D3 team booted out of conference! Why?

[Blakeon18]

Too good: D3 St. Thomas' recent success gets it kicked out of conference

St. Thomas has won 118 games in coach Glenn Caruso's 11 years. Some of those wins have been by absurd margins and MIAC schools didn't like that.

sports.yahoo.com

Reason? Their football team is too good! St. Thomas doesn't want to leave but other schools vote them gone.

Hmmm….I wonder if this might give AAC schools some ideas about UConn and our women's basketball program?
Just kidding....I think.

 

[eebmg]

Too good: D3 St. Thomas' recent success gets it kicked out of conference

St. Thomas has won 118 games in coach Glenn Caruso's 11 years. Some of those wins have been by absurd margins and MIAC schools didn't like that.

sports.yahoo.com

Reason? Their football team is too good! St. Thomas doesn't want to leave but other schools vote them gone.

Hmmm….I wonder if this might give AAC schools some ideas about UConn and our women's basketball program?
Just kidding....I think.

and play in front of crickets.

 

[Vowelguy]

Well not exactly.
St Thomas has 6100 students. The rest of the conference schools are 1500-3200. In a non scholarship setting that’s s huge advantage. It would be like putting Greenwich High in the same conference with Litchfield and Stafford.

And St Thomas did themselves no favors by winning 97-0 in a recent FB game. Have some class.

 

[Striper69]

Too good: D3 St. Thomas' recent success gets it kicked out of conference

St. Thomas has won 118 games in coach Glenn Caruso's 11 years. Some of those wins have been by absurd margins and MIAC schools didn't like that.

sports.yahoo.com

Reason? Their football team is too good! St. Thomas doesn't want to leave but other schools vote them gone.

Hmmm….I wonder if this might give AAC schools some ideas about UConn and our women's basketball program?
Just kidding....I think.

Best thing that could happen.

 

[jaydee602]

Another factor is that the St. Thomas players had a dangerous size advantage over their opponents. Some players were DOUBLE the size of their competitors. Move up in class & face teams of equal size and strength.

 

[oldude]

This is a problem throughout D3. Mt Union, the UConn of D3 football, typically crushes everyone in their OH conference. WI Whitewater dominates the WIAC every year. Mary Hardin Baylor owns their TX conference, and so on.

Small colleges do not typically have the budgets or endowments of big time universities and their athletic programs usually operate at a loss. Difficult choices often result in cuts to athletic programs with the result that teams are unable to compete with a school like St Thomas that has a much bigger cash inflow with 6,000+ students paying tuition.

 

[Oldbones]

Another factor is that the St. Thomas players had a dangerous size advantage over their opponents. Some players were DOUBLE the size of their competitors. Move up in class & face teams of equal size and strength.

 

[EricLA]

Scott Van Pelt did a segment on this on ESPN last night. He was disgusted with the league for booting the team out. He noted that St. Thomas was one of the founding members of the league, started in 1920. He also noted that St. Thomas lost 2 games to conference rivals last season.

The conference foes cited the size of the university as one of the main reasons. But size has nothing to do with ability to recruit good players. UCONN, with an undergraduate enrollment of under 20,000, has nothing on Liberty (75K), Cal State Fullerton (70K), aTm (67K), UCF (66K), tOSU (60K), Maryland (60K) etc etc, yet our men's and women's hoops teams historically have run circles around those schools.

The best football schools in recent years - Alabama (38K), Clemson (23K) and LSU (31K), so I'm not really sure that size matters even in football.

Maybe in tiny schools like some others noted, but it would seem like a good solution for the "smaller" schools would be to grow.

 

[UConnNick]

Scott Van Pelt did a segment on this on ESPN last night. He was disgusted with the league for booting the team out. He noted that St. Thomas was one of the founding members of the league, started in 1920. He also noted that St. Thomas lost 2 games to conference rivals last season.

The conference foes cited the size of the university as one of the main reasons. But size has nothing to do with ability to recruit good players. UCONN, with an undergraduate enrollment of under 20,000, has nothing on Liberty (75K), Cal State Fullerton (70K), aTm (67K), UCF (66K), tOSU (60K), Maryland (60K) etc etc, yet our men's and women's hoops teams historically have run circles around those schools.

The best football schools in recent years - Alabama (38K), Clemson (23K) and LSU (31K), so I'm not really sure that size matters even in football.

Maybe in tiny schools like some others noted, but it would seem like a good solution for the "smaller" schools would be to grow.

Yes. Rice only has something like 3-4,000 undergrad students, yet they have competed at the D-I level in all sports going all the way back, at times fairly competitively in many sports, including football. They were in a major conference (SWC) for most of their history. They still play in a 70,000+ seat stadium. Even in the AAC, Tulsa only has about 4,500 undergrads, SMU around 10,000. Before they got hit with the death penalty, SMU was a major national power in football. Enrollment has nothing to do with it, except perhaps from a financial standpoint for some schools.

Also, this nonsense about running up the score in games is ridiculous. It's a result of the participation trophy era. In a PC world we have to make everybody feel good about themselves.

If you can't keep up with your opponent then you deserve to lose by a big score. Either figure it out or perhaps your school should drop down to a lower level. In a blowout, putting second and third string players on the field and expecting them to simply lay down and not try to score isn't fair to those kids. They deserve a chance to play it straight. If you can't stop them from scoring that's on your team, not theirs. Figure it out. This mercy rule nonsense at the HS level is for wimps.

 

[EricLA]

If you can't keep up with your opponent then you deserve to lose by a big score. Either figure it out or perhaps your school should drop down to a lower level. In a blowout, putting second and third string players on the field and expecting them to simply lay down and not try to score isn't fair to those kids. They deserve a chance to play it straight. If you can't stop them from scoring that's on your team, not theirs. Figure it out. This mercy rule nonsense at the HS level is for wimps.

In fairness, tho, no one really knows how that blowout game was played. Did St Thomas put in most of their subs in the 2nd half? 2nd and 3rd string players? If so, it's like when our subs get in - we don't have to press and run fast breaks all over the court, but you can't expect even the 2nd or 3rd teams to "not try"...

 

[UConnNick]

In fairness, tho, no one really knows how that blowout game was played. Did St Thomas put in most of their subs in the 2nd half? 2nd and 3rd string players? If so, it's like when our subs get in - we don't have to press and run fast breaks all over the court, but you can't expect even the 2nd or 3rd teams to "not try"...

This reminds me of many seasons ago when both UCONN and Tennessee played Illinois when they were coached by Theresa Grentz. Both games were blowouts, but Pat Summitt put on a full court press in a game when they were ahead by something close to 60 points. When asked about it afterward, she said she was using it for training purposes in a game situation. They also asked Grentz about it. Her only comment was, "Geno is a gentleman."

You're right that playing it straight with the second and third stringers is one thing. Full court pressing at the end of a blowout is going way too far.

 

[lne001]

Either figure it out or perhaps your school should drop down to a lower level.

Um, it would appear that's exactly what all the other teams in the MIAC did, as a group.

 

[Vowelguy]

Folks, You can not compare scholarship to non scholarship.

No matter how big the school, all D1 schools get the same number of scholarships.

D3 is a completely different animal.

Schools will set aside some spots for athletes who might be slightly weaker (yes even at that level), but fir a 1600 student school it’s very limited. And if a few of those kids aren’t as good as expected or get injured, you’re screwed. But a 6000 student school probably gets 20 or 30 kids trying out for the freshman BB team alone. There is enormous powers in numbers.
Again I go back to the Greenwich vs litchfiekd example

 

[UConnNick]

Folks, You can not compare scholarship to non scholarship.

No matter how big the school, all D1 schools get the same number of scholarships.

D3 is a completely different animal.

Schools will set aside some spots for athletes who might be slightly weaker (yes even at that level), but fir a 1600 student school it’s very limited. And if a few of those kids aren’t as good as expected or get injured, you’re screwed. But a 6000 student school probably gets 20 or 30 kids trying out for the freshman BB team alone. There is enormous powers in numbers.
Again I go back to the Greenwich vs litchfiekd example

If you're suggesting that some D-III schools rely only on the luck of the draw, with 100 percent of their players trying out for the team, then you'd have a point, but I think most if not all schools recruit players to some extent. Maybe some schools at that level don't have the resources to recruit enough players, but the commitment of the schools to their athletic programs will dictate how successful they will be. If you're solely relying on the right 20-30 players randomly showing up, you're not likely to have much success.

Saint Joseph has the tiniest of tiny male D-III enrollments of any college in the country, yet they thought outside the box, hired Calhoun, he recruited, and took a brand new program to within one win of making the NCAA tournament. That alone refutes your theory. It can be done at the smallest enrollment schools at any level, with the right approach.

 

[diggerfoot]

If you're DI and you dominate the competition the burden is on the rest to catch up because that's the highest level of competition available. It feels like entitlement to expect the same from DIII schools. Big deal St. Thomas founded the conference. UConn fans in particular should know that does not entitle a school to be in the conference they want in perpetuity, it's entitlement to think it should. It's also entitlement to think that you should be immune to the other schools in a conference wanting you gone if you recruit at a higher level than them. The potential of good recruiting is irrelevant. They are DIII, the majority or schools in that conference don't want to recruit and compete at a higher level, as primarily academic institutions they have no obligation or expectation to do so. St. Thomas needs to suck it up and move up to higher competition.

On edit: The above was worded too harsh. I just have a problem with a society's mindset when people feel they are entitled to things staying the same rather than adapting to change, since change is inevitable and particularly when that change is brought about by the consensus of others.

 

[DefenseBB]

If you're suggesting that some D-III schools rely only on the luck of the draw, with 100 percent of their players trying out for the team, then you'd have a point, but I think most if not all schools recruit players to some extent. Maybe some schools at that level don't have the resources to recruit enough players, but the commitment of the schools to their athletic programs will dictate how successful they will be. If you're solely relying on the right 20-30 players randomly showing up, you're not likely to have much success.

Saint Joseph...yet they thought outside the box, hired Calhoun, he recruited, and took a brand new program to within one win of making the NCAA tournament...and hasn’t got caught cheating, yet.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

If you're DI and you dominate the competition the burden is on the rest to catch up because that's the highest level of competition available. It feels like entitlement to expect the same from DIII schools. Big deal St. Thomas founded the conference. UConn fans in particular should know that does not entitle a school to be in the conference they want in perpetuity, it's entitlement to think it should. It's also entitlement to think that you should be immune to the other schools in a conference wanting you gone if you recruit at a higher level than them. The potential of good recruiting is irrelevant. They are DIII, the majority or schools in that conference don't want to recruit and compete at a higher level, as primarily academic institutions they have no obligation or expectation to do so. St. Thomas needs to suck it up and move up to higher competition.

On edit: The above was worded too harsh. I just have a problem with a society's mindset when people feel they are entitled to things staying the same rather than adapting to change, since change is inevitable and particularly when that change is brought about by the consensus of others.

As you and others correctly point out, there is a philosophical difference between St. Thomas and the other schools, that is perhaps made worse because they are larger than the other schools, but most likely because they see a benefit to athletics above and beyond something for students to participate in to be well rounded.

The article I read stressed this is a DIII wide problem, where schools range from 400 to 40000 students and have athletic programs ranging from glorified intra-murals to programs that are being operated - within DIII constraints - on a higher division model.

The problem for St. Thomas is, by the end of the next 2 years (they are staying for 2 years) they need to find somewhere to go. Moving up in division is expensive, they could move to NAIA which allows scholarships but there is no reason to think they want to give athletic scholarships, or they could find another DIII conference, which is unlikely to be easy since geography (travel budgets) is a major concern. This kind of stinks for them, since (as the conference stressed) they did nothing wrong.

 

[UConnNick]

If you're DI and you dominate the competition the burden is on the rest to catch up because that's the highest level of competition available. It feels like entitlement to expect the same from DIII schools. Big deal St. Thomas founded the conference. UConn fans in particular should know that does not entitle a school to be in the conference they want in perpetuity, it's entitlement to think it should. It's also entitlement to think that you should be immune to the other schools in a conference wanting you gone if you recruit at a higher level than them. The potential of good recruiting is irrelevant. They are DIII, the majority or schools in that conference don't want to recruit and compete at a higher level, as primarily academic institutions they have no obligation or expectation to do so. St. Thomas needs to suck it up and move up to higher competition.

On edit: The above was worded too harsh. I just have a problem with a society's mindset when people feel they are entitled to things staying the same rather than adapting to change, since change is inevitable and particularly when that change is brought about by the consensus of others.

UCONN is technically still in the same conference it was a founding member of. The AAC is the successor entity to the original Big East Conference. We never left it...all the other founding member schools did.

Most collegiate conferences have changes in membership from time to time. I don't think any of them expect the membership to remain the same forever.

 

[diggerfoot]

As you and others correctly point out, there is a philosophical difference between St. Thomas and the other schools, that is perhaps made worse because they are larger than the other schools, but most likely because they see a benefit to athletics above and beyond something for students to participate in to be well rounded.

The article I read stressed this is a DIII wide problem, where schools range from 400 to 40000 students and have athletic programs ranging from glorified intra-murals to programs that are being operated - within DIII constraints - on a higher division model.

The problem for St. Thomas is, by the end of the next 2 years (they are staying for 2 years) they need to find somewhere to go. Moving up in division is expensive, they could move to NAIA which allows scholarships but there is no reason to think they want to give athletic scholarships, or they could find another DIII conference, which is unlikely to be easy since geography (travel budgets) is a major concern. This kind of stinks for them, since (as the conference stressed) they did nothing wrong.

It does suck for them; that's why I suggest they suck it up. Right now they are gaming the system. They have an enrollment the size of which allows some schools to compete favorably in other divisions, at a higher cost, but they presumably accept that cost because they see an athletic benefit of putting out a better product. St. Thomas wants to gain the athletic benefit of a better product without having the cost that some other schools with their enrollment size are willing to accept. It may suck, but it's not an unreasonable expectation.

 

[oldude]

While there is a pecking order in D1 football, there is not a significant difference in resources between the very best and very worst schools. So Alabama has the same number of full time coaches (9), Grad Ast (4), strength coach, video coordinator and recruiting budget as Vanderbilt.

The disparity between the haves and the have nots in D3 is enormous. D3 schools are allowed 4 full time coaches and a grad ast. Some schools get by with as few as two full timers. Teams fill in their staffs with volunteers who typically have other jobs. As for recruiting, some schools have the funding to put all 4 full time coaches on the road, including putting them on planes to hit recruiting hotbeds like FL & TX. Other schools recruiting budgets are often limited to gas money for 1 or 2 coaches.

The disparity goes on and on, but the simple truth is that most D3 schools will never be able to compete with top D3 schools like St Thomas, Mt Union, WI Whitewater & Mary-Hardin Baylor.