Logan Hansen has his rankings out . While the LL coaches poll is probably  the best source, Logan's data based forecast is always interesting .

1. Ithaca
2. RPI
3. Hobart
4. Union
5. Rochester
6. SLU
7. Buffalo St,
8. Hilbert

UP,
    Thanks for your research. We'll see how player continuity impacts performance this year. My biggest concern is injuries to key players. If Hobart loses EJ Taylor we are not the same team despite some young talent coming in. I can't wait for the season to start and continue our five game win streak.

Watched most of the Hobart-Cortland scrimmage last night. The first half was mostly first strings and both defenses were strong as the offenses were working out the kinks , resulting in no scores. Each were able to force a turnover . Hobart D looked strong up the middle and the LB talent looked good. The second half saw mostly second and third stringers vying for playing time when the season opens. Hobart has a few  fast and well skilled Freshman that look like they'll see playing time . Overall, the Cortland depth showed in the second half as they scored three TDs to Hobart's one. It was great to see some live action.   

Like Ithaca, Hobart retention rates are higher for athletes. It is one of the reasons we added additional sports(M&W volleyball, W Bowling, new in 2027 W Flag Football, M&W Alpine Skiing) and all of these new sports had success with either  playoff spot or a named All American. Retention helps when the teams are successful , as I know Ithaca's are.
More importantly, ess than 2 weeks to Football .

Unionpalooza, freshman year is a big retention issue for many teams , but UMHB stats are crazy. Everyone knows a big roster in D3 helps the tuition bucket, but to have that kind of churn is sad. I think having a strong JV program and  healthy schedule is very important for retention. If a kid gets a season ending injury , or even a nagging injury during pre season camp as a Freshman, it's really tough to pump yourself up for Sophomore year. If you have a JV program you can give it a shot and get game experience. I wish Hobart had a stronger JV schedule, I think the retention rate would improve, and you can give the coaching staff valuable experience  as well. It is often a budget issue....have more salary for support staff or invest in a JV program. The Coaching staff is also a big factor. Hobart lost their DC( Mike Green) to the HC job at Gettysburg, I wish him all the best but he did a great job the last few years recruiting and on the field coaching. Looks like Union should be strong again based on those stats.

Hobart's Tru Styles(gotta love the name), SR QB, and highly recruited HS QB out of Pittsburg is now listed as a TE on the roster. Tru has been a leader on the team but does not have the passing skills that Jeremy Weiss(last years starter after Conrath injury) and Aidan Conrath(started first 3 games last year until season ending injury). At 6'4" and 225 pounds, Tru has the size and athletic skills to be a very good TE and can still be used in short yardage situations as QB.
  The boys are on the BOZ in their all black uniforms getting ready for the season. Ithaca has a lot of returning starters and should be the favorite with Union as the defending champs, but with the 6 home game schedule this year I'm thinking Hobart has a good shot at the LL title. Early season Ithaca game at the Boz may be for all the marbles. Can't wait for football!

Quote from: Patrick Coleman on August 13, 2026, 11:25:38 AM

Quote from: Bartman on August 12, 2026, 10:02:30 PM

Quote from: IC798891 on August 12, 2026, 01:27:40 PMThree LL preseason all-americans

Ithaca safety Joe Spirra was 1st team
E.J Taylor and Billy Brosko from Hobart were 2nd and 3rd team respectively

Congrats to these LL Football studs. I don't understand how Vicente Lyon, Punter for Hobart missed this 2026 pre-season team, after having been an actual 2025 third team selection .Perhaps the voters didn't know he was returning for a GRAD season.

Yes, we did not know he had another season.

Thanks Pat, Vicente was actually !st Team AP after the 2024 season which included the Ithaca game where he had one 86 yard punt and exceeded 50 yards on four punts , averaging 65 yards on the day. If ever a punter won a critical game it was that IC game in 2024 at the Boz, and the Statesmen went on to win the LL. I'm hoping for a repeat in 2026 from Vicente.

Quote from: IC798891 on August 13, 2026, 07:55:00 AM

Quote from: Bartman on August 12, 2026, 10:02:30 PMI don't understand how Vicente Lyon, Punter for Hobart missed this 2026 pre-season team, after having been an actual 2025 third team selection .Perhaps the voters didn't know he was returning for a GRAD season.

There are four All-American teams announced during the postseason. There are three in the preseason.

Lyon was the odd man out

So the Wheaton punter was fourth team last year, and Lyon was third team, I think the voters assumed Lyon was not returning as a Senior from last year. Not that preseason selections really matter. I'd rather he just punt another 80+ yarder against the Bombers at the Boz this year

Quote from: IC798891 on August 12, 2026, 01:27:40 PMThree LL preseason all-americans

Ithaca safety Joe Spirra was 1st team
E.J Taylor and Billy Brosko from Hobart were 2nd and 3rd team respectively

Congrats to these LL Football studs. I don't understand how Vicente Lyon, Punter for Hobart missed this 2026 pre-season team, after having been an actual 2025 third team selection .Perhaps the voters didn't know he was returning for a GRAD season.

Quote from: ryanice on July 22, 2026, 09:14:10 AMFirst post on here so hello!
Recently I made a website for Liberty League football statistics and thought that this would be a good place to share it. The website has data for LL players between the years 2013 and 2025 and includes stats from all 3 phases of the game. The website allows users to filter by certain statistics and create their own statistics (rushing yards per game, completion percentage, etc). Additional features include chart creation, player career statistics, and data exporting.

All of the code that created the website is available here: https://github.com/RyanIce100/LibertyLeagueFootballDataSite
All of the code that created the dataset is available here:https://github.com/RyanIce100/LibertyLeagueFootballStats

Website Link: https://ryanice100.github.io/LibertyLeagueFootballDataSite/


Story:

Around a month ago I found that Logan Hansen had compiled player statistics for every D3 football team between the years 2013 and 2018. When playing around with the data in R, I realized that I could filter it to only display Liberty League teams. This allowed me to create interesting charts and tables that showed how good players were relative to each other.

My next idea was to gather the data from 2019-2025 to create a (somewhat) complete dataset. The most "exciting" part was creating the code that scrapes the season statistics and roster page from the website. Once that was completed, I went through every season for every team until the dataset was complete. Any errors were fixed manually (but I'm sure there are some that slipped through the cracks).

The website came next as I realized that there wasn't an existing source for all time Liberty League football statistics. I am not a very good coder so most of the website was made through Claude and Gemini (which probably creates a lot of bugs). Hopefully this website will be interesting to play with and doesn't mess up too much!

Ryanice, thanks for the data view of the LL stats. I'm thinking you and Logan Hansen need to throw down some cold ones and brainstorm AI analytics together. Claude was an old friend of mine and Gemini was part of NASA....I'm barely keeping up with TOP stats

Congratulations to Tyler Terens, Hobart(2016), for being selected as a  Fox play by play announcer for the World Cup. He was also on the Fox morning show a couple of times commenting on the overall tournament and upcoming games.Living the Dream.

Quote from: IC798891 on June 17, 2026, 10:39:41 AMCost of attendance is kinda a "would you rather?" type thing. You do have some people who will pay full price, or close to it.

Our men's wrestling coach told me once that you're always going to have a type of family that *wants* their child to go to the expensive school, and pay for it, because it's as much social currency as anything. So cutting too much off the sticker price lowers what they give you.

But the flip side is, while it's easy for us to understand that the sticker price is just that, there are a lot of families who simply don't get that, and see a $75,000 price tag and say "No thanks"

It's why Hartwick just knocked like $35,000 off of tuition. They're looking at the types of students they're bringing in, and those who are saying no, and have decided that the lower price tag will get people in the door and not to worry about those who may pay the higher price.

It's a game of moving sliders for sure.

IC, some good points here. I know Hobart has really invested in grants to make the net price more affordable. I grabbed this interesting stat from Collegesimply:

The typical actual cost that students pay to attend (average net price) is less at Hobart William Smith Colleges than Ithaca College ($33,172 vs. $34,297)

It is a war out there for a shrinking student population and the product as well as the cost are under lots of scrutiny by 17 year olds and their families. While Hobart had a "good" admissions tally this year, it is a struggle every year.

Quote from: IC798891 on June 15, 2026, 01:13:10 PMThe two things that set Ithaca apart tended to be rowing and wrestling, simply because there weren't that many schools that offered them. When wrestling was a top 10 program, those two sports were an easy 100+ points.

They had plenty of other strong programs as well, but those were two that a lot of other colleges did not offer. I wish Ithaca had started ice hockey during the halcyon days of 7,000 students and massive budget surpluses.

I've always felt Ithaca had an edge in Sports based on size and tradition.I played my first Freshman football game against Ithaca and almost got double teamed by two studs into Cayuga lake.  I know when HWS looked at deficits a few years ago , we decided one solution was to expand the sports program offerings. This has yielded a steady increase in admission yields with this year reaching 560+ , and with higher retention rates(athletes tend to stay). HWS is getting close to our 2200 target ( this was way down during the Covid years for various reasons) . We have also made investments in business/economics/entrepreneurship and the broad category of science that seem to attract more athletes and gen pop than the traditional liberal arts these days( don't worry you can still do bi-disciplinary/independent studies on social justice/gender/alternative universe stuff).
We are also starting women's flag football next Spring and have recruited a coach(Rusty Verkler , ex WR from Hartwick) from Owego Free Academy that is already bringing players from his high school team.I'm looking forward to the first cross over receiver from the women's flag football team to the Statesmen varsity in the future. I heard a couple of them are really fast and have good hands and great moves

Interesting to see final Learfield Cup rankings for 2025-26 D3 Sports. NESCAC was the #1 overall ranked conference and Liberty League was in the top 5. Here are individual Liberty rankings based on NCAA Championship results for all sports(out 0f 318 colleges nationally).

48.   HWS (#2 in (M)Hockey, made NCAAs in soccer(M&W), (W)lacrosse, baseball,and #3 in (W) rowing
71. Ithaca
78. RIT
85. Vassar
93. RPI
138. Union
139. SLU
238. Skidmore

The few D1 sports the LL participate in don't count, as well as non NCAA Championship sports.

Quote from: Jonny Utah on May 23, 2026, 01:09:10 PMSo I live near the Curry campus and drive by their field 1-2 times a week.  After graduation 2 weeks ago they have now peeled the turf back and are putting in that purple drank turf we all know and love. 

Ithaca lacrosse had a good year ending up losing to the Dutchmen in the playoffs.  Oh no, not the Union College Dutchman though, the Hope College Dutchman.  (Ithaca actually did lose to Union in the LL tourney though).  LL probably the 2nd best lax league in the country behind the NESCAC.

Hobart baseball also made the tourney and has brought a new program to great heights this year. 

Hobart's hockey team got upset in the National Championship game though, losing 2-1 to Hamilton. It was Hobart's only loss of the year.  Hobart is 116-6-2 over the past 4 years with 3 national championships in that time.

Johnny, Thanks for the shout outs to Hobart baseball( cut 30 years ago due to Title 9 math,  and returned to the NCAAs after only 4 years starting back up.)
Hobart hockey lost in OT of the Championship game  and almost had 4 National Championships in a row. We play in the Geneva community rink but the players love Coach Taylor and each other.
Last but not least, the William Smith Heron Lax team won the Liberty League, made the auto NCAA bid...and the William Smith rowing team finished third in the National Championship . The Winter Spring sports had some nice seasons.
Some good recruits this year for football, and we have the favorable 6 home game "even year"schedule ( Home against Union, Ithaca and strat out the season with Alfred and Brockport ). The odd year schedule is tough starting on the road and having away games against Union and Ithaca are always tough. Hopefully the Statesmen will bounce back this year having ended last year with a bowl win.Lots of new coaches behind DeWall this year as our DC was offered the HC job at Gettysburg. Ex Hobart assistant coaches are at quite a few HC jobs in D3. Most were from the coaching tree of Mike Cragg who was succeeded by DeWall.
have a great summer and see you guys in the banter before the Fall.