Btw, this a question for some of the old-timers (and anyone)...and please chime in if you think this is hyperbolic and/or unfair.
Tufts was not better than Messiah in 2014...very, very good and that day good enough but 2012-2014 Messiah had just fantastic teams who I would guess could have finished mid-table or better in the Patriot League. Tufts scored like in the first minute. Messiah cleared a ball to only outside the 18 where Tufts legend and midfield maestro, Jason Kayne, one-timed a half-volley top shelf. Messiah threw the kitchen sink at Tufts but could not break through to score. Messiah fans will point out that the match was played on Muhlenberg's infamous turf.
So the question...was that game/moment program-altering (and even D3 landscape-altering) for either, both, or none. I don't think it takes a lot of hyperbole to say all three.
Tufts experienced the feeling of being a champion (barely, barely got a bid that year too), and went on to win three more in a four year period (a feat only Messiah had matched or exceeded at least in the past 25 years). Not saying Tufts didn't have great players and they obviously has a brilliant coach, but I think winning that game changed the Jumbo culture, just like with Messiah, winning every single year became the expectation.
Messiah has won only once title since that game when at worst they probably were supposed to win every other year. The next year of 2015 Amherst won. Then Tufts won again in 2016. Messiah won in 2017...a year when I think Tufts got knocked out of Bello Field by Brandeis in double OT that at least most of Tufts Nation considered fluky. Then back to Tufts for 2018 and 2019. And after Covid year, Conn Coll and Chicago have claimed titles. We at least currently are in a new era where there isn't an almost automatic endorsement of Messiah vs The Field.
In truth, I doubt Messiah has changed much at all, but maybe has forced Falcon Nation to calibrate things a little differently.
And certainly the overall landscape still has its favorites every year, but the sense that you don't have to be Messiah (or Tufts) to win a title imo has really opened things up.
I think this is a long answer with a lot of factors.
For my money I think the "elite tier" of D3 soccer has just gotten broader and flatter, while the second tier has gotten so much larger. Messiah in the 00s and early teens was constantly in the top tier, but that top tier, the teams that could legitimately win a title, was maybe a cast of 4 or 5 schools that rotated, but Messiah was always there. By the start of the teens, I think that tier had expanded to 8 teams, with 4 or 5 being there regularly, or at least spending a considerable number of years in a row there. Now I think that tier is closer to 12, with 4 or 5 that are there consistently and then a rotating group.
As that group expands, and frankly the second tier gets deeper in quality, the odds of "upsets" increases, especially in a low scoring game like soccer that is not really the best for single-elimination tournaments. I don't think you are ever going to see another run like Messiah from 2000-2014. 10/14 championships in an NCAA style tournament is a dominance that I don't think, the way talent is evaluated and dispersed now, will ever be repeated.
Personally, any team that can win 2 titles in 5 years, with other years being Elite 8 or better, is probably a dynasty. I find Tufts run of 4 in 6 years to be almost comically against the odds these days. I can see teams winning back to back again, you get that special group of players and they win as mostly juniors and again as seniors. But beyond that? There is so much talent available, and so many more schools with the ability to find it.
I suspect Messiah will remain among the elites, but I suspect a championship every 5 years, maybe a repeat once in every 10 years, is going to be a darn good mark for D3 dynasties.
Now, why do I think this is true? Because the players across the country are so much better. My home town soccer club in NJ was founded in 1976. Those kids, from that very first year of inexperienced dads inspired by the NASL, went to college in the late 80s, early 90s. It was one of 4 clubs in two counties. I started playing in 1983 at 5 years old, and the league had grown to 12 clubs, and I promise you, every one of our coaches still had no idea what soccer was. The refs were all immigrants, and tactics were non-existent. My dad was watching VHS "learn to coach soccer" tapes in 1985, and he was still watching them while coaching me in 1994, just going up in age.
We had no clue how to play soccer and, except for the 1994 World Cup it wasn't on TV. I remember my dad hiring a soccer "tutor" for several members of our team when I was about 10, all the parents chipped in. It was a 70 year old Italian guy we couldn't understand who spent an hour with us and told us we couldn't beat 7 year olds in "the old country" and we weren't playing soccer, just kickball, and he wasn't able to coach such incompetence. We were runner-up NJ State Champs at the time.
When I went to W&L, class of 2000, it wasn't the tactics that kept me on the bench, they were no better than what I had picked up playing select and at various summer camps and in h.s., it was the athleticism. I had a good "soccer mind" for the time, having watched as many videos as my dad, but I couldn't kick and run with the college crowd. And I guarantee almost no one in D3 was looking for David Beckham, they were looking for Cobi Jones.
Contrast that to today, where the local club where I live now, required completion of all the U.S. Soccer grassroots classes to coach a 5 year old rec league team. In Alabama! A state where soccer is still often considered a communist plot. You want to coach an entry level travel team? D license. You want to coach a select travel team? C License. Every travel coach is paid, they share at least two teams in season, often 3, with assistants that coach away games.
In other words, these kids playing today have learned to play soccer. Maybe not as well as the rest of the world, with their academy systems that cover huge swathes of the country while ours covers a few urban areas, but they have learned more by 10 about "football" than I ever learned about "soccer". And the ones playing D3 aren't just the kids that made a h.s. team and could run. The recruiting process is different, the newer coaches are different, the pool is bigger, and schools like Messiah, with their wonderful recruiting niches, can get players they never dreamed of 20 years ago, but so can so many other schools.
I expect it will continue to get harder, and I suspect more and different schools will push through to the Elite 8. Not just because tournament soccer can be fluky, but because the barriers to good players have fallen and more and more good coaches grow up from the generations after mine that actually learned how to play football.
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