BB: IIAC: Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[doolittledog]

I like your rant Floyd.  And NU High is being closed down...a friend of ours that teaches there got her termination letter today.  About a week after she gave birth...nice present.

Dubuque beats Greenville 7-2 to move to 3-0 on the season.  And there was much rejoicing!!! 

[bbplayer]

ooh Dubuque starts out well. That has happened the last two but... playin the better competition maybe.....

[doolittledog]

ooh Dubuque starts out well. That has happened the last two but... playin the better competition maybe.....

I know we've all seen this movie before.  I'm not saying Dubuque is a major player in the IIAC.  They do look improved though.  2 years ago Dubuque was losing games 22-4 and getting swept 3-0 in series.  Last year Dubuque was going 1-2 in most series with all 3 games being decided by 1-3 runs or so.  This year I think they make the jump up to getting a few 2-1 series wins.  3 years ago 3 conference wins...2 years ago 6 conference wins...last year 9 conference wins...12-16 this year???  Maybe flirting with .500???  I am ever the optimist.  If Dubuque could win the IIAC in football last year after going 9-74 in the 1990's and 2-42 in the 1st 5 years of the 2000's they can eventually inch up to at least respectability in baseball.  Which for me would be eaking out a 6th place finish in the IIAC this year. 

[TheSportsFan]

I now have Dubuque finishing 12-12 in the IIAC for 6th place.....but 12-16 and playing 28 games in the IIAC is highly unlikely seeing as the IIAC only plays a 24-game conference schedule.

[doolittledog]

Oh yeah...9 teams, so you play the other 8 three times each for a 24 game schedule...note to self...don't post on here late in the evening after a few beers...your math skills suffer as a result

[warrior35]

Depends on what kind of beer you're drinking... if it's a "1554" from New Belgium or "Baron Von Awesome" from Piece Brewery then maybe you'd have a shot   Although some beers just sound so interesting that maybe they'd be worth that result... "Verboten" (German for To Forget) by Weyerbacher Brewing.  How about this name "Delirium Tremens" from the Huyghe Brewery?  Or "Idiot Sauvin" from Elysian Brewing Co. I'd be willing to give them a shot. (no pun intended)

[doolittledog]

Depends on what kind of beer you're drinking... if it's a "1554" from New Belgium or "Baron Von Awesome" from Piece Brewery then maybe you'd have a shot   Although some beers just sound so interesting that maybe they'd be worth that result... "Verboten" (German for To Forget) by Weyerbacher Brewing.  How about this name "Delirium Tremens" from the Huyghe Brewery?  Or "Idiot Sauvin" from Elysian Brewing Co. I'd be willing to give them a shot. (no pun intended)

My office is across the street from Broad Street Brewing Company...convenient   Our plan this year is to try any local brews near IIAC cities.  Angry Cedar Brewing in Waverly...Topling Goliath in Decorah...Potosi (near Dubuque)...Peace Tree Brewing in Knoxville can take care of Central and Simpson...Cedar Ridge Winery and Distillery south of Cedar Rapids (we'll go hard alcohol for Coe)  ...don't know of anything near Storm Lake for BVU

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Congrats to Dubuque for the 7-0 start!  The scores from the Spartans, Coe, and Central so far have jumped out the most (from an IIAC positive standpoint).

Has anyone gotten out to see any games so far?  I am wondering how the hitters have made adjustments from the changes in the bats over the last few years.  Coe still looks strong on offense.

I am hoping to catch at least one Norse game this Saturday in the Metrodome.  I am hopeful for the Norse pitching staff as many guys return from a solid to good staff last year.  The hitting lineup depth past Reynolds and Bahnemann, plus who the new SS will be are the bigger questions.

[doolittledog]

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of a possible summer or fall partial schedule of non-con games counting towards teams spring games.

http://www.thonline.com/sports/other_sports/article_95eff5d1-59a0-5b48-8ab4-24e40ce62929.html

The Big Ten is instead working on a proposal that would allow teams across the nation to play up to 14 non-conference games in the fall. The results of those fall games would carry over to the spring for consideration in the NCAA tournament selection process.

A team choosing to play in the fall could resume its season later than the current mid-February start date and avoid those expensive trips to the Sun Belt. Proponents say northern teams could build a stronger RPI, the key component weighed by the selection committee, because they would have more home games.

Purdue coach Doug Schreiber, who came up with the fall-spring model, said the fall games would be optional and the trick would be to lure teams from the power conferences to come north in the fall.

[mr_b]

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of a possible summer or fall partial schedule of non-con games counting towards teams spring games.

http://www.thonline.com/sports/other_sports/article_95eff5d1-59a0-5b48-8ab4-24e40ce62929.html

Hey, that way you could face a pitcher on four months' rest!

Seriously, though, I think the concept, while worthy of consideration, presents some other challenges.  Fall ball is the time to evaluate incoming talent.  Without that practice time, when would coaching staffs be able to do that?  If you're going to make the switch, it's got to be all or nothing: summer/fall or spring/summer.

[doolittledog]

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of a possible summer or fall partial schedule of non-con games counting towards teams spring games.

http://www.thonline.com/sports/other_sports/article_95eff5d1-59a0-5b48-8ab4-24e40ce62929.html

Hey, that way you could face a pitcher on four months' rest!

Seriously, though, I think the concept, while worthy of consideration, presents some other challenges.  Fall ball is the time to evaluate incoming talent.  Without that practice time, when would coaching staffs be able to do that?  If you're going to make the switch, it's got to be all or nothing: summer/fall or spring/summer.

And at the D3 level you almost count on those trips as a recruiting tool.  "Come to our school and spend each spring in sunny Florida"

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of a possible summer or fall partial schedule of non-con games counting towards teams spring games.

http://www.thonline.com/sports/other_sports/article_95eff5d1-59a0-5b48-8ab4-24e40ce62929.html

Hey, that way you could face a pitcher on four months' rest!

Seriously, though, I think the concept, while worthy of consideration, presents some other challenges.  Fall ball is the time to evaluate incoming talent.  Without that practice time, when would coaching staffs be able to do that?  If you're going to make the switch, it's got to be all or nothing: summer/fall or spring/summer.

I agree as baseball will not grow on the college level if it is competing with college football (NFL and high school as well).  Can you imagine the college baseball season starting as MLB is moving towards the playoffs and football is playing games?  It is usually great weather (little rain) in September though.

I want things to be done to help Northern baseball, but the April-July (or August) model of college baseball would be the best.  Don't start playing games until March 15th or April 1st.  I know the South doesn't want this, but they can play night games in the middle of the summer to deal with the weather in Alabama in July.  This would grow college baseball overall (if the South really cared about the sport overall).

The Purdue coach and others are correct though that baseball could become the opposite of hockey.  Both sports would have national interest in large parts of the country at the professional level, but that at the high school and college levels only certain niche areas of the country really might be playing it in 20-30 years.  I don't want that for baseball. 

The college hockey title will never mean that much nationally if only certain regions are trying to compete for it.

[warrior35]

I've got several problems with playing fall games that count towards the spring.  First, as previously mentioned I think taking 14 days out of the development period is a definite issue.  With that, for D3 there isn't a uniform fall ball policy... each conference decides its own policy.  The IIAC is better, but there was a period there for quite some time where there were so many multi-sport athletes that the IIAC would only allow like 7 contact dates where conferences like the CCIW have allowed the maximum amount for a long time.  This poses more issues than it would for D1. 

Secondly, baseball already has a hard enough time drawing crowds in the north... then you put it in the market to compete with football?  Bad idea.  I'm not sure there are more than a few college baseball teams across the country at any level that are actually revenue sports.  Now, you want to take 14 dates that would otherwise compete with track and field, soccer, softball, crew, golf, and tennis and you ask people in a bad economy to choose between baseball and football games...  and if you don't get those games back in the spring?  I think that's just plain stupid.  You'll be playing in front of 50 people, where in the spring you can at least hope to draw a couple hundred or more.  Depending on the team and stadium you could be talking 10s of thousands of dollars in lost revenue for a sport that doesn't break even anyway.  At the D3 level, this wouldn't be as severe... but I just don't think it would be wise.

Now, if you were still allowed your full month of fall ball and the 14 games were in addition to that and didn't count against your spring schedule, I'd be all for that... but it's not very practical.  I have been a supporter for a long time of the NCAA allowing for 2-3 fall exhibition games against non-conference opponents that don't count towards your contact dates or towards your spring record.  But that poses issues as well... namely idk if other leagues (jucos and naia) allow fall exhibition games or not, b/c there aren't many D3's in Iowa that aren't in the IIAC... it'll be Grinnell and Cornell (once they leave).

I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist, but I don't see baseball going anywhere.  And, no offense but hockey is a really bad comparison.  Hockey is clearly a northern sport because anything south of Tennessee/Middle of Missouri barely gets enough freezing temps to even think about ice.  Northern states still have several players in the MLB and lots of northern high school players still go on to major college baseball teams.  We are losing college teams predominantly b/c of financial issues, not because of a lack of talent.  UNI was typically in the top half of the MVC, Iowa regularly competes in the Big Ten tourney, in the past 15 years I would classify 25 of 30 of the teams that competed for the championship game as northern schools.  Should steps be taken to even the playing field between north and south?  Maybe.  But not at the cost of American baseball suffering as a whole.  If we limit how much kids can play ball when the weather allows them to (and they want to), we end up with a weaker overall product as a nation.  Quite frankly I think baseball as whole is going down in quality in the past decade... that concerns me more than whether Northern schools have a "fair" shot in college athletics.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

I've got several problems with playing fall games that count towards the spring.  First, as previously mentioned I think taking 14 days out of the development period is a definite issue.  With that, for D3 there isn't a uniform fall ball policy... each conference decides its own policy.  The IIAC is better, but there was a period there for quite some time where there were so many multi-sport athletes that the IIAC would only allow like 7 contact dates where conferences like the CCIW have allowed the maximum amount for a long time.  This poses more issues than it would for D1. 

Secondly, baseball already has a hard enough time drawing crowds in the north... then you put it in the market to compete with football?  Bad idea.  I'm not sure there are more than a few college baseball teams across the country at any level that are actually revenue sports.  Now, you want to take 14 dates that would otherwise compete with track and field, soccer, softball, crew, golf, and tennis and you ask people in a bad economy to choose between baseball and football games...  and if you don't get those games back in the spring?  I think that's just plain stupid.  You'll be playing in front of 50 people, where in the spring you can at least hope to draw a couple hundred or more.  Depending on the team and stadium you could be talking 10s of thousands of dollars in lost revenue for a sport that doesn't break even anyway.  At the D3 level, this wouldn't be as severe... but I just don't think it would be wise.

Now, if you were still allowed your full month of fall ball and the 14 games were in addition to that and didn't count against your spring schedule, I'd be all for that... but it's not very practical.  I have been a supporter for a long time of the NCAA allowing for 2-3 fall exhibition games against non-conference opponents that don't count towards your contact dates or towards your spring record.  But that poses issues as well... namely idk if other leagues (jucos and naia) allow fall exhibition games or not, b/c there aren't many D3's in Iowa that aren't in the IIAC... it'll be Grinnell and Cornell (once they leave).

I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist, but I don't see baseball going anywhere.  And, no offense but hockey is a really bad comparison.  Hockey is clearly a northern sport because anything south of Tennessee/Middle of Missouri barely gets enough freezing temps to even think about ice.  Northern states still have several players in the MLB and lots of northern high school players still go on to major college baseball teams.  We are losing college teams predominantly b/c of financial issues, not because of a lack of talent.  UNI was typically in the top half of the MVC, Iowa regularly competes in the Big Ten tourney, in the past 15 years I would classify 25 of 30 of the teams that competed for the championship game as northern schools.  Should steps be taken to even the playing field between north and south?  Maybe.  But not at the cost of American baseball suffering as a whole.  If we limit how much kids can play ball when the weather allows them to (and they want to), we end up with a weaker overall product as a nation.  Quite frankly I think baseball as whole is going down in quality in the past decade... that concerns me more than whether Northern schools have a "fair" shot in college athletics.

I guess I am worried that the three things in bold have something to do with each other.  The perception is that the real baseball is being played in warmer areas and that baseball is not what it used to be.  It is not as black and white as that, but there is that perception. 

One could also argue that offensive line play in football and shooting/passing skills in basketball are also down, but I do get concerned when schools like UNI, Iowa State, Wisconsin, and others have dropped baseball in the past generation.  Seeing those baseball programs get dropped can not be a help to the youth/high school programs in Iowa and Wisconsin.  I don't really know the direct impact, but over time it can't be good.  If a kid wants to play college sports, there are not as many baseball chances at the state schools as there was.

The Big Ten has the money to keep funding baseball, but are they going to push to develop and maintain programs if the feeling is that the resources would be better spent in sports where the fight isn't such an uphill climb?  I still would love to see Iowa playing Minnesota in a conference weekend series in June.  That could eventually help from a revenue/exposure/recruiting standpoint as those games would be nice crowds with good weather during a time of year when baseball is king.  It would also reduce the crazy travel budgets.

If the games (not practice) are limited to March 15th to the end of June before the playoffs start, is it really limiting baseball more than the other big college sports?

[warrior35]

I can't help but wonder... is baseball in states where there isn't a D1 school really dying out?  Or are NAIA, JUCO, D2, and D3 schools just getting better because there's less room on D1 rosters across the country?  I won't get into whether or not certain aspects of other sports are going down hill, that is a different discussion =). 

I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a March 15th through late June schedule, even though night games in the south would still be in the 90's come June.  But, I would rather see that than Northern teams losing spring games by playing some in the fall.  It does appear that many Northern schools are willing to make a push for baseball... Most Big Ten teams have done or are about to do some pretty major upgrades to their facilities in the last 5-10 years.  Iowa still needs to do something about their seating, but they did completely resurface their field this year as well as adding top-of-the-line lights 5-6 years ago.  Minnesota is about to build.  Michigan State, Purdue, and Penn State just built.  Ohio State, Nebraska, and Michigan have beautiful stadiums that are nicer than most Minor leagues and Illinois just put in probably a half million dollars worth of Field Turf.  So, it seems they are willing to push for it.  D3 schools around the Midwest are making some dramatic upgrades too. Would like to see a little more of that in the IIAC, but times are tough.

I tend to be a black and white kinda guy, but I do think either baseball in the US is going backwards, or baseball in 3-4 other countries is equal to or better than the US.  IMO, it's a combination... in the 5 Olympics that actually had baseball, the US finished 4th or higher in 4 of the 5, winning it once with our college players against their pros. So far our pros in 2 years of the WBC have only made it to the semi-finals.  It's not a perfect comparison for a couple reasons, but it MIGHT be an indicator of the direction of baseball quality in the US.