7 SCAC teams plus Berry to form new conference

Started by Ron Boerger, June 07, 2011, 10:23:52 AM

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ADL70

Quote from: Pat Coleman on June 07, 2011, 11:11:00 PM
If they go with CAC, we're going to have to go with COAC since there already is a CAC. :)

What about New South Conference?  I know at first blush it sounds generic and bland.  But "New South" has been used in cultural discussion for some time.

Or (cynically) AWBTC Anywhere But Texas Conference.
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awadelewis

Quote from: cush on June 08, 2011, 11:13:28 AM
I could see berry college start a football program so the breakaway school's are back to 7 without any expansion but i'd guess they eventually expand to 10 in any case.
A possibility that was brought up by some folks up on the Mountain was Oglethorpe restarting their football program. It becomes a lot more attractive to do so when you aren't having to worry about flying out to Texas schools.   Combine that with Hendrix starting their program and the new CAC is up to 7 football schools.     Sounded like some pretty wild speculation to me but it would explain why you aren't hearing a lot of talk about expansion from the schools leaving the SCAC.

Ron Boerger

Quote from: awadelewis on June 08, 2011, 09:50:43 PM
... Sounded like some pretty wild speculation to me but it would explain why you aren't hearing a lot of talk about expansion from the schools leaving the SCAC.

Well, they did just announce they were going to HAVE a conference two days ago ... with the addition of an eighth team.   ;)

arktraveler

An interview with the Hendrix president appears in the Conway paper:

http://thecabin.net/sports/college/2011-06-08/hendrix-president-discusses-move-new-conference

I initially assumed that this discussion started getting serious when University of Dallas was invited instead of Berry, but the article suggests that the discussion started with the admission of Austin and Colorado into the conference. In retrospect, maybe the selection of University of Dallas was so that the remaining schools would be a bit closer to critical mass.

It also mentions a couple of possible membership requirements for the new conference. Coach salaries would be "in line with" professor salaries. More interestingly, each member would be required to sponsor at least 18 sports. This seems to be talking specifically about Austin, with 12 sports. (Colorado also has 12 represented in the SCAC All-Sports trophy, though you might include the two D1 teams and the two lacrosse teams to bring its total to 16.) The Hendrix president says that sponsoring fewer sports means that you can dedicate resources to gain an unfair advantage in other sports - though Austin's performance is hardly a good example of that.

Among the new conference, Oglethorpe currently sponsors 16 sports, so presumably they'd be adding two sports to reach 18. Berry seems to sponsor 18 - if you count women's equestrian even though I doubt it would be a conference sport. The other 6 seem to already be at 18.

Gregory Sager

The fewer sports sponsored by the newcomer schools is one sticking point that led to the split, according to the Hendrix president. The other is academic standards, as the Hendrix president is not shy about saying that at least one of the schools left behind in the SCAC is not up to snuff academically by the standards of the seven defectors and Berry.

Thanks for the link, arktraveler.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

Bmo

#20
"The other is academic standards, as the Hendrix president is not shy about saying that at least one of the schools left behind in the SCAC is not up to snuff academically by the standards of the seven defectors and Berry."

Sounds like a shot at Trinity.  The others haven't been in the league long enough or been dominant enough in any sport to exhibit any unfair advantage.

Ron Boerger

It certainly does.    He might want to be more careful about all the stuff he's throwing out there ...

Trinity - which offers 18 sports, unlike some of the *other* schools he alleged have unfair advantages - is always among the conference leaders in all-academic selections even without sponsoring a sport like field hockey which by its nature tends to draw the brainy types.  I believe they have had more NCAA post-graduate scholarship winners than anyone else in the conference over the years and are in the top ten of all D3 schools (per TU's web site).  And, as I said on the SCAC board (and was chastised for so saying) the school that has dominated the all-SCAC standings the last half-decade has been DePauw.  This year, Centre was a very close third to Trinity's second with Rhodes not far behind.    

With all the aspersions Dr. Cloyd seems to be casting, Trinity managed to win all of five conference championships last season:  baseball, men's/women's soccer, men's tennis, and women's swimming and diving.      

PA_wesleyfan

 Ron

That's the same argument that some of the USAC  schools used to keep Wesley out and as it turned out Wesley would have had the second highest academic achievements in the conference!!!
Football !!! The ultimate team sport. Anyone who plays DIII football is a winner...

Bishopleftiesdad

Quote from: arktraveler on June 09, 2011, 03:51:04 PM
An interview with the Hendrix president appears in the Conway paper:

http://thecabin.net/sports/college/2011-06-08/hendrix-president-discusses-move-new-conference

I initially assumed that this discussion started getting serious when University of Dallas was invited instead of Berry, but the article suggests that the discussion started with the admission of Austin and Colorado into the conference. In retrospect, maybe the selection of University of Dallas was so that the remaining schools would be a bit closer to critical mass.

It also mentions a couple of possible membership requirements for the new conference. Coach salaries would be "in line with" professor salaries. More interestingly, each member would be required to sponsor at least 18 sports. This seems to be talking specifically about Austin, with 12 sports. (Colorado also has 12 represented in the SCAC All-Sports trophy, though you might include the two D1 teams and the two lacrosse teams to bring its total to 16.) The Hendrix president says that sponsoring fewer sports means that you can dedicate resources to gain an unfair advantage in other sports - though Austin's performance is hardly a good example of that.

Among the new conference, Oglethorpe currently sponsors 16 sports, so presumably they'd be adding two sports to reach 18. Berry seems to sponsor 18 - if you count women's equestrian even though I doubt it would be a conference sport. The other 6 seem to already be at 18.
Many of the arguments he makes seem similar to Earlhams president when the NCAC was talking about D IV a while back. Less emphasis on sports so the athelete could also participate in other parts of campus life.

awadelewis

Link to an article on insidehighered.com with comments from ADs from involved schools:'http://goo.gl/6PbRi

gordonmann

I'm not picking sides in whether Trinity and the former SCAC teams are academically similar because I don't know enough about them to say.  But I think there's more to measuring academic equity than how many academic all-conference selections a school has or how many post graduate scholarships the top kids win.  That measures how well the top performers do, not the performance of the student athletes at large.

When coaches complain to me about not being on an equal academic playing field, they normally cite the difference in admission standards. "School X could admit that player but we couldn't."

I checked out the admissions data at CollegeBoard.com and it shows Trinity as being well within the mainstream of teams who left the SCAC.  The SAT scores are for writing and math since some schools didn't report the writing portion.


School   Acceptance rate   Top 10% of HS   SAT Low   SAT High   Act
Berry   64%   33%   1060   1270   23-29
B-Southern   66%   31%   1050   1270   24-29
Centre   74%   62%   1160   1370   26-31
DePauw   57%   53%   1080   1320   24-29
Hendrix   83%   53%   1180   1380   27-32
Oglethorpe   67%   24%   1060   1280   23-27
Rhodes   45%   53%   1180   1390   26-30
Trinity   63%   55%   1170   1370   26-33
Sewanee   62%   50%   1160   1360   26-30
Millsaps   77%   40%   1060   1290   24-29

dahlby

#26
gordonmann:

Academic standards have a huge impact on recruitiing. Considering that D3 athletes can receive no athletic based financial aide, they fall into the standard aide requirements with the entire student body. That aide is academic and need based only. Athletes can be given no special treatment.

If school A has a higher academic standard than school B, the athlete will need a higher
academic standing than a recruit from school B in order to get a financial package good enough to attract the student athlete. This can create an uneven playing field when 2 different schools within a conference have uneven academic standards, and it plays out even moreso when you have , let's say, 8 teams in a conference with varying academic standards.
In SOCAL we have 9 D3 schools within a small radius. When recruiting local players, the coaches are recruiting the same players in many cases and these standards do have a big say in where average students can get a nice package from one school, and nothing from a school with higher standards.

I have seen the variance in "offers", and it can be very frustrating to a coach to lose a recruit they spent a lot of time with. The NCAA does moniter this very closely.

Ron Boerger

Gordo - thanks for the SAT/ACT details, of which I was well aware (in general) when I made my post.  Your comment about 'measuring [solely] how well the top performers' rate is a decent one, but isn't it also the case that you generally don't see a lot of academic top performers hanging around where there are a bunch of non-performers?

If one looks at your stats,  Berry, B-SC, Oglethorpe, and Millsaps are all about 100 points lower on SATs, significantly lower on students in top 10% of their class, etc. than the other schools.   If you're going to throw around academics as an excuse for leaving a conference, you'd better have some numbers to back up the claim. 

So maybe Cloyd means someone else, though from what I know of Austin, Colorado, and Southwestern don't think they have a standard lesser than any of the schools listed.     I quickly looked up UDallas:  1090-1350 / 23-30.

cush

I did think his comment were odd considering colorado college is probably the best academic school in the scac. My guess is he was just pouting off and reconsider it  by putting out this statement:

http://www.hendrix.edu/news/news.aspx?id=52948&terms=scac

Travel distance is a reasonable reason to break off. Yet, the current commish  of the scac seems to like the model of geography  not playing much of a role in conference affiliation. With SW airlines all over texas, if you want pay $ to fly, its pretty easy to get around. I would be surprised if they pick up school's east of texas though but more like hitting the naia school's in Utah, Kansas, or Nebraska.

smedindy

Geez, I go away for a while and all Hell breaks loose down South!  ;)