat]

Having had some exposure to Bowdoin MTEN and WBB, Middlebury WLAX and Bates Rowing, each of whom has been NCAA champion or runners-up, my opinion is YES, Trinity's commitment to FB is unique in the CAC.

That may in part be due to roster size.  Most other sports played at the NESCAC level can shine on a national stage with 5 to 10 stud players and a gifted HC.  FB needs a bigger pool of talent on both the player level and the coaching level.  And no other CAC matches the Bants' commitment.  We've been saying it for years - no other NESCAC team starts pre-season with 100 players in the program.  (I'm not even sure if John Carrol, Augustana or any of the traditional D3 powerhouses have that many talented bodies).  The Bants are successful by design, not by chance.

[JEFFFAN]

Having had some exposure to Bowdoin MTEN and WBB, Middlebury WLAX and Bates Rowing, each of whom has been NCAA champion or runners-up, my opinion is YES, Trinity's commitment to FB is unique in the CAC.

That may in part be due to roster size.  Most other sports played at the NESCAC level can shine on a national stage with 5 to 10 stud players and a gifted HC.  FB needs a bigger pool of talent on both the player level and the coaching level.  And no other CAC matches the Bants' commitment.  We've been saying it for years - no other NESCAC team starts pre-season with 100 players in the program.  (I'm not even sure if John Carrol, Augustana or any of the traditional D3 powerhouses have that many talented bodies).  The Bants are successful by design, not by chance.

Now you guys have really piqued my interest ...

So Trinity, with a winning percentage in football of 85.3%, is more committed to football - and, in the words of one of the posters, does things by "design, not by chance" -than Amherst is to a girls basketball program that has won 93.4% of their contests over that same period?  Or by inference, is Amherst girls basketball doing it by chance and not design"

Look, we all know that Trinity is good at football.   Good coaches, good players, the whole shooting match.   But they don't win because they are more committed.  They are just very good, by design.

[Pat Coleman]

Women's basketball. Girls play high school sports.

[lumbercat]

Having had some exposure to Bowdoin MTEN and WBB, Middlebury WLAX and Bates Rowing, each of whom has been NCAA champion or runners-up, my opinion is YES, Trinity's commitment to FB is unique in the CAC.

That may in part be due to roster size.  Most other sports played at the NESCAC level can shine on a national stage with 5 to 10 stud players and a gifted HC.  FB needs a bigger pool of talent on both the player level and the coaching level.  And no other CAC matches the Bants' commitment.  We've been saying it for years - no other NESCAC team starts pre-season with 100 players in the program.  (I'm not even sure if John Carrol, Augustana or any of the traditional D3 powerhouses have that many talented bodies).  The Bants are successful by design, not by chance.

Now you guys have really piqued my interest ...

So Trinity, with a winning percentage in football of 85.3%, is more committed to football - and, in the words of one of the posters, does things by "design, not by chance" -than Amherst is to a girls basketball program that has won 93.4% of their contests over that same period?  Or by inference, is Amherst girls basketball doing it by chance and not design"

Look, we all know that Trinity is good at football.   Good coaches, good players, the whole shooting match.   But they don't win because they are more committed.  They are just very good, by design.

They are very good, by design,  because they pull out all the at the stops and push the envelope more than Williams would ever do in any sport.

[amh63]

Thank goodness the season starts this Sat!  Recent posts wrt Trinity were unfruitful, IMO.  It was good to hear from PolarCat again.  Hope your kids are doing well and the "Big Green" has a winning season.
Before Nescac was formed, Amherst along with Williams had football rosters of about 100!  Amherst would play a number of "D1" schools like UConn and Harvard in soccer or baseball, etc.  Heck, Trinity would dominate Squash...still does...against any schools.  Now we have the Nescac.  Football has a squad limit of 75...that has creeped up to 76.  Preseason scrimmages between schools have been dropped...are there still JV squads around?
For me, Trinity plays within the guidelines/rules of the Nescac...period.  Great coaches, great program and a support system for their student athletes. 
Amherst has built a fine support system for ALL of its students...like other Nescac schools.  Amherst admitted less than 11% of its applicants this year.  The incoming class of 470 maybe the smallest in the Nescac.  It has military veterans, community college transfers, etc., etc.  Amherst's support system is built to have these talented diverse students graduate.  I am sure it is the same at Williams, Bowdoin, Bates, Wes, etc.
Been watching some D1 football.  The early games between power teams and non power teams were boring.  Maryland, daughter in law school, scored 63 points over a N.Y. school!   This Sat....the season starts!  May the "best" team win .  Go Jeffs!  Oh yes, maybe we will have all the rosters posted.

[footballluv]

Thank goodness the season starts this Sat!  Recent posts wrt Trinity were unfruitful, IMO.  It was good to hear from PolarCat again.  Hope your kids are doing well and the "Big Green" has a winning season.
Before Nescac was formed, Amherst along with Williams had football rosters of about 100!  Amherst would play a number of "D1" schools like UConn and Harvard in soccer or baseball, etc.  Heck, Trinity would dominate Squash...still does...against any schools.  Now we have the Nescac.  Football has a squad limit of 75...that has creeped up to 76.  Preseason scrimmages between schools have been dropped...are there still JV squads around?
For me, Trinity plays within the guidelines/rules of the Nescac...period.  Great coaches, great program and a support system for their student athletes. 
Amherst has built a fine support system for ALL of its students...like other Nescac schools.  Amherst admitted less than 11% of its applicants this year.  The incoming class of 470 maybe the smallest in the Nescac.  It has military veterans, community college transfers, etc., etc.  Amherst's support system is built to have these talented diverse students graduate.  I am sure it is the same at Williams, Bowdoin, Bates, Wes, etc.
Been watching some D1 football.  The early games between power teams and non power teams were boring.  Maryland, daughter in law school, scored 63 points over a N.Y. school!   This Sat....the season starts!  May the "best" team win .  Go Jeffs!  Oh yes, maybe we will have all the rosters posted.

Great Post! Please no Trinity haters this season. I just want to see my son's school beat them on the field. They are playing by the same rules as everyone else. Clearly, they are better at football. NESCAC football is great and it is what we bargained for 3 years ago. Great education, Semester in Europe and great internships along with 3 good months of football each year. Love this league and his choice.

[nescac1]

I think there is a big difference between institutional commitment to football vs. pretty much any other sport save for men's ice hockey (the latter is really unique because you need to recruit players who are so far out of the typical NESCAC mainstream, Canadians and/or very old frosh, to succeed at the highest levels). 

Women's basketball at Amherst is actually one of many instructive examples.  At really just about any NESCAC school (granted at some its easier than others), with a truly tremendous coaching hire, becoming a national powerhouse in a sport isn't really that surprising.  Amherst women's hoops was a middling-at-best program until they hire G.P. Gromacki, who to me is a high D-1 level coach content to be in D-3.  Immediately, even before he brought in his own recruits, he turned Amherst into a powerhouse, and they have remained so since.  Tufts has been too, but with the loss of their fantastic coach, will probably decline some.  Williams women's tennis won national titles nearly every year with Alison Swain as coach; once she left to coach at USC, the program fell back down to earth.  Wesleyan's men's and especially women's tennis rose quickly thanks to the hire Wes made about eight years ago.  Tufts men's soccer, Williams women's soccer, Bates women's crew (and before that, Williams women's crew), in almost every case, becoming a national power and in some cases a national dynasty is closely tied to coaching.  Beyond making the perfect coaching hire at the outset, I don't think any of these schools have to take dramatic institutional measures to become and stay a powerhouse.   in almost all these sports, you just need 2-3 top-tier recruits per year, guided by a stellar coaching staff, to compete for national championships.  And there are no shortage of really, really good rowers, tennis players, even basketball and soccer players, with absolutely stellar academic credentials.  And of course, success begets success -- if  you want to win national titles in men's soccer, you will now very likely pick Tufts.  In women's soccer, Williams.  In women's basketball, Amherst.  And so on. 

I don't know anything about Trinity football in particular.  But I'll note that in general, there has been a lot of turnover among coaching staffs at NESCAC schools in recent decades, but other than one remarkably bad hire by Williams, the rough pecking order hasn't changed all that much.  Trinity leading the pack, Amherst and Williams (other than during the Kelton era) right there and in some cases for a few years at the very top, Bates, Bowdoin, Hamilton struggling to compete, the other schools mostly in the middle with some variability.  Tufts is the school that changed its fortunes the most thanks to a great coaching hire, but Tufts really never should have been as bad as they were for so long before that, given all of its institutional advantages (in particular close proximity to Boston and being very different in character from the rest of NESCAC as a university, and also being able to keep guys on for a fifth year for a graduate degree if they suffer an injury).  Success at football seems more about the institution and less about coaches in particular.  And that makes sense when you think about it -- football requires as many recruits each year as could sustain 3-4 other high-level programs in some sports.  It is a lot more resource intensive / dependent that other sports, requiring more practice space, a lot more coaches, more aggregate time and resources spent on recruiting, more camps, more equipment, more logistics, and so on.  In particular, there is a lot more variance in the academic credentials of top football recruits than top recruits in other sports, from what I understand (save for hockey).  There are just so many more ways to massively support, or conversely shortchange, a football program in NESCAC than basically any other sport.  It's not like Gromacki brought in an unusual number of basketball recruits each year at Amherst -- if anything, his rosters were unusually small.  Compare that to Trinity in football, huge difference.

So in short, I don't think the fact that a brilliant coaching hire at Amherst (or anywhere else) quickly built a dynasty in one sport necessarily means that football could follow the same formula.  The reality is, I doubt that the best football coach in all of D3 could turn Bates football into Trinity, the way the best (I'm guessing) coach in all of D3 turned Bates' rowing into a consistent national champion. 

The only counter example I can think of in which a school has maintained a program with a very high national profile despite a huge amount of coaching turnover is Williams men's basketball.  But then again, Williams has been fortunate to have four straight REALLY good men's basketball coaches in Sheehy, Paulsen, Maker and App, and after each left there was still a several-year period of transition. 

Side note: no matter how good Trinity gets in football, I sure as heck hope (and certainly believe) that NESCAC would never pull the bush-league MIAC move of saying, "go play somewhere else."  Elevate your own program in response, instead!  It does seem to be happening.  Lots of great / prominent NESCAC football hires in recent years, and lots of schools building sparkling new football facilities.  It's not like the other programs are just giving up ...

[NBC93]

NESCAC1,
Thank you for the post. I've only been acquainted with the NESCAC for 1 year, and that has been through my son playing football at Amherst. The only insight I have comes from his personal experience and this forum. It seems like there exists a tolerance for football at Amherst and not a necessarily open support from the student body and faculty. Football players are definitely not BMOC. The difference at Trinity seems to be a willingness to embrace student athletes that have made the difficult commitment to football which can encroach, if not on academics, then certainly on the extracurricular and above and beyond accomplishments that make applicants more attractive to these schools. The Trinity commitment to help student athletes achieve in the classroom is to be commended.

[lumbercat]

To my knowledge Trinity is the only NESCAC school that provides extra academic support for their Football team in the form of dedicated tutors in a study hall type setup.
I commend them for that.

[nescac1]

Maybe this will be an unpopular position, am I the only one who thinks it is a bit weird (if I understand this correctly) that a NESCAC school (this ain't Clemson or Alabama) would have dedicated tutors for athletes in one particular sport?  Or dedicated tutors for athletes, period?  The whole idea of NESCAC is founded on student-athletes ... it's not like a pipeline to the NFL or something.  It's one thing to make some fairly modest (in the grand scheme of things) admissions concessions for star athletes, but really, anyone admitted to a NESCAC school (other than a disadvantaged, socio-economic hardship admit with great academic potential) should be presumed able to perform at least adequately academically without the need for any extra help ...

That's very different from the sort of general culture / attitude towards football NBC93 is referring to, which does, indeed, seem entirely commendable ...