FB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[TheChucker]

Those NSIC schools are public institutions that are at the epicenter of their towns. Partnering up with Bemidji or Mankato or even Duluth to build a municipal arena is a far cry from a major city like St. Paul using taxpayer dollars to partner up with a Catholic University to build an arena. I'd be willing to bet UST would be on their own on this one. Especially considering the Loons we're pretty much on their own and downtown has the Xcel.

I get the sense the area around Allianz field is nowhere near being redeveloped. That neighborhood be a great place for a mini Schwans Center type ice arena (busy with people year-round) or other multiple-use type facility. Getting long term leases in place with organizations like St. Thomas would be a developers dream. Just wildly speculating here.

[OzJohnnie]

Lurked on this board for a long time but never posted or registered until now.

No matter the vote outcome, the MIAC membership is fractured, probably beyond repair, and I doubt the conference exists in in its current form a few years from now. The conference blowing up probably causes a domino effect of changes.

I can't help wonder what Concordia would do if the MIAC blows up. They're already way out on an island 200+ miles from other schools. Would they go back to their glory years in NAIA with several other private Christian schools up and down I-29 in the GPAC? Would they even attempt for D2 with NSIC schools that are in the same geographic region including renewing their popular neighborly rivalry with MSU Moorhead (those games were always a big draw)?

Welcome, Chucker, I hope you have a long and happy time here. 

Wasn't The Chucker an old KQ character?  It comes from somewhere my memory vaguely tells me but I can't specifically recall.

[Mr.MIAC]

Those NSIC schools are public institutions that are at the epicenter of their towns. Partnering up with Bemidji or Mankato or even Duluth to build a municipal arena is a far cry from a major city like St. Paul using taxpayer dollars to partner up with a Catholic University to build an arena. I'd be willing to bet UST would be on their own on this one. Especially considering the Loons we're pretty much on their own and downtown has the Xcel.

Maybe there's a site on or adjacent to the Minneapolis campus more suitable for new athletic infrastructure. 

[Inkblot]

Finally, the question needs to be asked, "What kind of D1 school does UST want to be?" There's nothing quite like UST in D2 right now, and all the similar schools in D1 (mid-major urban Catholic) don't sponsor hockey. Sports would have to be cut while maintaining Title IX compliance. I think UST would ultimately have a Sophie's choice: dump men's and women's hockey or dump baseball and softball then build an on-campus hockey arena? This would likely result in the track being moved to the soccer field, the elimination of the softball field, a hockey arena going where the baseball field is, and major upgrades to the football stadium, which is adequately sized for FCS non-scholarship football, but that hardly seems like UST's ambition since making the decision to flagship football. This sounds like a $100 million undertaking, conservatively.

There is one mid-major urban Catholic school that has men's hockey (but not women's): Canisius. Of course they dropped football in 2002, which spoils the UST comparison.

[faunch]

Lurked on this board for a long time but never posted or registered until now.

No matter the vote outcome, the MIAC membership is fractured, probably beyond repair, and I doubt the conference exists in in its current form a few years from now. The conference blowing up probably causes a domino effect of changes.

I can't help wonder what Concordia would do if the MIAC blows up. They're already way out on an island 200+ miles from other schools. Would they go back to their glory years in NAIA with several other private Christian schools up and down I-29 in the GPAC? Would they even attempt for D2 with NSIC schools that are in the same geographic region including renewing their popular neighborly rivalry with MSU Moorhead (those games were always a big draw)?

Welcome, Chucker, I hope you have a long and happy time here. 

Wasn't The Chucker an old KQ character?  It comes from somewhere my memory vaguely tells me but I can't specifically recall.

POWER 92
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeOqVhYLU70

[hazzben]

https://www.inforum.com/sports/football/1002715-McFeely-If-St.-Thomas-coach-promises-to-be-nicer-MIAC-should-keep-Tommies

I don't see this happening.
How would recruiting speech go, "If you come to UST you will be part of a team will challenge for a national title but at the same time won't beat any conference opponents by more that 2TDs. Whataya say? You in?"

I don't think it's the size of the victories but the spirit (or poor spirit as argued in the article) in which those thrashings are administered.

The article doesn't quote anyone, even anonymously, that claims this is the issue, though. The author merely asserts it. While I'm very willing to believe the issue is as per the article, the article has no more credibility than if I wrote it.

I have to say I'm really impressed at how message disciplined all the schools have been about this, despite the keen public interest.  No leaks, no insider quotes. Nothing since that reusse article that quoted Johnson. It makes me think the vote will be to stay. If it were a vote that kicks out UST then I would expect a lot of positioning in the press to justify the vote in advance.

And here I was thinking that it was you that wrote the article, Mr McFeely, based on some of the wording and the angle used. 

Funny you say that. I thought he could have cribbed it from these boards. His concluding paragraph is the same point and has the exact phrasing of hazzben's second point in his epic summary post from a few days ago.

The thing I found dubious is the contention that no one has ever told Caruso they don't appreciate his style, or lack there of. How do we know that's the case? There's really never been a cross word spoken at the end of one of these blowouts? Caruso's no fool, he's got enough emotional intelligence to know when another person is seething mad when they shake hands, and to realize it's because the scoreboard is blinking 70ish to 6ish.

Having been around him a bit and heard him speak, he's well aware of people's dissatisfaction with some of his methods. He generally just doesn't care (unless it was his AD or somebody like that that took issue with it) and is happy to justify the choices he makes and let you judge him for it one way or the other.

That's my issue with the article. It makes it seem like the issue is no one at UST or other coaches ever let Caruso know that he was rubbing people the wrong way. Caruso is anything but stupid. He knows.

I also don't think he's evil. Less than sporting at times, yes. But it's not like he's Urban Meyer. He didn't leave MAC in disarray when he jumped to UST. There haven't been reports of multiple arrests or deviant coaches being protected on the staffs. That said, if you don't give two craps what people think, you can't expect others to give two craps when your own methods come back to bite ya. Again, I loathe what Olaf and company are doing. But I'm not crying over Caruso having to sleep in the bed he's made. Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams dominated the Big 8 in the late 80's and 90's at a level far beyond what UST has done. Other schools hated it, Texas and the Big 12 arrived and they took it out on Nebraska with changes to hurt them. But no one could point the finger at Osborne and the man he was and the coach he was, and say he deserved what was happening. Not so much with Caruso. But that also doesn't mean he's an evil guy or something.

[hazzben]

That leads this diatribe to Coach Caruso. ...
There is no argument that he has been successful. Glenn is an extremely driven, highly motivated person and likely believed he would have 2 or 3 national championships at this point in his career. Who could blame him based on the teams that he assembled.
His winning percentage as a head coach is 80%. At U$T it is 88%. He came to $t. Thoma$ with a plan at a time where literally nobody in the league was actively recruiting football players.
Let's face it...John Gagliardi did not visit high schools or send out assistants to visit players. SJU didn't become complacent...they were complacent. Glenn saw an untapped opportunity and grabbed it by the balls based on his experience as a recruiter.
Thankfully after about seven or eight years SJU got the message...as did the rest of the MIAC. At this point I believe that SJU has a superior football coaching staff to U$T.

Sorry, but you're reading this through a Johnnie lens. MIAC teams were recruiting prior to Caruso's arrival. Meidt was going hard after recruits at Olaf. Possibly Bethel's best recruiting class of all time were freshman in 2003. Horan seems to have been going hard after Red River valley talent his entire tenure.

Did Caruso's arrival force SJU to wake up? Yup, no one seems to argue that. Does better competition in terms of UST and SJU force everyone else to get better, Yes. Well at places like Bethel, GAC, and Concordia anyway. Others apparently just whine more. 

But maybe that's the real issue. At places that already understood that success required active recruiting, off season conditioning programs, and total player buy in, Caruso's arrival just pushed them that much harder. Maybe it was places that weren't all bought in that struggled with this adjustment? My gut says coaching staffs like Augsburg and Hamline and Olaf have always been bought in, but with varying degrees of institutional support.

The issue that's really not talked about, St. Olaf's blame shifting and scapegoating of UST.

Things were rolling under Meidt. Jerry Olszewski largely continued that success. The dirty secret in Northfield is that he left for Augustana because he felt a lack of institutional support from the administration when it came to recruiting. This was an open secret in the coaching community, hence why Anderson and the AD couldn't find anyone to take the job. They ended up hiring the only warm body willing to take the job, the program imploded, and suddenly FF a few years and you've got a much better coach, with an empty roster, losing 97-0.

Anderson can be pissed at Caruso about how it went down. But the terrible product on the field was the direct result of his policies and lack of support for his coaches at Olaf. Wash U, Carnegie Melon, John's Hopkins, etc. (all better schools than Olaf) have no trouble maintaining academic standards and rep, while also getting high level recruits. Anderson can't seem to admit that he needs to own a good chunk of hte 97-0 debacle.

[art76]

Anderson can't seem to admit that he needs to own a good chunk of hte 97-0 debacle.

+K Hazz

[Mr.MIAC]

It looks like there are dangers associated with this new direction St. Olaf et al. want to take the MIAC. Maybe instead of actually competing, in the future teams from these schools can just meetup and talk about sports for a couple hours. The administrators wouldn't want anyone to get physically or, perhaps more importantly, emotionally injured.

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/13/708111436/for-some-quidditch-players-the-magic-wears-off-as-injury-risks-grow-clearer

[OzJohnnie]

Anderson can't seem to admit that he needs to own a good chunk of hte 97-0 debacle.

+K Hazz

I concur.

[SJUrube]

[BDB]

If UST moves up they will probably just drop hockey.

[BDB]

Time has come for UMD Bulldogs to repeat. But damn that Makar kid for UMass is impressive.

[TheChucker]

 
Welcome, Chucker, I hope you have a long and happy time here. 

Wasn't The Chucker an old KQ character?  It comes from somewhere my memory vaguely tells me but I can't specifically recall.
[/quote]

Yeah, the namesake of my avatar (KQ) made my belly laugh and cringe at the same time with brilliant stupidity and somehow turned into my nickname.

[TheChucker]

The MIAC is so Twin Cities centric that there's not much mention of how this impacts Concordia-Moorhead. They seem to be a wild card in this whole St. Thomas/realignment debacle if the conference falls apart (like several here have posited as inevitable).

If St. Thomas were to remain D3 along with St. John's and try to recuit other members of a newer stronger/smaller conference, I can't see Concordia being eager to travel 200+ miles every other week (in all sports) to play constant bridesmaid to both St. Thomas and St. Johns. Even when they come in 2nd place in the conference which has been quite often (usually tied with USJ or Bethel) they get left out of the NCAA playoffs with no "at large" bid while crappy schools in weak conferences (like UMAC) get monkey stomped by 60-80 points in the opening round. That doesn't sit well with older alumni who were accustomed to deep playoff runs in D3 and NAIA national championships before that.

Their options are limited though. Go back to NAIA and play other christian college schools in the GPAC in the I-29 corridor? Go NSIC to reignite the MSU Moorhead rivalry and be closer to other competition? This whole issue will be interesting to watch unfold in the near future.