FB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[jknezek]

News of some import: https://www.d3football.com/notables/2021/10/region-shift

Pleasantly surprised to see this. It makes a lot of sense, which is why I'm astonished the NCAA was all over getting it fixed proactively 

This balances the regions quite a bit more. Still plenty of depth in the "new Region 5" ... which I'll still probably revert to calling the West Region. It will change how the bottom of the region gets ranked, now that UMHB and HSU aren't in the mix. More room for two loss teams, especially from power conferences like WIAC and MIAC to slide in.

A lot depends on how many 1 loss runners up in the SCIAC and NWC we end up with.

I'm modifying this post because I ran out of fingers and toes and can't count and so my numbers were wrong.

[Pat Coleman]

Hot off the presses!  Thanks for the update, Pat, though maybe you should have released that to your Paetreon subscribers, first. 

Interesting thought -- I just revert to breaking news mode in breaking news situations and the Patreon subscribers get more analysis.

[DuffMan]

Interesting thought -- I just revert to breaking news mode in breaking news situations and the Patreon subscribers get more analysis.

Just giving you $hit. 

[OzJohnnie]

News of some import: https://www.d3football.com/notables/2021/10/region-shift

This is good to see.  I suspect someone at NCAA HQ (or a friend of theirs) played out the end of year selection and saw the logjam.  The selection process appears as if it was designed to keep all the regions in the mix and stop one from dominating from easy schedules or the like.  But if a region is legitimately stacked with 80% of the pool c selections, then the process would make almost all of those picks miss out.  The regions must be mostly even in strength and depth for the process to play out properly.


Now the MIAC must consider the implications of a two-loss runner up and post-season selection.  Perhaps they already have.

EDIT:  My guess is that the MIAC sticks with this format for three or four years and then changes.  Post-season selection is a nice reward for hard work and if one team ends up dominating the selection and other teams are locked out because of a second loss in the championship game then that's not very rewarding.  A prize you can never win isn't much of a prize at all.  I like the divisions and what they do for conference play so a different, more playoff friendly option that I also like isn't obvious to me.

[SJU13]

News of some import: https://www.d3football.com/notables/2021/10/region-shift

This is good to see.  I suspect someone at NCAA HQ (or a friend of theirs) played out the end of year selection and saw the logjam.  The selection process appears as if it was designed to keep all the regions in the mix and stop one from dominating from easy schedules or the like.  But if a region is legitimately stacked with 80% of the pool c selections, then the process would make almost all of those picks miss out.  The regions must be mostly even in strength and depth for the process to play out properly.


Now the MIAC must consider the implications of a two-loss runner up and post-season selection.  Perhaps they already have.

EDIT:  My guess is that the MIAC sticks with this format for three or four years and then changes.  Post-season selection is a nice reward for hard work and if one team ends up dominating the selection and other teams are locked out because of a second loss in the championship game then that's not very rewarding.  A prize you can never win isn't much of a prize at all.  I like the divisions and what they do for conference play so a different, more playoff friendly option that I also like isn't obvious to me.

SOS article also posted and I suspect the best way to mitigate missing out would be to schedule difficult non-conference games. Double edge sword would be losing one or two makes winning out near necessary. Might see this in 22 and 23 with the SJU vs UWW series.

Not at all probable but would make for an entertaining season would be to ship the Northfield schools to the UMAC so they can try and realize their dreams of winning championships and create an SEC-esque MIAC/WIAC super conference. Wouldn't solve the playoff bid issue but that'd make for week-in and week-out good football.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

mmm boy! Did Reusse show his love for the MIAC!

https://www.startribune.com/st-thomas-football-miac-pioneer-league-carleton-hamline-st-scholastica-macalester-patrick-reusse/600106186/

A highlight/lowlight: "The MIAC already was bottom-heavy in football, with Augsburg and St. Olaf joining Carleton and Hamline in recent seasons. The response to losing St. Thomas was adding two more teams to the bottom: St. Scholastica and Macalester."

But he has a point. The Pioneer is like playing St Thomas/St Johns/Bethel (most years) every week, without 6-8 courses of cream puffs filling the schedule. Other than SJU Bethel and UST, the only teams to win an outright conference title in the past 30 years were Concordia (in 2004 & a share in  1995) and Carleton (in 1992-- 68 years after their previous championship).

I keep reading on here about GAC being a contender--but in truth they have not been one in around 50 years. They last won the title in 1979 and that was as part of a 4-way tie.  Augsburg had a fun electric season in  1997 and not much since then (or before then for that matter as their prior championship was 1928).

You can puff up the paper tigers to make the upcoming games seem challenging, but really? if it's not SJU v Bethel, it just doesn't have championship implications. Realistically, most weeks SJU & BU should be winning by 50+ over the cream puffs.

Yeah I miss the Tommie/Johnnie game and will always miss it. And I miss the battles UST had with Bethel-- they were good football. But the games against the cream puffs were too boringly predictable and I don't miss them at all. I'd rather play the Mad Hatters of Stetson

[Johns Knees]

So just curious, not really, but just wondering when the last time MUC was ranked as low as 4th??   

Mount Union lost the regular season finale to John Carroll in 2016 and entered the playoffs ranked No. 7.

I believe the defensive coordinator of that John Carroll team is now an NFL head coach. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it

[jakeMN91]

So just curious, not really, but just wondering when the last time MUC was ranked as low as 4th??   

Mount Union lost the regular season finale to John Carroll in 2016 and entered the playoffs ranked No. 7.

I believe the defensive coordinator of that John Carroll team is now an NFL head coach. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it

According to Wikipedia, he was also the defensive line/special teams coach for the Tommies in 2009.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Staley

[Johns Knees]

So just curious, not really, but just wondering when the last time MUC was ranked as low as 4th??   

Mount Union lost the regular season finale to John Carroll in 2016 and entered the playoffs ranked No. 7.

I believe the defensive coordinator of that John Carroll team is now an NFL head coach. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it

According to Wikipedia, he was also the defensive line/special teams coach for the Tommies in 2009.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Staley

Yup. Which means he lost to Gagliardi while s coach. Another NFL head coach also lost to Gagliardi as a player.

[OzJohnnie]

Uh, VOJ on football weekly sure made the room uncomfortable RE: the east.  There's facts and there's polite and the two don't always go well together.

[faunch]

Uh, VOJ on football weekly sure made the room uncomfortable RE: the east.  There's facts and there's polite and the two don't always go well together.

Any chance the show is archived anywhere?

[OzJohnnie]

Uh, VOJ on football weekly sure made the room uncomfortable RE: the east.  There's facts and there's polite and the two don't always go well together.

Any chance the show is archived anywhere?

It's available on demand at Stretch.  Good Saturday morning with a coffee listening for me.

https://portal.stretchinternet.com/csbsju/portal.htm?eventId=651070&streamType=audio

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks for sharing the link.

To answer the question of when the last time the East had a team in the final four, it was in 2019, the last year we had a final four. Before that, Johns Hopkins would probably be considered an East team by the estimation of that question, and that was in 2018. And in 2017, Brockport was in the final four, although Brockport was in a region of fully East teams so someone was going to advance no matter what.

[hazzben]

Thanks for sharing the link.

To answer the question of when the last time the East had a team in the final four, it was in 2019, the last year we had a final four. Before that, Johns Hopkins would probably be considered an East team by the estimation of that question, and that was in 2018. And in 2017, Brockport was in the final four, although Brockport was in a region of fully East teams so someone was going to advance no matter what.

Getting an 'East team' to the final four is all but guaranteed most years with how the brackets are constructed. When's the last time an East team won in the semifinals? Rowan in the late 90's?

[57Johnnie]

Uh, VOJ on football weekly sure made the room uncomfortable RE: the east.  There's facts and there's polite and the two don't always go well together.

Any chance the show is archived anywhere?

It's available on demand at Stretch.  Good Saturday morning with a coffee listening for me.

https://portal.stretchinternet.com/csbsju/portal.htm?eventId=651070&streamType=audio

Thanks Oz!