MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Because of the scoring methodology, this year the CCIW may have done about as well as it possibly could in the Directors' Cup.  They include many sports that no CCIW school fields teams in, schools count only their 9 best teams for each gender, and the scoring is equal for every sport (IWU's national title in women's basketball - 420? schools - receives the same 100 points that whoever won skiing, fencing, or rifle - 30? schools - received.  It is no surprise that the Cup is always won by one of the NESCAC schools (usually Williams; this year Middlebury).  Rather surprising is that a WIAC school UWW) managed to make #5.

Budget counts heavily for the Directors' Cup.  NESCAC schools finished #1 Middlebury, #3 Williams, #4 Amherst, #7 Tufts; WashU finished #2.

Exactly -- although, as PS pointed out, UWW absolutely rocked in sports this past year. (On the other hand, if you've ever seen UWW's facilities, you'd wonder why the Warhawks don't finish in the Directors' Cup top five every year.)

The Directors' Cup competition is far from an even playing field. Leaving aside the fact that many, perhaps even most, D3 schools don't even have nine teams per gender to be counted, let alone a whole bunch of extra sports over and above nine per gender that give schools additional chances to get a higher score, the equal scoring from sport to sport regardless of the number of schools that offer each particular sport is, as Chuck pointed out, unfair.

If they really wanted to make it a fair competition, they'd tweak the rules so that the NESCAC schools can't take advantage of their field hockey teams, their polo teams, their yachting teams, their squash teams, and their croquet teams.

(does any CCIW school field more than that? IWU has 9 for each gender; some NESCAC and other schools have 13+)

The CCIW sponsors 21 sports, 11 for men and 10 for women. Here's how many sports each CCIW school offers:

Augustana -- 23 (12/11)
Carthage -- 24 (12/12)
Elmhurst -- 21 (11/10)
Illinois Wesleyan -- 20 (10/10)
Millikin -- 19 (9/10)
North Central -- 22 (11/11)
North Park -- 17 (8/9)
Wheaton -- 21 (11/10)

(Keep in mind that men's track & field and women's track & field are each two sports -- indoor t&f, which is a winter sport, and outdoor t&f, which is a spring sport. All eight CCIW schools list indoor & outdoor t&f as one sport on their respective websites, but don't be fooled by that. The indoor and outdoor seasons each have their own CCIW and D3 championships, and they're considered separately by both the league and the NCAA as far as trophies, rules, budget, etc., are concerned. The Directors' Cup counts them separately, too, and the CCIW website lists them separately.)

North Park's men are the only CCIW constituency that can't fill out the maximum nine-team limit for Directors' Cup scoring. NPU men compete in soccer, cross-country, football, basketball, indoor t&f, outdoor t&f, baseball, and golf. They don't field teams in three CCIW men's sports: Wrestling (which only has four competing schools left), tennis, and swimming, and, unlike NPU's women (and Elmhurst's women, NCC"s women, Carthage's men, etc.), the North Park men don't have a non-CCIW varsity sport in which to compete.

(As DB said, NPU really needs to have ultimate sanctioned as an NCAA sport. )

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg, you're right about T&F - I hadn't noticed that IWU only has a single T&F listing for each gender, so they DO, as you noted, have 10 sports for each gender.

Shame on me for not noticing that, since women's T&F constituted TWO of the Titan's 3 national titles in that magical year of 2010!

With NPU not even having 18 sports, no one having very many 'oops' teams to drop from scoring, and few if any schools competing in sports with only 20-40 other schools (where randomly-selected members of the student body might still score some Directors' Cup points! ), I would think the highest realistic aspiration for any CCIW school (and one helluva year!) would be finishing somewhere in the teens.  Top ten is a phenomenal year.  IWU's 2010 #5 finish may be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

[Gregory Sager]

Shame on me for not noticing that, since women's T&F constituted TWO of the Titan's 3 national titles in that magical year of 2010!

With NPU not even having 18 sports, no one having very many 'oops' teams to drop from scoring, and few if any schools competing in sports with only 20-40 other schools (where randomly-selected members of the student body might still score some Directors' Cup points! ), I would think the highest realistic aspiration for any CCIW school (and one helluva year!) would be finishing somewhere in the teens.  Top ten is a phenomenal year.  IWU's 2010 #5 finish may be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Uh, Chuck, I hate to shatter your reverie, but Illinois Wesleyan only won two titles in 2010: Baseball and women's outdoor t&f. IWU also won two titles in 2008, as both the indoor and outdoor t&f teams (distaff side) took home the Walnut & Bronze.

And I disagree with your assertion that a CCIW school's aspirations re: Directors' Cup standings should be capped in the teens. North Central, which is a pretty regular member of the top 30, has finished as high as 13th. What NCC has going for it is the fact that it has done so well over so many years in the three men's running sports (cross-country, indoor t&f, and outdoor t&f), because they're related sports that have built-in redundancies with regard to coaches and athletes. North Central won the men's running-sports trifecta in 2010-11, and it's won two out of the three on a couple of other occasions. If the Cardinals can push through in some other sports -- f'rinstance, they've been about as good as anyone in D3 in football over the past four or five years, aside from Purple One and Purple Two, of course -- and get another one of those running trifectas (or two out of the three), I could see NCC finishing in the top ten of the Directors' Cup, especially as long as Al Carius is still around.

It's all a matter of staging your athletics resources strategically if you've got enough of them -- or being the beneficiary of the NCAA's sponsoring certain closely-related sports that lend themselves to personnel crossover.

[Gregory Sager]

and few if any schools competing in sports with only 20-40 other schools (where randomly-selected members of the student body might still score some Directors' Cup points! )

These are the D3-sponsored-championship sports that have fewer than 100 participating schools in which CCIW schools compete:

Men's volleyball (56 schools), Carthage
Women's rowing (40 schools), North Park

Men's volleyball just became a D3 championship sport this season. Carthage finished second in the nation, losing the championship match to host Springfield out in Massachusetts. (It's as close as Carthage has ever come to winning a Big Doorstop; the Red Men have finished third in baseball on two occasions and third in men's basketball once, and fourth in baseball at three different College World Series.)

I know you're being facetious with your random-student comment, but I should point out in defense of the NPU women's rowing team that the schools in the northeastern corner of the nation -- particularly the NESCAC schools (surprised?) -- have women's rowing on absolute lockdown as far as D3 is concerned. Williams has now won the D3 title seven years in a row, and the other schools that have won D3 women's rowing Walnut & Bronze are Colby and Ithaca. Bates, Smith, and Trinity (CT) are also powers. Rowing is a very old and well-established sport in that part of the country, and everyone else has decades of catching-up to do, much as is the case with lacrosse. Northeasterners are very into rowing; the IRA championship regatta used to be held outside my hometown of Liverpool, NY (near Syracuse) on Onondaga Lake, and the crowds were massive.

Elmhurst is one of only eight D3 schools that has a women's bowling team, but I don't think that the NCAA sponsors a D3 championship in that sport. I think that it's a combined-divisions title, as the championship results from this year show both D1 and D2 schools listed.

Wheaton was one of only 19 D3 schools that competed in women's water polo, but, like Elmhurst in bowling, the Sonic Aquatic Disturbance had to contend with D1 and D2 schools for a combined crown. It's all moot, anyway, as Wheaton has dropped that sport.

[NCF]

Shame on me for not noticing that, since women's T&F constituted TWO of the Titan's 3 national titles in that magical year of 2010!

With NPU not even having 18 sports, no one having very many 'oops' teams to drop from scoring, and few if any schools competing in sports with only 20-40 other schools (where randomly-selected members of the student body might still score some Directors' Cup points! ), I would think the highest realistic aspiration for any CCIW school (and one helluva year!) would be finishing somewhere in the teens.  Top ten is a phenomenal year.  IWU's 2010 #5 finish may be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Uh, Chuck, I hate to shatter your reverie, but Illinois Wesleyan only won two titles in 2010: Baseball and women's outdoor t&f. IWU also won two titles in 2008, as both the indoor and outdoor t&f teams (distaff side) took home the Walnut & Bronze.

And I disagree with your assertion that a CCIW school's aspirations re: Directors' Cup standings should be capped in the teens. North Central, which is a pretty regular member of the top 30, has finished as high as 13th. What NCC has going for it is the fact that it has done so well over so many years in the three men's running sports (cross-country, indoor t&f, and outdoor t&f), because they're related sports that have built-in redundancies with regard to coaches and athletes. North Central won the men's running-sports trifecta in 2010-11, and it's won two out of the three on a couple of other occasions. If the Cardinals can push through in some other sports -- f'rinstance, they've been about as good as anyone in D3 in football over the past four or five years, aside from Purple One and Purple Two, of course -- and get another one of those running trifectas (or two out of the three), I could see NCC finishing in the top ten of the Directors' Cup, especially as long as Al Carius is still around.

It's all a matter of staging your athletics resources strategically if you've got enough of them -- or being the beneficiary of the NCAA's sponsoring certain closely-related sports that lend themselves to personnel crossover.

North Central won the al carius award for the third straight year. It's given to the program that has the best men' s "running sports" teams. NC has won 7 of 9 national championships in the last three years as well.  IMO,the director's cup is pointless, unless you are 1. ranking the same sports across the board and 2. sports must have at least 100 schools in the nation competing for it to count.  On a side note-I'm surpised that only four cciw schools still have wrestling.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Shame on me for not noticing that, since women's T&F constituted TWO of the Titan's 3 national titles in that magical year of 2010!

With NPU not even having 18 sports, no one having very many 'oops' teams to drop from scoring, and few if any schools competing in sports with only 20-40 other schools (where randomly-selected members of the student body might still score some Directors' Cup points! ), I would think the highest realistic aspiration for any CCIW school (and one helluva year!) would be finishing somewhere in the teens.  Top ten is a phenomenal year.  IWU's 2010 #5 finish may be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Uh, Chuck, I hate to shatter your reverie, but Illinois Wesleyan only won two titles in 2010: Baseball and women's outdoor t&f. IWU also won two titles in 2008, as both the indoor and outdoor t&f teams (distaff side) took home the Walnut & Bronze.

And I disagree with your assertion that a CCIW school's aspirations re: Directors' Cup standings should be capped in the teens. North Central, which is a pretty regular member of the top 30, has finished as high as 13th. What NCC has going for it is the fact that it has done so well over so many years in the three men's running sports (cross-country, indoor t&f, and outdoor t&f), because they're related sports that have built-in redundancies with regard to coaches and athletes. North Central won the men's running-sports trifecta in 2010-11, and it's won two out of the three on a couple of other occasions. If the Cardinals can push through in some other sports -- f'rinstance, they've been about as good as anyone in D3 in football over the past four or five years, aside from Purple One and Purple Two, of course -- and get another one of those running trifectas (or two out of the three), I could see NCC finishing in the top ten of the Directors' Cup, especially as long as Al Carius is still around.

It's all a matter of staging your athletics resources strategically if you've got enough of them -- or being the beneficiary of the NCAA's sponsoring certain closely-related sports that lend themselves to personnel crossover.

Alas, I must again bow to the master - the IWU women finished only 4th in indoor in 2010; it was 2008 that they won it all.

A good thing that both basketball teams made the Elite Eight!  And the baseball team warms my heart every time I reread the d3boards.com 2010 baseball tournament thread!

And I said the teens is 'one helluva year'.  Since NCC has so far topped out at 13th, I'm not sure how we disagree that the teens is the highest realistic aspiration for a CCIW team.  Top ten is a fantastic year; top five is unbelievable; winning it all with the scales tipped is just not imaginable.

Of course IWU, NCC, Wheaton, whoever, should aspire for all the marbles.  I just think the table is slanted enough that anything above the teens is not realistic except in VERY exceptional years.

[Ralph Turner]

Because of the scoring methodology, this year the CCIW may have done about as well as it possibly could in the Directors' Cup.  They include many sports that no CCIW school fields teams in, schools count only their 9 best teams for each gender (does any CCIW school field more than that? IWU has 9 for each gender; some NESCAC and other schools have 13+), and the scoring is equal for every sport (IWU's national title in women's basketball - 420? schools - receives the same 100 points that whoever won skiing, fencing, or rifle - 30? schools - received.  It is no surprise that the Cup is always won by one of the NESCAC schools (usually Williams; this year Middlebury).  Rather surprising is that a WIAC school UWW) managed to make #5.

Budget counts heavily for the Directors' Cup.  NESCAC schools finished #1 Middlebury, #3 Williams, #4 Amherst, #7 Tufts; WashU finished #2.

I wish that the Directors' Cup would employ a "Participation Ratio" (PR) which would be the number of participants in the sport in the numerator divided by  the number of D-III full members in good standing.  After the point total for each sport is determined, that number is multiplied by the PR.

The NESCAC would never settle for that.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Obviously that would begin to level the playing field.  The schools that can afford to field so many teams that their 7,8,9 worst are not counted still have a huge advantage over the schools that can only afford to even field 9 or 10 (or less) per gender, but it is a start.  When whoever is the skiing champion gets the same points as the winner of the Stagg Bowl (or the bball or soccer championships, with 400+ teams), the Cup is clearly less meaningful.

[Pat Coleman]

If they really wanted to make it a fair competition, they'd tweak the rules so that the NESCAC schools can't take advantage of their field hockey teams, their polo teams, their yachting teams, their squash teams, and their croquet teams.

Hey, let's not bag on field hockey. That's a legitimate Division III sport with a legitimate championship. Just because you guys don't play it doesn't mean it lumps in with the other "sports" you lump it in with.

[Ralph Turner]

Obviously that would begin to level the playing field.  The schools that can afford to field so many teams that their 7,8,9 worst are not counted still have a huge advantage over the schools that can only afford to even field 9 or 10 (or less) per gender, but it is a start.  When whoever is the skiing champion gets the same points as the winner of the Stagg Bowl (or the bball or soccer championships, with 400+ teams), the Cup is clearly less meaningful.

Of course under the "PR" system, the Stagg Bowl is only worth about 60% of the Men's Basketball championship.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Obviously that would begin to level the playing field.  The schools that can afford to field so many teams that their 7,8,9 worst are not counted still have a huge advantage over the schools that can only afford to even field 9 or 10 (or less) per gender, but it is a start.  When whoever is the skiing champion gets the same points as the winner of the Stagg Bowl (or the bball or soccer championships, with 400+ teams), the Cup is clearly less meaningful.

Of course under the "PR" system, the Stagg Bowl is only worth about 60% of the Men's Basketball championship.

That's OK; it should probably count even less than that - after all, it seems to have only TWO participating schools!

[NCF]

Obviously that would begin to level the playing field.  The schools that can afford to field so many teams that their 7,8,9 worst are not counted still have a huge advantage over the schools that can only afford to even field 9 or 10 (or less) per gender, but it is a start.  When whoever is the skiing champion gets the same points as the winner of the Stagg Bowl (or the bball or soccer championships, with 400+ teams), the Cup is clearly less meaningful.

Of course under the "PR" system, the Stagg Bowl is only worth about 60% of the Men's Basketball championship.

That's OK; it should probably count even less than that - after all, it seems to have only TWO participating schools!

HAHAHAHA! Unfortunately, so true.

[Gregory Sager]

And I said the teens is 'one helluva year'.  Since NCC has so far topped out at 13th, I'm not sure how we disagree that the teens is the highest realistic aspiration for a CCIW team.  Top ten is a fantastic year; top five is unbelievable; winning it all with the scales tipped is just not imaginable.

Of course IWU, NCC, Wheaton, whoever, should aspire for all the marbles.  I just think the table is slanted enough that anything above the teens is not realistic except in VERY exceptional years.

I'm not sure that we disagree, Chuck. I think that the terms I spelled out for NCC achieving a top-ten finish dictate a very exceptional year for the Cardinals. My point was simply that the men's running sports give NCC a platform with which to potentially achieve that very exceptional year that few other non-NESCAC and non-WIAC schools really have.

I wish that the Directors' Cup would employ a "Participation Ratio" (PR) which would be the number of participants in the sport in the numerator divided by  the number of D-III full members in good standing.  After the point total for each sport is determined, that number is multiplied by the PR.

The NESCAC would never settle for that.

Yup. A participation ratio would be both logical and fair. But, as those of us who have followed men's basketball for a long time and have been continually exasperated by the NESCAC's refusal to adopt a double round-robin league schedule know all too well, nobody knows how to leverage an advantage like the NESCAC schools.

If they really wanted to make it a fair competition, they'd tweak the rules so that the NESCAC schools can't take advantage of their field hockey teams, their polo teams, their yachting teams, their squash teams, and their croquet teams.

Hey, let's not bag on field hockey. That's a legitimate Division III sport with a legitimate championship. Just because you guys don't play it doesn't mean it lumps in with the other "sports" you lump it in with.

True, but the snobbiest and preppiest girls (is that a redundancy?) in my high school all played field hockey ... which, as far as I'm concerned, makes it the ideal NESCAC sport.

[Gregory Sager]

On a side note-I'm surpised that only four cciw schools still have wrestling.

Why are you surprised? College wrestling is dying, and it's been dying for years. In 1981-82 there were 149 D3 schools that competed in wrestling. As of 2010-11 there were only 88 D3 schools that still offered wrestling. Several of the 61 schools that dropped the sport during that period were CCIW schools. At one point, all nine CCIW schools (including Carroll) offered wrestling.

[Mr. Ypsi]

BTW, Greg, I love your Mark Twain quote!  I try not to distort the facts (at least, not beyond recognition ), but I have a bad habit of relying on my memory for them, rather than double-checking. Back when I was teaching, I got away with it pretty well in my teaching areas, but at my age, I probably better double-check more often!

(e.g., I could have sworn the CWS was the Titan's third title of 2010. )