FB: Empire 8

[Jonny Utah]

I actually would consider it more likely that Kansas makes it to a championship game in the next 5 years than Ithaca. The Top 2 to 4 of D3 is almost uncrackable while a random team in D1 power conference seems like they could go on a run (Iowa?)

I think there is a big difference between Iowa and Kansas football.

Duke is a school that has radically changed, not top 5, but a good change.

[pg04]

I actually would consider it more likely that Kansas makes it to a championship game in the next 5 years than Ithaca. The Top 2 to 4 of D3 is almost uncrackable while a random team in D1 power conference seems like they could go on a run (Iowa?)

I think there is a big difference between Iowa and Kansas football.

Duke is a school that has radically changed, not top 5, but a good change.

I still think a team could go from where Kansas is to the top in D1 before the Purple powers are going to be overthrown (will it ever happen?).

[Jonny Utah]

I actually would consider it more likely that Kansas makes it to a championship game in the next 5 years than Ithaca. The Top 2 to 4 of D3 is almost uncrackable while a random team in D1 power conference seems like they could go on a run (Iowa?)

I think there is a big difference between Iowa and Kansas football.

Duke is a school that has radically changed, not top 5, but a good change.

I still think a team could go from where Kansas is to the top in D1 before the Purple powers are going to be overthrown (will it ever happen?).

Oh yea I think there is a 50/50 chance every year now that someone in the top 5-6 (and that's a small group) can win a national championship.  Kind of a different conversation, but Kansas isn't as close as Wesley or MHBU

[pg04]

I actually would consider it more likely that Kansas makes it to a championship game in the next 5 years than Ithaca. The Top 2 to 4 of D3 is almost uncrackable while a random team in D1 power conference seems like they could go on a run (Iowa?)

I think there is a big difference between Iowa and Kansas football.

Duke is a school that has radically changed, not top 5, but a good change.

I still think a team could go from where Kansas is to the top in D1 before the Purple powers are going to be overthrown (will it ever happen?).

Oh yea I think there is a 50/50 chance every year now that someone in the top 5-6 (and that's a small group) can win a national championship.  Kind of a different conversation, but Kansas isn't as close as Wesley or MHBU

This is certainly true. And sometimes teams do rotate in and out (UW-not whitewater, St. Thomas, St. Johns, North Central, ...)

[Bombers798891]

Would you be more shocked if Kansas or Ithaca college won a national championship in 5 or 10 years? I'd be more shocked if Kansas was wouldn't you? 

Would that be the Kansas that in 2007, was ranked #2 in the country at 11-0?

I say D-I in general however. The reason? There's an upside you can sell to the University if you put out a contending team. Visibility, increased enrollment, increased donations, straight up cash from major bowl games. Even if those things don't always pay off, you can pitch it to people as being good for the school as a whole.

Trying to sell a college on the need to have not just a good, but a great D-III football team? That's a lot harder. What's the upside?

I'll give you a for instance. I interviewed a highly successful D-III softball coach recently and was told this.
"We let prospective players know that because we're a D-III team, even if we go 51-0, no one is going to care." Granted, football is more popular than softball, but the truth is something we don't like to admit. Most people on our campuses do not care one bit if our football teams are good or not. Sure, they'd prefer good rather than bad if you ask them on a questionaire. But watch how quickly that changes when you actually have to compromise academic/admission standards, or take money/time.focus away from something related to academics to give them extra resources in order to get there.

(Especially when you're dealing with the issues Ithaca currently is. I'm not even talking about the financial aid stuff we talk about a lot. Have you seen what's going on there right now? I'm the biggest football fan there is, and if there was an announcement tomorrow that the school was going to make a commitment to getting football to the national level, I'd quit following the team on general principle. There are a lot of much bigger fish to fry than football.)

[ExTartanPlayer]

Would you be more shocked if Kansas or Ithaca college won a national championship in 5 or 10 years?

Answering this in a vacuum, I think the chances are about 0% for each, but it seems a little silly to put Ithaca (who was in the national playoffs the last two years, is 4-4 this year in a "down" season) and Kansas (whose coach got fired last year after three straight disasters and is currently 0-8) into this comparison.  All of the schools you mentioned in that post are scraping the absolute bottom of D1 right now.  Ithaca's not even close to that bad.  Maybe it should be "Ithaca or (struggling mid-pack team with history of success from pretty good conference)" - like, "Ithaca or Nebraska" or "Ithaca or UCLA."

Basic philosophies like "the coach has to be good at talking to players" are true at all levels, sure, and I'll absolutely agree that if part of McCartney's strategy was "be good at talking to players" that's a sound place to start when recruiting - isn't that kind of obvious?  I still don't see how it's hard to believe that turning around a major-conference Division I program in 1989 and Division III program in 2015 are radically different.

[ExTartanPlayer]

I say D-I in general however. The reason? There's an upside you can sell to the University if you put out a contending team. Visibility, increased enrollment, increased donations, straight up cash from major bowl games. Even if those things don't always pay off, you can pitch it to people as being good for the school as a whole.

Trying to sell a college on the need to have not just a good, but a great D-III football team? That's a lot harder. What's the upside?

And this, this, a million times this.  Bombers as always, more eloquently than I can say it.  Turning around a D1 and turning around a D3 program are radically different.

[Div3Fan]

Bombers, sorry if you've answered this before, what problems is the IC -- the institution -- facing?

[pg04]

Sometimes I feel like I don't type nearly enough in my responses to post on this board 

[bman]

Would you be more shocked if Kansas or Ithaca college won a national championship in 5 or 10 years? I'd be more shocked if Kansas was wouldn't you? 

Would that be the Kansas that in 2007, was ranked #2 in the country at 11-0?

I say D-I in general however. The reason? There's an upside you can sell to the University if you put out a contending team. Visibility, increased enrollment, increased donations, straight up cash from major bowl games. Even if those things don't always pay off, you can pitch it to people as being good for the school as a whole.

Trying to sell a college on the need to have not just a good, but a great D-III football team? That's a lot harder. What's the upside?

I'll give you a for instance. I interviewed a highly successful D-III softball coach recently and was told this.
"We let prospective players know that because we're a D-III team, even if we go 51-0, no one is going to care." Granted, football is more popular than softball, but the truth is something we don't like to admit. Most people on our campuses do not care one bit if our football teams are good or not. Sure, they'd prefer good rather than bad if you ask them on a questionaire. But watch how quickly that changes when you actually have to compromise academic/admission standards, or take money/time.focus away from something related to academics to give them extra resources in order to get there.

(Especially when you're dealing with the issues Ithaca currently is. I'm not even talking about the financial aid stuff we talk about a lot. Have you seen what's going on there right now? I'm the biggest football fan there is, and if there was an announcement tomorrow that the school was going to make a commitment to getting football to the national level, I'd quit following the team on general principle. There are a lot of much bigger fish to fry than football.)

Bombers
Not sure I'd agree
A few years ago, I interviewed a young candidate for a position, who was forwarded to me from a job fair.  On her resume, she listed 2 colleges...  Lycoming, then Penn State for undergrad.   When I asked her, why she transferred, she stated that someone advised her to get her degree from a well known school rather than a smaller school.   Of course I digressed given the scandal currently at it's height, and asked her if she regretted the decision based on what was happening.   
She said (as close as I can remember)..."No one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, but everyone knows Joe Paterno"...
Admittedly I was dumbfounded by that response.
I really feel her decision was based on the fact that she had gotten into college, but wanted more of the game day, tailgating experience, and chose a run of the mill State degree factory to do it....I think there is a lot more of that bubbling under the surface that we think.

BTW, I did ask her who gave her the advise to transfer...her answer:  her mom....

Given this was in the middle of the Sandusky saga, I asked

[Bombers798891]

Bombers, sorry if you've answered this before, what problems is the IC -- the institution -- facing?

I don't want to get to into it on the boards, since I work there. But there's a lot going on like, right now. Ithaca's student paper has a lot on it. Trust me, when you read it, you'll realize football could disappear tomorrow and it'd be a page 2 issue.

[Bombers798891]

When I asked her, why she transferred, she stated that someone advised her to get her degree from a well known school rather than a smaller school.   Of course I digressed given the scandal currently at it's height, and asked her if she regretted the decision based on what was happening.   
She said (as close as I can remember)..."No one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, but everyone knows Joe Paterno"...

That's exactly my point. At the Division III level, no one cares who your football coach is. The football team is largely irrelevant. If no one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, who's going to support him when he tells the non-athletic administrators that he needs more help from admissions to get the team better?

Remember too. We're sports fans. We hang out with other sports fans, so we have a biased view of how many people actually know about sports. Anecdotally, I had a buddy who started dating this girl. She was a Michigan fan, so when he introduced me to her, I naturally started talking some light smack, because I'm a Michigan State fan. My friend listened, and said, word for word, in utter sincerity:

"Wait, so there's a Michigan and Michigan State football? What's the difference?"

Blew my mind. But he had no clue

[ExTartanPlayer]

Remember too. We're sports fans. We hang out with other sports fans, so we have a biased view of how many people actually know about sports. Anecdotally, I had a buddy who started dating this girl. She was a Michigan fan, so when he introduced me to her, I naturally started talking some light smack, because I'm a Michigan State fan. My friend listened, and said, word for word, in utter sincerity:

"Wait, so there's a Michigan and Michigan State football? What's the difference?"

This is fantastic.  I once had someone ask me what the big deal was about the Army-Navy football game.  After some discussion, I realized that they thought it was a football game between the Army and the Navy, rather than a game between students at the two service academies (and obviously they were completely unaware that the United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy both have NCAA Division I football teams).

[AUPepBand]

When I asked her, why she transferred, she stated that someone advised her to get her degree from a well known school rather than a smaller school.   Of course I digressed given the scandal currently at it's height, and asked her if she regretted the decision based on what was happening.   
She said (as close as I can remember)..."No one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, but everyone knows Joe Paterno"...

That's exactly my point. At the Division III level, no one cares who your football coach is. The football team is largely irrelevant. If no one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, who's going to support him when he tells the non-athletic administrators that he needs more help from admissions to get the team better?

Remember too. We're sports fans. We hang out with other sports fans, so we have a biased view of how many people actually know about sports. Anecdotally, I had a buddy who started dating this girl. She was a Michigan fan, so when he introduced me to her, I naturally started talking some light smack, because I'm a Michigan State fan. My friend listened, and said, word for word, in utter sincerity:

"Wait, so there's a Michigan and Michigan State football? What's the difference?"

Blew my mind. But he had no clue

Seems like there are some sportswriters in some newspapers asking the same question, only localized:

"Wait, so there's an Alfred University and Alfred State football? What's the difference?"

Just had to throw that in. And +K Bombers for being a Michigan State fan....Pep's j-school prof is a Michigan State grad and diehard fan.

[bman]

When I asked her, why she transferred, she stated that someone advised her to get her degree from a well known school rather than a smaller school.   Of course I digressed given the scandal currently at it's height, and asked her if she regretted the decision based on what was happening.   
She said (as close as I can remember)..."No one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, but everyone knows Joe Paterno"...

That's exactly my point. At the Division III level, no one cares who your football coach is. The football team is largely irrelevant. If no one knows who Lycoming's football coach is, who's going to support him when he tells the non-athletic administrators that he needs more help from admissions to get the team better?

Remember too. We're sports fans. We hang out with other sports fans, so we have a biased view of how many people actually know about sports. Anecdotally, I had a buddy who started dating this girl. She was a Michigan fan, so when he introduced me to her, I naturally started talking some light smack, because I'm a Michigan State fan. My friend listened, and said, word for word, in utter sincerity:

"Wait, so there's a Michigan and Michigan State football? What's the difference?"

Blew my mind. But he had no clue

Seems like there are some sportswriters in some newspapers asking the same question, only localized:

"Wait, so there's an Alfred University and Alfred State football? What's the difference?"

There is?   

...not according to Cortland...