Quote from: Reverend MIAC, PhD on May 11, 2019, 04:54:35 pm

I get a kick out of the most recent Star Tribune article’s comments section. Most commenters seem supportive of UST, but those who aren’t tend to talk about enrollments and academic requirements. They say that UST is too large and doesn’t focus on recruiting for academic excellence. UST supporters quickly counter by talking about how enrollment numbers don’t matter at the college level because coaches aren’t recruiting from the student body, and then cite all sorts of things meant to show UST’s academic prowess, most notably employment rates and starting salaries after college.

Everyone seems to be missing the point. STO et al. don’t have a problem with UST’s enrollment just because it provides a larger pool of potential recruits.  They have a problem because the larger enrollment allows UST to match and/or supersede them athletically AND academically, which is its current trajectory.

Let’s compare STO and UST. There’s currently a two-point difference between the median ACTs at STO and UST. STO has roughly 3K undergraduates; 1.5K achieved a 29 or better on the ACT. UST has roughly 6K undergraduates; roughly 1.5K achieved a 29 or better on the ACT. In other words, these two schools have the same number of academically potent students on campus.

That being said, UST’s larger enrollment affords it the opportunity to recruit students gifted in other ways (athletics) without greatly impacting its overall academic selectivity. STO’s smaller enrollment offers far less leeway, and I don’t see it being able and/or wanting to expand student numbers anytime soon. Places like STO with smaller enrollments can’t accept many athletes with lower ACT scores without significantly diminishing their overall selectivity. Because of the larger enrollment, places like UST can recruit a sufficient number of less academically potent athletes and still remain highly selective.

There’s nothing wrong with the way UST is positioned; nor is there a problem with it recruiting stellar athletes with less that optimal academic credentials. Doing so doesn’t mean that it’s less academic either. All the Ivy League schools do the same thing, as their athletes tend to have far lower academic qualifications than the other students on campus. STO et al. have a problem with UST because they don’t have the same advantages.

Reworded - Because St Thomas is much bigger than other schools, it can recruit low-academic athletes that the rest of the MIAC can't because they can't get accepted into the rest of the MIAC schools. Most MIAC schools can't afford to expand, and those that can would destroy their small and selective approach that has become their (highly successful) calling card. The issue here isn't the rest of the MIAC failing to be as "great" of institutions as St Thomas, its that St Thomas has grown out of the league and is using this growth to beat the other schools into submission by eliminating the academic requirements most D3 private schools have.

Side note, spare me the sympathy for the death of the Tommie-Johnnie game, which only increases media coverage for the two schools and not the league as a whole, and is a major influx of cash that other D3 schools will never have. If you think it's fair that St Thomas and St Johns get to play annually at places like Target Field, and think that this isn't a ridiculously unfair recruiting advantage, than you probably went to either St Thomas or St Johns.

Quote from: AO on May 14, 2019, 03:40:37 pm

Quote from: DuffMan on May 14, 2019, 02:59:02 pm

I wonder how recruiting is going at St. Olaf.  That's got to be fun to answer questions from recruits/parents about the recent happenings.

Recruiting to St. Thomas has to be way more difficult right now.  They're recruiting players for a future scholarship team without scholarships.  When current recruits work their way up the depth chart after a couple years, the scholarship players will start to roll in and take over.  I guess you could say in 2 years maybe we'll have a 25% scholarship for you if you're good enough.

Not many of the football scholarships at D2 are full scholarships. Most are far below full, especially in the NSIC. Someone here knows the limit but for some reason I recall the NSIC allows less per team than other D2 conferences*. Back when the earth cooled and I had a short stint at UMD some of the Scholarships were $800.

*Now I see the NSIC can offer the full amount as of this year; 36 full scholarships but they have to be split up between the entire roster of deserving players. $1,000 here $1,500 there and a full scholly to a few players.

Quote from: Walter Eagle on May 10, 2019, 05:04:17 pm

What about the University Athletic Association with Emory, Rochester, Wash U, Chicago, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western and NYU?  Seven of these schools have undergraduate enrollments between 3,700 and 6,600 with an average of 5,250.  NYU is an extreme outlier with an enrollment of 20,950 (not included in above average).

No conference football though, so UST might have to drop football.  Lot's of air travel and hotel stays, but the savings from football would possibly offset the increased travel costs.

Loss of prestige from "no football", but very prestigious schools.  Positive impact on endowment?

Would the UAA even accept UST?

Edit:  5 of the 8 UAA schools play football in other conferences closer to home.  (Liberty, MWC, CCIW, and the PAC.)

Not a chance. Those are top-tier prestigious academic schools. UST academics have improved and I got a great education there, etc etc but it's not anywhere near that tier.

The money figures are a bit misleading IMO.

Does the half of Caruso's salary that comes from "consulting" for a football booster get listed in these numbers? Definitely not.

* The arms race aspect is part of this, and has already been mentioned.
* The willingness to throw significant financial aid packages at players they want to land is part of this. Maybe those aid packages aren't out of the norm for the general student body (it's also not hard to shift those numbers around either). But that only underscores the problem. If UST is putting together vastly superior aid programs for students across the board that Hamline and Augsburg can't compete with, it makes a difference in enrollment. And when enrollment numbers are what keep you afloat, that matters.
* Where does the money for coaching staff salaries come from? Are there deep pockets helping to offset assistant salaries? Paid out of non-UST managed funds? If so these don't show up in the numbers either.

Anecdotally, a good friend of mine was an All American soccer player at the U. She was asked to be an assistant coach for Hamline this past fall. She wasn't doing it for the Starbucks caramel macchiato they paid her. But she also got an inside look at the differences between what the Hamline HC was trying to accomplish compared specifically to UST. Her words, before any of this TomToss came up, was that UST was a lot closer to what she experienced at Minnesota than to what the rest of the MIAC was doing.

Again, there's nothing wrong with UST leveraging all its resources. And I have sympathy for the schools that sit right in her shadow and are trying to compete for students & student athletes. What I don't have a lot of sympathy for are the Olaf's of the world. UST is beating them at their own game, and they don't like it.

Quote from: USTBench on May 08, 2019, 04:54:44 pm

Quote from: sfury on May 08, 2019, 03:40:17 pm

I like that we've gotten to the it's the media's fault portion of this. Took a bit longer than usual in today's world but good to see.

For my part, I am in no way blaming the media, but I know many are. My chief complaint is the institutional refusal to let the media know what the hell is going on, which leads to rampant speculation and 97-0 finding its way into every article.

My guess is, there's no good way to spin this for the COL, so they're probably thinking they might as well say nothing.

The 'no comment' approach by most of these institutions is certainly not giving media members much to go on. But it's not as if they're asking "what's going on in the MIAC." They are pontificating about what's going and lumping all the schools together. I highly doubt Dan Barreiro reached out to MIAC institutions for comments before he declared the whole league a bunch of idiots. Reusse actually appears to have been doing all he could to get comments on the record. But that's also part of his frustration. He's directly called out Anderson for driving all of this, and then not having the guts to comment or own publicly that he's the one leading the parade.

Quote from: 57Johnnie on May 06, 2019, 03:31:55 pm

I think that if you look at the overall record, CSB was second only to UST but what do I know. 

Hamline had the toughest strength of schedule in the MIAC, finished head of St. Ben's in the standings, and took the Tommies into 11 innings for the championship. Hamline got screwed.

https://stats.ncaa.org/rankings/change_sport_year_div

Quote from: miac952 on April 22, 2019, 07:31:59 pm

Chucker - the scholarships get audited by the NCAA against the non athlete student body every year. This has been brought up baselessly on here a few times already.

Also, note UST Football’s rise came long before any facilities. Caruso had them in the NCAA quarters long before the facility developments were a reality. At that time they had rusting weights in a hot box of a weight room that small high schools would ridicule today. They won a national championship in hockey playing in a horse barn at the fairgrounds. They dominated track and field while in one of the saddest indoor facilities in the conference. Baseball won a national title while having to move 7 man blocking sleds into foul territory before games started, leaving huge ruts in the outfield; also the location for hammer and shot put by the way. You really test your mettle as a center fielder shagging fly balls while dodging hammer throws from the throwers.

Meanwhile, St Olaf has had some of the best facilities in the MIAC for some time. The gigantic fieldhouse with a 2nd deck, the $10 million ice arena, and the separate football training facilities. Yet, they are the ringleader of this mess. Let’s not forget they had a football program rolling up huge scores on teams in the last decade, while building a recruiting pipeline from Dade and Broward counties, leading to skepticism from the rest of the conference. Note, this was all under President Anderson’s watch by the way. The other schools didn’t decide to cut and run.

UST has never won a hockey national title in either gender.  Baseball won 2 national titles but I fear you're exaggerating greatly regarding the multi-sport use of the ballfield. Sorry