FB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[hasanova]

The Baltimore Ravens' John Urschels is attending MIT pursuing a Phd.  While there this semester he worked out with the MIT football team. Here's what he said ....I didn't know what to expect. But what I found was that the team at MIT is no joke. It is a football team — in some ways, more of a football team than any I'd ever seen. These guys love football. They are playing the game because they want to. No one is making them come to practice, no one is checking up on them. They know as well as anyone about head injuries; they know that football is dangerous; they know the feeling of exhaustion and pain. They still play. They don't do it for money, and they don't do it for status. The average size of their crowds is fewer than 1,000. On campus, no one gives them a second look. (The guys who won the Putnam Competition — a national math contest — three years in a row are the ones who get treated like star quarterbacks.) But they show up every day and work hard because it's their choice — because they love to play...

I think this is very indicative of all of D3. To see the full article http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/john-urschel-s-excellent-mit-offseason-142359101.html

Some of you may remember MIT had an undefeated regular season in 2014.

[HSCTiger fan]

Dave Dunn of CUA is leaving to coach TEs at Marshall.

http://www.si.com/college-football/2016/06/01/marshall-hires-dave-dunn-tight-ends-coach-catholic-university-america

[jknezek]

Dave Dunn of CUA is leaving to coach TEs at Marshall.

http://www.si.com/college-football/2016/06/01/marshall-hires-dave-dunn-tight-ends-coach-catholic-university-america

Given the travel schedule Catholic is going to face going forward, I'd have looked to jump ship as well! Seriously though, this may be something both sides win with. Catholic gets a fresh start going into their new conference next year and Coach Dunn can move on from what can best be described as a deteriorated situation. Coach Dunn's stint at Catholic had more 1 or 0 win conference seasons, 6, than multiple win conference seasons, 4. Of those 4 multiple conference win seasons, half were 2 wins, one 3 win effort, and the pinnacle 4-2 spaghetti knot in 2008.

[HSCTiger fan]

Jk i know cua is leaving ODAC. Where are they going and who will be in their new conference?

[jknezek]

Jk i know cua is leaving ODAC. Where are they going and who will be in their new conference?

Catholic is going to the NEWMAC. Which will feature the following fun road trips:

Maine Maritime   670 miles, 11.5 hours
MIT   432 miles, 7 hours 20 minutes 
Norwich   528 miles, 8 hours 45 minutes
Springfield 363 miles,  6 hours 15 minutes
Coast Guard 348, 6 hours 12 minutes
Merchant Marine 250 miles, 4 hours 40 minutes. Which I very much doubt since it involves crossing the entire NY Metro area west to east.
WPI   398 miles, 6 hours 45 minutes


Keep in mind, every one of these trips is up and down the I95 corridor. A slight traffic jam will add hours to each trip. I get why being in New England and the north east will help Catholic, given where there students come from. But this is simply a nightmare conference for them to road trip through. Good thing it is only 4 away games a year. I don't think you can get to a single one of these inside 6 hours and I think most of them listed as 6 are more like 8 given the area of the country.

Maybe they are planning to take Amtrak whenever possible...

[tigerFanAlso2]

So why are they leaving the odac ? Those road trips will be a nightmare. Are they leaving because they cannot compete ? HSC played Coast Guard recently and they are not very competitive and that is being nice as I can be.

[jknezek]

So why are they leaving the odac ? Those road trips will be a nightmare. Are they leaving because they cannot compete ? HSC played Coast Guard recently and they are not very competitive and that is being nice as I can be.

I think they are moving to that conference and area because that's where their kids come from. Catholic school like CU is pulling a lot of kids from Philly, NYC, Boston area. So playing E&H and Guilford and W&L and other rural VA (sorry Hasa) type schools doesn't do much for them playing in front of friends and relatives. Being an associate member, and having another associate membership offered in a more applicable area for recruiting, might have been attractive. The distances suck, but if it puts them in a better position to recruit, they may have decided it was a fair trade for essentially 4 weekends a year.

The whole ODAC stint has been more or less a failure. Except '99 and '08, they have rarely been competitive so they don't have much to lose. The NEWMAC will probably be somewhat easier, but I doubt it will be orders of magnitude different. Norwich isn't a bad team, they've been doing real well in their conference, MIT is in a halcyon period for them, WPI (last year) and Springfield (previously) were ok in a tough Liberty League. So there are some decent teams with them. I don't think Catholic will go from dog to top dog.

[hasanova]

So why are they leaving the odac ? Those road trips will be a nightmare. Are they leaving because they cannot compete ? HSC played Coast Guard recently and they are not very competitive and that is being nice as I can be.

I think they are moving to that conference and area because that's where their kids come from. Catholic school like CU is pulling a lot of kids from Philly, NYC, Boston area. So playing E&H and Guilford and W&L and other rural VA (sorry Hasa) type schools doesn't do much for them playing in front of friends and relatives. Being an associate member, and having another associate membership offered in a more applicable area for recruiting, might have been attractive. The distances suck, but if it puts them in a better position to recruit, they may have decided it was a fair trade for essentially 4 weekends a year.

The whole ODAC stint has been more or less a failure. Except '99 and '08, they have rarely been competitive so they don't have much to lose. The NEWMAC will probably be somewhat easier, but I doubt it will be orders of magnitude different. Norwich isn't a bad team, they've been doing real well in their conference, MIT is in a halcyon period for them, WPI (last year) and Springfield (previously) were ok in a tough Liberty League. So there are some decent teams with them. I don't think Catholic will go from dog to top dog.

No offense taken ... it's essentially a VA conference.    Surprisingly, however, Guilford is much more of an urban/suburban school than some of our ODAC brethren.  Other than RMC in Ashland (Richmond), there may be more Catholic students and private schools here than many southern cities of our size (280,000).  A lot of folks don't realize that the city of High Point (over 100,000) is also in Guilford County.  In a state of over 10,000,000 people, Guilford County is 3rd behind Charlotte (Mecklenburg) and Raleigh (Wake).

[Charles]

Dave Dunn of CUA is leaving to coach TEs at Marshall.

http://www.si.com/college-football/2016/06/01/marshall-hires-dave-dunn-tight-ends-coach-catholic-university-america

Given the travel schedule Catholic is going to face going forward, I'd have looked to jump ship as well! Seriously though, this may be something both sides win with. Catholic gets a fresh start going into their new conference next year and Coach Dunn can move on from what can best be described as a deteriorated situation. Coach Dunn's stint at Catholic had more 1 or 0 win conference seasons, 6, than multiple win conference seasons, 4. Of those 4 multiple conference win seasons, half were 2 wins, one 3 win effort, and the pinnacle 4-2 spaghetti knot in 2008.

There are real issues with the entire athletic program at CUA.
Dunn was a problem promoting a culture on campus that was disliked by the administration as well as the students on and off campus.
He won't be missed.
That being said, who's idea was it to join the NEWMAC?

[jknezek]

That being said, who's idea was it to join the NEWMAC?

Hard to believe that is anything lower than the AD level with support from the rest of the administration.

[hscathletics]

That being said, who's idea was it to join the NEWMAC?

Hard to believe that is anything lower than the AD level with support from the rest of the administration.

School President, maybe even Board of Trustees also, would ultimately have the final say.

[Charles]

That being said, who's idea was it to join the NEWMAC?

Hard to believe that is anything lower than the AD level with support from the rest of the administration.

School President, maybe even Board of Trustees also, would ultimately have the final say.

The school president and BOT would agree with the AD.
However, totally crazy to be playing teams in the Northeast.
This is D3 football, their travel budget is limited, these road trips will be so long.
There's a reason Dunn was asked to leave and Sullivan is probably next.

[jknezek]

So I was curious. There were 111 players listed on Catholic's 2015 roster. As befitting Coach Dunn's history, the largest contingent of 15 were from FL, which ties PA. No help for DIII games for FL student athletes.

In the ODAC area, VA (9) and NC (4), there were 13 kids listed.

In the NEWMAC area: VT (0), MA (10), NY (10), NJ (14), CT (9), RI (1), and ME (0) I counted 43. Over 1/3 of the roster.

That leaves Catholic's home area: MD (14), PA (15), DE (1) there are 30, and if you want to count VA as home instead of ODAC you get 39 total. Less in the three home states than in the NEWMAC areas.

Of the rest, obviously FL (15) is huge. CA, GA, IL, LA, MO, MN, OH, S.C. and WI all have 1.

So it's pretty clear. The team is largely from the NE (northern mid-atlantic?) and New England states, with a huge contingent from FL which I expect will fall without Coach Dunn's connections. The two ODAC states, despite one of them being basically a home state for Catholic, provide about 10% of the roster, and MD and PA provide the bulk of the rest (25%).

Looking at it this way, only Maine Maritime and Norwich are painful, with games in MA, CT, and NY looking like very appropriate road trips. Especially if recruiting in these areas picks up to replace the large FL contingent that will probably shrink. If two of your OOC games are in PA, home and home in alternate years, or maybe one in PA and one in NJ, the NEWMAC plus some strategic OOC games would do a good job of covering Catholic's recruiting areas.

Yes the bus trips will suck. But for many of the athletes the NEWMAC will give them home games near friends and family, something the ODAC does not come close to providing.

[hscathletics]

Ed Kelley '76 on the 2017 College Football Hall of Fame Ballot
http://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2016-06-01/peyton-manning-steve-spurrier-among-names-2017-college-football

[tigerFanAlso2]

Best player I had the pleasure of playing with. He deserves any award coming his way. I doubt of HSC has ever had better player.