University Athletic Association

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martin

Quote from: DBQ1965 on June 13, 2015, 10:41:03 PM
Quote from: formerd3db on June 13, 2015, 08:29:30 PM
Quote from: DBQ1965 on June 13, 2015, 07:38:40 PM
I know it was a different era, but how many D3 teams can boast a Heisman Trophy winner among its players?

So true DBQ1965.  I had the great privilege of meeting Berwanger years ago after having been invited by him for a visit.  We met at his then office and he kindlpy spent some 4 1/2 hours visiting with me.  We talked about many things, although obviously no surprise that the big topic was football.  He shared with me about his time at U of C and Stagg when Berwanger was a freshman and the Old Stagg Field Stadium and Big Ten football back then. (Some of you may not know that U of C of the Big Ten (Western Conference) played MIAA Hillsdale College in 1930 and it was a low scoring game). 

Anyway, he gave me signed photos (his famous pose of course) and a book on the Heisman.  I remember when walking up the front walk and I was holding a new book on the Heisman winners that my wife had given me for my birthday-I was bringing it to have him sign it. He saw the book and sad..."oh, I see you already have that one" and he proceeded to give me a different book on the Heisman winners that had also been published at the time and signed both for me.  His autographed photo remains in my sports library den.  He gave everyone who visited him one of the Heisman books.  Berwanger was very kind and generous man and I was sad when he passed away in the early 2000s. 

I do love U of C's football history room and seeing the original Heisman Trophy.  WashU was big time football also until the 1930's.

My claim to fame with U of C  came with running the 880 (I am that old) and the 800 indoors on the 220 dirt track oval in the old fieldhouse (allegedly built above the Fermi cyclotron on campus).  Two times I ran for Wheaton College and once representing McCormick Theological Seminary.  While unofficial, I did run a PR at 1:59.1 in 1961. Now I still run at 5k distances in the 70-74 age group.

The Fieldhouse is at University and 56th.  The cyclotron was in the Accelerator Building, 5604-20 S Ellis. This is (was) just south of the Ratner Athletics Center, UofC's new facility - the replacement for the Fieldhouse, which is still in use.  Around 1974, the Fieldhouse went from one cavernous level to two levels. The track (now synthetic) and basketball court are on the second floor.
http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf2-00114.xml

The entire west side of the 5600 block of South Ellis has been demolished to make way for the William Eckhardt Research Center.
http://facilities.uchicago.edu/construction/current/meb/

Across Ellis is Regenstein Library - built on the site where Stagg Field stood.  Under the West Stand of Stagg Field, Fermi built Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor to achieve a self-sustaining chain reaction.  Henry Moore's sculpture "Nuclear Energy" marks the spot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1

The cyclotron was moved out to Fermilab in 1971.  It was obsolete as an accelerator but the Tevatron could use its magnets. Parts of it were still in use until the Tevatron was shut down after the Large Hadron Collider began running.
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive/archive_2006/today06-05-05.html

Good history of the Chicago Cyclotron aka Fermi's Magnet:
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/cyclotron/visited_cycs/the_many_lives.pdf




Crescat scientia; vita excolatur.
Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining.

ADL70

I was aware that Chicago originated the logo. D3 Carroll uses it as well. You linked to D2 Carrol (MT).
SPARTANS...PREPARE FOR GLORY
HA-WOO, HA-WOO, HA-WOO
Think beyond the possible.
Compete, Win, Respect, Unite

formerd3db

martin:

Thanks for sharing the information regarding the U of C facilities.  I remember when the Fieldhouse was transformed into the two tier level facility.  The old Athletic Hall/A.A. Stagg's old office (I forget the name without looking it up right now) next to it was where the Heisman/history room was.  As it has been several years since I visited that, is it still there or did they move it to the new Ratner AC?

It is kind of a neat experience to walk the area of The Regenstein Library where the old stadium stood and envision what it was like in the old days, especially in comparing it to old photographs of games there.  I'm also that the University preserved one of the old gates from the original Stagg Field stadium and incorporated that in the new entrance to New Stagg Field when those renovations were done back in the 1980's.  A nice touch to preserve a little history for today's teams.

One last comment:  When I was co-writing Alma College's Centennial Football History back in 1993-1994, we found in the archives and yearbooks that A.A. Stagg was invited up to Alma to the football team's end-of-the season banquet to give a speech and partake in the dinner in 1902.  It was a most interesting read about his visit.   
"When the Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He'll write not 'won' or 'lost', But how you played the game." - Grantland Rice

martin

Quote from: formerd3db on June 14, 2015, 07:29:47 PM
martin:

Thanks for sharing the information regarding the U of C facilities.  I remember when the Fieldhouse was transformed into the two tier level facility.  The old Athletic Hall/A.A. Stagg's old office (I forget the name without looking it up right now) next to it was where the Heisman/history room was.  As it has been several years since I visited that, is it still there or did they move it to the new Ratner AC?

It is kind of a neat experience to walk the area of The Regenstein Library where the old stadium stood and envision what it was like in the old days, especially in comparing it to old photographs of games there.  I'm also that the University preserved one of the old gates from the original Stagg Field stadium and incorporated that in the new entrance to New Stagg Field when those renovations were done back in the 1980's.  A nice touch to preserve a little history for today's teams.

One last comment:  When I was co-writing Alma College's Centennial Football History back in 1993-1994, we found in the archives and yearbooks that A.A. Stagg was invited up to Alma to the football team's end-of-the season banquet to give a speech and partake in the dinner in 1902.  It was a most interesting read about his visit.   

The original athletics facility was Bartlett Hall at University and 57th.  It has been converted to a dining hall.  All the offices are in Ratner now. Some Bartlett pics - then and now:
http://brunercott.com/portfolio/academic/campus_centers/cc_univ_chicago_bartlett
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/010329/bartlett.shtml



Crescat scientia; vita excolatur.
Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining.

martin

Quote from: ADL70 on June 14, 2015, 05:55:24 PM
I was aware that Chicago originated the logo. D3 Carroll uses it as well. You linked to D2 Carrol (MT).

I goofed up.  I would call Carroll's logo a variant of the wishbone C.  The classic version has a round interior of the C and a round exterior with a point added.  Carroll has the inside and outside sloping to a point. The Cincinnati Reds have a hybrid - round inside and Carroll like outside,  They used to have a classic version.  Here is Carroll writing about its C:
http://carrollulibrarynews.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-legend-of-carroll-c.html

Here is the history of the Cincinnati Reds version:
http://sportsteamhistory.com/cincinnati-reds-logos
Crescat scientia; vita excolatur.
Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining.

hickory_cornhusker

Quote from: formerd3db on June 14, 2015, 07:29:47 PM
martin:

Thanks for sharing the information regarding the U of C facilities.  I remember when the Fieldhouse was transformed into the two tier level facility.  The old Athletic Hall/A.A. Stagg's old office (I forget the name without looking it up right now) next to it was where the Heisman/history room was.  As it has been several years since I visited that, is it still there or did they move it to the new Ratner AC?

It is kind of a neat experience to walk the area of The Regenstein Library where the old stadium stood and envision what it was like in the old days, especially in comparing it to old photographs of games there.  I'm also that the University preserved one of the old gates from the original Stagg Field stadium and incorporated that in the new entrance to New Stagg Field when those renovations were done back in the 1980's.  A nice touch to preserve a little history for today's teams.

One last comment:  When I was co-writing Alma College's Centennial Football History back in 1993-1994, we found in the archives and yearbooks that A.A. Stagg was invited up to Alma to the football team's end-of-the season banquet to give a speech and partake in the dinner in 1902.  It was a most interesting read about his visit.   

The Heismann Trophy is now in the center of the front lobby of Ratner. Stagg's office is still marked in Bartlett (the old athletic) Hall but the spot is being used. I can't remember what it is for.

formerd3db

#3501
Quote from: hickory_cornhusker on June 14, 2015, 08:57:41 PM
Quote from: formerd3db on June 14, 2015, 07:29:47 PM
martin:

Thanks for sharing the information regarding the U of C facilities.  I remember when the Fieldhouse was transformed into the two tier level facility.  The old Athletic Hall/A.A. Stagg's old office (I forget the name without looking it up right now) next to it was where the Heisman/history room was.  As it has been several years since I visited that, is it still there or did they move it to the new Ratner AC?

It is kind of a neat experience to walk the area of The Regenstein Library where the old stadium stood and envision what it was like in the old days, especially in comparing it to old photographs of games there.  I'm also that the University preserved one of the old gates from the original Stagg Field stadium and incorporated that in the new entrance to New Stagg Field when those renovations were done back in the 1980's.  A nice touch to preserve a little history for today's teams.

One last comment:  When I was co-writing Alma College's Centennial Football History back in 1993-1994, we found in the archives and yearbooks that A.A. Stagg was invited up to Alma to the football team's end-of-the season banquet to give a speech and partake in the dinner in 1902.  It was a most interesting read about his visit.   

The Heismann Trophy is now in the center of the front lobby of Ratner. Stagg's office is still marked in Bartlett (the old athletic) Hall but the spot is being used. I can't remember what it is for.
Quote from: martin on June 14, 2015, 07:55:54 PM
Quote from: formerd3db on June 14, 2015, 07:29:47 PM
martin:

Thanks for sharing the information regarding the U of C facilities.  I remember when the Fieldhouse was transformed into the two tier level facility.  The old Athletic Hall/A.A. Stagg's old office (I forget the name without looking it up right now) next to it was where the Heisman/history room was.  As it has been several years since I visited that, is it still there or did they move it to the new Ratner AC?

It is kind of a neat experience to walk the area of The Regenstein Library where the old stadium stood and envision what it was like in the old days, especially in comparing it to old photographs of games there.  I'm also that the University preserved one of the old gates from the original Stagg Field stadium and incorporated that in the new entrance to New Stagg Field when those renovations were done back in the 1980's.  A nice touch to preserve a little history for today's teams.

One last comment:  When I was co-writing Alma College's Centennial Football History back in 1993-1994, we found in the archives and yearbooks that A.A. Stagg was invited up to Alma to the football team's end-of-the season banquet to give a speech and partake in the dinner in 1902.  It was a most interesting read about his visit.   

The original athletics facility was Bartlett Hall at University and 57th.  It has been converted to a dining hall.  All the offices are in Ratner now. Some Bartlett pics - then and now:
http://brunercott.com/portfolio/academic/campus_centers/cc_univ_chicago_bartlett
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/010329/bartlett.shtml







Very neat.  I would like to try and see both (the new Bartlett Hall and Stagg's old office and the Ratner AC and the Heisman) the next time I visit Chicago.  Thank you both for the follow-up.
"When the Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He'll write not 'won' or 'lost', But how you played the game." - Grantland Rice

DagarmanSpartan

I am very sorry to hear that the UAA is essentially ending its existence as a football conference.

I am glad to hear that it will continue to exist in other sports; it's nice to have ONE conference in the NCAA that has ALL of its members as AAU schools (even the Ivy League and B1G can't boast of that!). 

That said, I am concerned about the UAA's long-term viability without football.  Well, that, on top of the fact that the UAA isn't an AQ conference in baseball.  How common is it in Division III to have a conference without football?  How many such conferences are also non-AQ in baseball?  I'm guessing that D3 conferences that fit that profile are few and far between.

If this is truly the demise of UAA football, and if Chicago and Washington U are indeed both coming off of CWRU's future football schedules, then I would argue that we should renew the "fight for the fish" series with Wooster (I had one of the Baird Brothers for Economics over two decades ago), and I'd also like to see us play either Oberlin or Kenyon (preferably Oberlin, since they're so close by) every year, simply because they're the only other schools in Ohio whose students have SAT profiles comparable to ours.  Good academic/athletic rivals, even if their focuses and energies differ from our own!

DagarmanSpartan

Quote from: Gregory Sager on June 14, 2015, 09:39:28 AM
Quote from: formerd3db on June 13, 2015, 06:01:00 PM
Good comments/observations all.  I agree that it is great to see that WashU and U of Chicago will continue their traditional rivalry.  But I also agree with Gregory that perhaps the better fit for Chicago is the MWF league as far as travel distances and some very old[er] rivalries from many years ago.  If I recall correctly, wasn't Chicago in the Midwest League for a while back in the mid-1980s?

The University of Chicago was a MWC member from 1976 until the founding of the UAA in 1987.

Quote from: formerd3db on June 13, 2015, 06:01:00 PMAnd finally, I also agree that it is sad to see the UAA breakup- the original formation in the first place of "like major research universities" which had storied football histories was a worthy.  However, the new era is such that travel costs are almost prohibitive (similar to Colorado College when it had its program), so this move makes sense for both Chicago and WashU.   

As ADL70 said, the UAA isn't breaking up. It simply lost two of its football teams. (The league indicates that it wishes to continue sponsoring football, but that point now appears to be moot.) Chicago and Wash U will continue to participate in the UAA in all of their other sports. As for travel costs, yeah, they're steep and getting steeper. But "almost prohibitive" is not really a term that fits either school; Wash U's endowment is $5.6 billion, and Chicago's is $7.5 billion. Needless to say, they can afford those UAA plane rides and hotel rooms.

Very true.

Every UAA school that has a football team (Chicago, Washington U., Case, Carnegie-Mellon, and Rochester) has an endowment well in excess of a billion dollars.  In fact, the only UAA member school that isn't a billionaire is Brandeis, and even Brandeis' endowment is over $700 million.

I'm guessing that only the Ivy League is richer, on average, among NCAA sports conferences.

The ability (or inability) to absorb travel costs has never been much of a consideration.

wally_wabash

Quote from: DagarmanSpartan on June 18, 2015, 01:21:00 PM
That said, I am concerned about the UAA's long-term viability without football.  Well, that, on top of the fact that the UAA isn't an AQ conference in baseball.  How common is it in Division III to have a conference without football?  How many such conferences are also non-AQ in baseball?  I'm guessing that D3 conferences that fit that profile are few and far between.

Very common actually.  In 2014 there were 24 football leagues that received automatic bids to the tournament, in basketball there were 43 such conferences.  So you've got about 20 conferences out there that don't sponsor football. 
"Nothing in the world is more expensive than free."- The Deacon of HBO's The Wire

DagarmanSpartan

#3505
I got that.

But how many of those 20 conferences are ALSO non-AQ in baseball?

I'm guessing that that number is much smaller.

As I said, the number of conferences like the UAA which are BOTH non-AQ in baseball AND don't sponsor football is probably pretty small, I'm guessing.

Given how small that number likely is, I'm worried about the UAA's long-term viability.

wally_wabash

That's a good question and I'm not studied up enough on the baseball leagues to know for sure.  A very quick check here tells me that there are 40 AQ baseball conferences.  Without cross-referencing right now, I'm guessing that most or all of those 40 baseball leagues are the same as those 43 basketball leagues that offer AQs. 

But that's not the question- how many leagues don't have an AQ in baseball?  My cursory glace at the size of conferences tells me that there are Independents and the UAA and that's it in the non-AQ part of the D-III baseball Venn diagram.  That same glance makes me wonder why on earth Chicago isn't playing UAA baseball because that solves your problem.  I digress.  It's less of a bad thing to be non-AQ in baseball than it is football.  While we've only ever seen one Pool B team be selected for the football tournament when lumped in with AQ conference runners up (Centre, 2014..and they had to be 10-0), teams that live in non-AQ leagues have been selected for the postseason plenty via the Pool C route in baseball.  It's not a killer at all the way it is in football.

If the UAA is creeping out onto the thin ice, I really don't think it has anything to do with football or baseball or money.  My guess is that it has a lot more to do with time and travel.  We've seen the division condense itself geographically over the last handful of years.  The UAA seems to be the lone holdout as far as geographically expansive conferences go in D-III.  I'd like to see the league continue on as is- it's unique and it's no doubt a special collection of universities.  As long as the powers that be there don't mind the travel, time, and expense involved in being a league so vast, have at it. 
"Nothing in the world is more expensive than free."- The Deacon of HBO's The Wire

ADL70

Chicago is on quarter calendar and exams are during the UAA tournament.

I don't see these football and baseball issues threatening the UAA overall.  As long as Chicago finds a home the five football schools should be happy. The UAA baseball champ hasn't been left out of the tournament that I can recall.
SPARTANS...PREPARE FOR GLORY
HA-WOO, HA-WOO, HA-WOO
Think beyond the possible.
Compete, Win, Respect, Unite

jaybird44

The same problem exists in the UAA for women's softball.  The U. of Chicago's inability to participate in the UAA spring conference tournament renders the conference into a Pool B situation.  I'm not criticizing Chicago...it certainly has the right to refuse to participate if it is detrimental to its semester framework and the student-athletes involved.  As long as the pendulum stays where it is, I don't foresee having an AQ in either baseball or softball for the foreseeable future.

While as Wally correctly states that it is easier to get in the NCAA tourney in baseball via Pools B and C, compared to football...not having an AQ for UAA baseball and football is still cause for concern, as Dagerman surmised earlier in this thread.  The ice is still perilously thin for UAA champs and co-champs to make the tournament field without the Pool A safety net.

Therefore, my hope is that folks throughout the UAA will get together and hammer out an agreement that is satisfactory for all, and that will give the conference an AQ in both baseball and softball.  I would hate to see a crumbling of the UAA in those two sports, especially when there are enough schools in that conference that play those sports to have an AQ.

DagarmanSpartan

Out of curiosity, when should we expect for d3football's preview magazine to be available?