Well the W&L Football schedule is out. Non-Conference games are 9/2 hosting Salisbury, 9/16 hosting Methodist and 9/23 at Apprentice.
This marks only the third year since 1955, and one of them 2020, that W&L will not play Sewanee. Once upon a time we had a similar streak with Centre. I'm sad to see these traditional rivals go. Centre got the best of us in a similar way to how we got the best of Sewanee. Now both small liberal arts colleges with strong academics are gone from the schedule, replaced by a public institution and Apprentice.
I have nothing against Salisbury and Apprentice. Salisbury has a fine football tradition, and it's rare to have two option teams face each other these days. Apprentice serves a worthy student base, and while they are up and down at the extremes in football, they perform well given the difficulties they face.
But I miss the traditional rivals. I hope losing Sewanee is a one year thing. I'd hate to see a tradition of 70 contests, all but 11 out of conference, fade away.
It seems quite unusual to see W&L play all of its non-conference games against schools that are in no way peers academically. The W&L of 20 years ago would not have done that.
That is very much my feeling as well. Used to be pretty consistently we played Sewanee to the South, Centre to the West, a Centennial or New York based team to the North and then another peer school from somewhere in an 8 hour bus ride circle (back when conferences were smaller and teams needed more OOC games).
Most player parents had at least one game headed their direction. But the Centennial schools only need 1 game, the New York schools don't need to travel to find the few OOC games they need, Centre I think got tired of beating on us, especially with the SAA travel, and deemed it unnecessary. Maybe Sewanee got the same feel. You run into similar problems with PAC and NCAC schools. They simply don't need a game in Lexington.
Add on that schools like Georgetown and Davidson that we played quite often before the NCAA forced them up to FCS are no longer available, though that barely fits in a 25 year window these days, and there is a problem.
I've seen a wider variety of schools, but I think that's out of necessity. If W&L wants to play peer schools, they have a problem. I think you'd agree with me when I say it's partially a problem of their own making stretching back more than those 20years...
