Slate: "Is Wesleyan Compromising ... to build an athletics cash cow?"

Started by Ron Boerger, December 21, 2017, 11:19:16 AM

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Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMThe best way to see how many sports a school is in a particular conference is to look at the schedules and what they mark as official conference games. Per Sager's research, I do believe you found the sports they are members in the UAA - that number was higher than the one I thought I put together. However, I would argue you could condense that technically to six (you forgot men's soccer, BTW) to being basketball, cross-country, swimming & diving, soccer, tennis, and volleyball.

I don't think that you can figuratively condense eleven sports down to six upon the premise that five of the six are parallel sports differentiated by gender for both Rochester and the UAA.  Those sports may be parallel but they're distinct, with their own coaching staffs, rosters, budgets, schedules, support staff, etc. At most you can use the parallel aspect to save some dollars on transportation on road trips (i.e., men's and women's basketball teams traveling together), but I don't see it as realistic to extrapolate that into saying that the men's basketball program and the women's basketball program are really just one big super-program.

Eleven sports is a dramatically larger presence, both from a league standpoint and an individual school standpoint, than six.

I condensed it for one simple reason - if a school decides to pull a sport out of a conference, they are going to do it for both. So there are six sports essentially that Rochester has in the mix. If they pulled soccer out to cut down on travel and head to the Liberty - that is essentially one decision that does affects two sports.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMMy bigger point about the UAA is when will costs become an overriding factor. I was given the example of a school (forget who) who's softball team traveled to Brandeis for a weekend series. The trip was four or five days ... they didn't play a single game. They couldn't be made up.

At some point, those costs and time away from class, especially in sports like baseball and softball, are going to become problematic in the current environment. Why would schools pay all that money and missed class time to risk not playing any games ... when they could have stayed closer to home and made it work.

Even though a lot of endowment money is specifically designated by their donors for certain things, I have a hard time believing that schools as incredibly wealthy as the UAA's view cancellations as anything other than sunk costs within the usual travel budget that's been required by UAA membership for thirty years now. Maybe I'm wrong about that; maybe the powers-that-be in UAA boardrooms are so obdurately opposed to viewing athletics as anything other than a (very) minor auxiliary of the larger university -- somewhere between an appendix and a toenail -- that they're going to insist upon nickel-and-diming it into complete irrelevance.

The missed class time is another matter. No matter how hard and how well UAA schools get around it, there's still a few formidable chunks of time spent away from campus for each team in each UAA sport.
All I can tell you is what I was told ... it didn't sit well that a team spent that much time on the road, didn't play any games, basically wasted money, while missing a ton of class time. I think it got people thinking. That's all.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMI love the UAA and certainly wouldn't want to see it disappear, but the conversations I have had do make the landscape understandable. WashU and Chicago can easily find homes - most likely in the CCIW.

The CCIW seems likely from a travel and competition standpoint -- it would be interesting to see if the CCIW would take in a third school along with Wash U and Chicago to make it an even dozen and then go to divisions, thereby cutting down further upon travel time -- but from an academic standpoint the two UAA refugees might decide to look at the MWC instead. Chicago was a MWC member from 1976-87, and it's currently an associate member in that league for football.
MWC is certainly a good idea as well. I was just spitballing. I wasn't trying to be dead accurate with it. There are a lot of factors in play.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMBrandeis could easily join the NESCAC or NEWMAC. Emory could join the SAA (maybe entice W&L to join them). Case Western could join the NCAC or maybe the OAC. Carnegie Mellon could join the NCAC or OAC.

It'd be a cold day in hell before either CWRU or CMU chose the OAC over the NCAC. And although I can't prove it, I suspect that if the two former UAA members couldn't get into the NCAC for whatever reason, they'd probably both opt for the smaller, less athletically cutthroat PAC than for the OAC.
Again spitballing ... again, I said "maybe" OAC. I felt it was more of an NCAC match anyway.

I don't think the PAC is an option, but I could be wrong. One of the reasons the PAC punted TMC was they were tired of getting their rear ends handed to them. Granted, it hurts more when the trip to and from is far longer and there are questions as to how TMC is conducting themselves. But again... not sure the PAC is interested in being non-competitive. I know one could argue CMU and CWRU aren't as big a threat as TMC ... but just a thought I think would be on the minds of PAC members.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMRochester could go full time into the Liberty League. NYU ... not sure where they would go.

The NEWMAC, maybe? It's got kind of a catch-all vibe, and there's at least one other highly exclusive school (MIT) already in it.
Yeah ... not sure. NEWMAC can easily get to NYC without too much trouble (already going to Coast Guard and the like. The Landmark could kind of get into NYC and maybe interested since they have Drew in that neck of the woods. Just not sure, honestly. Also wonder if the NEWMAC starts to get too big, on the women's side especially. Not sure overall.

Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Quote from: PaulNewman on September 25, 2018, 03:28:06 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 03:21:42 PM
Quote from: PaulNewman on September 25, 2018, 03:10:46 PM
I didn't realize W&L is so far away from Centre.  If Centennial was in play,why not W&L, Centre, Kenyon, Oberlin, DePauw, Denison, Wabash, Wooster, OWU....?

Do not follow your logic what so ever. Create a new conference?

My bad....thought we were sort of doing fantasy conferences.

No one has been creating new conferences... just discussing the what-ifs of members leaving for conferences that currently exist.
Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

PaulNewman

Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 04:16:35 PM
Quote from: PaulNewman on September 25, 2018, 03:28:06 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 03:21:42 PM
Quote from: PaulNewman on September 25, 2018, 03:10:46 PM
I didn't realize W&L is so far away from Centre.  If Centennial was in play,why not W&L, Centre, Kenyon, Oberlin, DePauw, Denison, Wabash, Wooster, OWU....?

Do not follow your logic what so ever. Create a new conference?

My bad....thought we were sort of doing fantasy conferences.

No one has been creating new conferences... just discussing the what-ifs of members leaving for conferences that currently exist.

Again, my apologies.  Thought I recalled someone mentioning a fantasy dissolution of the UAA and comments from our W&L friend about how W&L would fit better with NESCAC (other than the obvious geography) or you opining on Centennial (geography still not great) than ODAC and other references to fantasy-like realignments. 

Gregory Sager

Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 04:15:59 PM
Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMThe best way to see how many sports a school is in a particular conference is to look at the schedules and what they mark as official conference games. Per Sager's research, I do believe you found the sports they are members in the UAA - that number was higher than the one I thought I put together. However, I would argue you could condense that technically to six (you forgot men's soccer, BTW) to being basketball, cross-country, swimming & diving, soccer, tennis, and volleyball.

I don't think that you can figuratively condense eleven sports down to six upon the premise that five of the six are parallel sports differentiated by gender for both Rochester and the UAA.  Those sports may be parallel but they're distinct, with their own coaching staffs, rosters, budgets, schedules, support staff, etc. At most you can use the parallel aspect to save some dollars on transportation on road trips (i.e., men's and women's basketball teams traveling together), but I don't see it as realistic to extrapolate that into saying that the men's basketball program and the women's basketball program are really just one big super-program.

Eleven sports is a dramatically larger presence, both from a league standpoint and an individual school standpoint, than six.

I condensed it for one simple reason - if a school decides to pull a sport out of a conference, they are going to do it for both. So there are six sports essentially that Rochester has in the mix. If they pulled soccer out to cut down on travel and head to the Liberty - that is essentially one decision that does affects two sports.

OK, when you put it that way it makes more sense.

Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 04:15:59 PM
Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PMI love the UAA and certainly wouldn't want to see it disappear, but the conversations I have had do make the landscape understandable. WashU and Chicago can easily find homes - most likely in the CCIW.

The CCIW seems likely from a travel and competition standpoint -- it would be interesting to see if the CCIW would take in a third school along with Wash U and Chicago to make it an even dozen and then go to divisions, thereby cutting down further upon travel time -- but from an academic standpoint the two UAA refugees might decide to look at the MWC instead. Chicago was a MWC member from 1976-87, and it's currently an associate member in that league for football.
MWC is certainly a good idea as well. I was just spitballing. I wasn't trying to be dead accurate with it. There are a lot of factors in play.

It got me thinking again about who might be that third school, given that the topic of evening out the league membership again does come up from time to time in CCIW Chat. I've always said that Lake Forest (which was a CCIW member back in the '40s, '50s and early '60s) would be the ideal tenth member, given its Chicagoland location, relative academic prestige, financial health, current D3 membership, and full menu of sports (including the three required by league bylaws for CCIW membership: football, men's basketball, and baseball). Other CCIW Chat posters are baffled by my thinking on that, because the Foresters aren't the dominant sports power in the MWC (that would be St. Norbert), which means that, rather than add to the CCIW's overall competitive prowess the Foresters would detract from it. But that's not how D3 presidents think. They think in terms of which schools add luster by association to theirs in terms of academics, as well as proximity and financial health, rather than how good they are at this sport or that.

Lake Forest doesn't appear to be interested, probably because the CCIW contains none of LFC's peer institutions in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, whereas the MWC is full of ACM members. But LFC's braintrust might think twice about that if a couple of ex-UAA academic heavyweights were looking to join the CCIW as full members. They could trade the luster of ACM peers for the luster of associating with a couple of AAU institutions, plus they'd be able to cut down a bit on travel costs.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

smedindy

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 05:08:56 PM

It got me thinking again about who might be that third school, given that the topic of evening out the league membership again does come up from time to time in CCIW Chat. I've always said that Lake Forest (which was a CCIW member back in the '40s, '50s and early '60s) would be the ideal tenth member, given its Chicagoland location, relative academic prestige, financial health, current D3 membership, and full menu of sports (including the three required by league bylaws for CCIW membership: football, men's basketball, and baseball). Other CCIW Chat posters are baffled by my thinking on that, because the Foresters aren't the dominant sports power in the MWC (that would be St. Norbert), which means that, rather than add to the CCIW's overall competitive prowess the Foresters would detract from it. But that's not how D3 presidents think. They think in terms of which schools add luster by association to theirs in terms of academics, as well as proximity and financial health, rather than how good they are at this sport or that.

Lake Forest doesn't appear to be interested, probably because the CCIW contains none of LFC's peer institutions in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, whereas the MWC is full of ACM members. But LFC's braintrust might think twice about that if a couple of ex-UAA academic heavyweights were looking to join the CCIW as full members. They could trade the luster of ACM peers for the luster of associating with a couple of AAU institutions, plus they'd be able to cut down a bit on travel costs.

When Wabash joined the NCAC - the league added Hiram as well. Wabash and Hiram aren't really parallel in terms of the importance of athletics on campus. Hiram was a good fit academically - while not to the level of a Denison or Kenyon or Oberlin, certainly good enough that everyone was comfortable in fit.

Those college associations are also important as well. The NCAC has (I believe) a PBK chapter criteria for its members, and eight members are also part of the GLCA (only Wittenberg and Hiram are not). Earlham is also a GLCA member, and they pulled themselves out of the NCAC (opening a spot for DePauw, hooray?).

If somehow the MIAA were to blow up (unlikely), then the GLCA members up there (Albion, Hope, and Kalamazoo) could probably find refuge in the NCAC.

WUPHF

Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on September 25, 2018, 01:52:09 PM
Per Rochester and the UAA and Liberty League ... take some of the info at face value.

I do NOT suggest going to the conference websites and seeing where Rochester pops up on their "standings" and such. There is a nice new "trick" with conferences that is going on. I'll use the MAC as a great example. [...]

Just in case this was meant for me, I initially went with the teams that I knew to be competing in the UAA rather than looking at the UAA website.  It is true that things get complicated.

WUPHF

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 05:08:56 PM
They could trade the luster of ACM peers for the luster of associating with a couple of AAU institutions, plus they'd be able to cut down a bit on travel costs.

When did the University of Chicago leave the Associated Colleges of the Midwest?

Gregory Sager

"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

WUPHF

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 25, 2018, 03:52:22 PM
The missed class time is another matter. No matter how hard and how well UAA schools get around it, there's still a few formidable chunks of time spent away from campus for each team in each UAA sport.

The time away varies from sport to sport and school to school, but in terms of conferences, it would be interesting if we have students run both a UAA schedule and a CCIW schedule and survey the students.

I was bored, so I thought I would look at the difference for two teams and their Spring 2019 semesters.

If you are Washington University for example, you have one trip to Chicago on a Friday night and return on Saturday night.  Then a weekend at home.  These games are before the semester begins.  Then, Thursday evening or Friday-Sunday.  Then a weekend at home. Then, another Thursday evening or Friday-Sunday.  Then another Thursday evening or Friday-Sunday.  Then a weekend at home.  Then Chicago at home.

If you are Illinois Wesleyan for example, you have Wednesday home, Wednesday home and Saturday home before the semester begins.  Then you have Wednesday away, Saturday home, Wednesday away, (Saturday bye), Wednesday home, Saturday away, Wednesday away, Saturday home, Wednesday home, Saturday away, CCIW tourney TBD, but let's Saturday away.

It is true that the Washington University student-athlete is going to miss three Thursday-Friday class days as they depart for three of those weekends.  The Washington University student will be away three times during the semester while the IWU student will be away on seven occasions.

I do think there is an argument to be made that the lack of a midweek interruption does mitigate a bit of those missed days.

WUPHF


Gregory Sager

The thing is, vis-a-vis the midweek interruption, the downstate schools never play the Wisconsin schools on a Wednesday. So IWU is never going to have anything longer than a three-hour road trip on a Wednesday. Basketball players never enroll in Wednesday afternoon classes -- that's been a given for as long as the league's been on a Wednesday/Saturday schedule, which has been for decades now -- so they don't miss classes on the front end. On the back end, given the league's universal 7 pm Wednesday night tipoff time and the usual game duration of an hour and forty-five minutes, you're talking about the Titans getting home at about 1:45 am on their longest Wednesday night CCIW road trip (North Park). And since that takes place the day after New Year's Day, it's irrelevant as far as interfering with Thursday morning classes are concerned, because school won't be in session.

The only real inconvenience that the Titans would face is on three Wednesday nights this winter when they'll have to play at Elmhurst, Wheaton, and North Central. They'll likely get back to campus about 1 am those nights, so they'll probably only get six hours of sleep if they have 8 am classes. All things considered, that's not bad at all for a school that has only one conference foe that's less than three hours distant.

Tack on an extra hour of travel time for the Millikin crew when they have to take to the road on a Wednesday, but they only have to make those long trips twice (North Park and Wheaton), as opposed to IWU's three.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Just something to consider with travel ... it is the outdoor sports that are most vulnerable, thus my example of softball at Brandeis. Basketball can be affected by weather, but not nearly as severely.

Per this ... I'm resisting the urge of getting fired up and talking about the Landmark Conferences scheduling issues over the years. But I digress... LOL
Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

PaulNewman

Per Wikipedia....

The Little Ivies (singularly Little Ivy) are a group of small, highly academically competitive private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States.[nb 1]

The term Little Ivy derives from these schools' small student bodies, standards of academic excellence, associated historic social prestige, and highly selective admissions comparable to the Ivy League. According to Bloomberg, the Little Ivies are also known for their large financial endowments, both absolutely and relative to their size.[11] The term is generally associated with the colleges of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) and select schools from the Liberty League, Patriot League and the Centennial Conference.

Among the Little Ivies are the Little Three, a term used by Amherst College, Wesleyan University and Williams College to describe themselves akin to the Big Three of the Northeast's Ivy League: Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.[12] The three colleges joined Bowdoin College to found the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) in 1971 along with Bates College, Colby College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Tufts University, Trinity College and Union College.[13] Union withdrew in 1977 and was replaced by Connecticut College in 1982.[14]


PaulNewman

That said, see https://books.google.com/books?id=C2fhGjLVFOEC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=nescac+more+like+ivies+than+uaa&source=bl&ots=uRmpKCb7Kc&sig=P71Pdw1ViGjseXtjsCm6izGGi9c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwipmPehotfdAhXPmOAKHXsLC90Q6AEwDXoECAAQAQ

Basically the study shows that the UAA schools have far less slippage in GPAs and difficulty of majors/curriculums for athletes versus the student bodies at large as compared to the Ivies and NESCACs where there is considerable slippage.

PaulNewman

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/in-college-admissions-athletes-are-the-problem

Interesting article.  Headline point is that recruited athletes have a far greater push than tuba players or drama students....well above legacies and very close to minority applicants.

NESCACs have been criticized (often fairly IMHO) because relative to their overall size they have a high percentage of recruited athletes, and embrace having an academic mission that lessons the significance of athletics while simultaneously making athletics a big deal and a a big deal in comparison to comparable LACs and UAAs.