FB: Midwest Conference

[HansenRatings]

Posted this on the ARC board, and figured I would share here:

Luther will be leaving the ARC after this upcoming season:
https://d3sports.com/notables/2025/06/luther-leaves-arc-for-mwc

Football related: This will obviously improve the overall quality of teams in the ARC. By my math, this will bump the ARC up from around 12th in conference rankings to around 7th, ahead of conferences like the MIAC, OAC, and NWC. I posted that analysis here:
https://x.com/LogHanRatings/status/1929952572535611696

Other sports-related: Luther can be very competitive in most sports. Looking at Massey ratings or track & field ratings in a few different sports (I found ratings for 14 of the 18 sports sponsored by the MWC). Luther is above average in 7/14, an immediate title favorite in Men's Soccer, Men's Tennis, and Softball, and would be the second-best team in Baseball.

[Captain_Joe08]

Luther will probably be at least better than the current bottom tier in the Midwest for football. Kinda hard to see them any lower than 3-4 wins going forward in the league.

I know for sure in Tennis, they will give Grinnell all they can handle and then some. Faced their program a decade-ish ago at their place, (They had indoor courts) and they were good...too bad they had to play second fiddle to Coe in most years.

[HansenRatings]

Luther being as bad as they are in football right now is a relatively new phenomenon. They went 5-5 each year I was in school. They're not like an Oberlin or Hiram who has never seen success, they've just had a couple successive unsuccessful coaching hires that have really dismantled their foundation.