Quote from: JCUStreaks70 on October 08, 2025, 03:08:00 PM1886 Lager, brewed by Great Lakes in honor of the one and only JCU!

Channeling my inner d3fanboy, I'm surprised that there isn't a 2016 IPA, for that 1 win over UMU between 1989 and today. Or a 3 ale for JCU's all time wins over UMU since 1920. 

I think that a one loss team from the NCAC has a great shot at getting an at-large bid in this year. JCU's NPI is 43, DePauw 29, and Wabash 27, looking at the teams that are ahead in the NPI there seems like there could be a fair number of losses still coming from them. At least 5 WIAC schools are ahead, and we know they'll all beat the sh*t out of each other and take some losses.

I can't answer your tiebreaker question, but I can say don't sleep on the NCAC's ability to get a second team in this year.

https://d3datacast.com/npi/fb/

Quote from: WIACer on October 06, 2025, 05:51:24 PMHow long does the toughest league have between National Championships, before we consider it not as tough?

I think you're conflating two ideas. The best team doesn't have to come from the toughest league. National Championships aren't the only bar for a league, but they are for a team. In fact, look at the list of D3 National champions and decide how often the national champion came from the best league. I would argue that most of the time the national champion wasn't coming from the toughest conference.

You can have 7-8 incredibly good teams in a league, and yet still not have the best team in the country, which makes sense mathematically. There is exactly 1 national champion, but there can be dozens of really good teams. That's why this extended playoff bracket is so great, more chances for deserving teams to make a run. 

Quote from: Crawford on September 29, 2025, 08:14:50 PM. I spent some time at Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN. JCU reminded me of the size and athleticism of the Jonnie's.

The MIAC is always a bit of a mystery to me. The top end of the conference (St. Johns and Bethel currently, and St. Thomas historically) are usually quite competitive on the national scene. But the bottom of the conference is so bad, it's really hard to get a feel for how good they really are. It's not all that different than the NCAC in some ways. I trust your gut on the size and athleticism of the team, but comparing them to Hamline or Augsburg is tough. Either way, if I were a betting man, I'd bet the Johnnies will be in the playoffs this year. They've got a tough matchup of their own this week against Bethel, maybe their only tough game this regular season.

While not the D3football poll, Wabash is ranked at 25 in the AFCA poll. Which makes Wabash vs. JCU a ranked match-up. I'm really excited to see how both teams play. I got to watch JCU earlier in the season at JHU, where they looked a bit out gunned, more in depth than in talent - JHU is for real, but that means so is JCU.

They have an excellent wide receiver who is a FCS graduate transfer, and an excellent graduate student tight end who was an FCS transfer as well. I'm not sure if those are leftovers from the COVID years, or just a boon to having one of the few graduate schools in the conference, but both guys caught my eye in the JHU game - both can play.

Win, lose or draw, I'm excited to see the top of the conference get a few more tough games. That should help anyone who makes it come playoff/bowl game time.

Welcome JCU to a new NCAC rivalry!

That is definitely the vibe, but in some ways that's understandable. D3 is kind of unique, in that one of the only thing all 427 schools that compete in division 3 agreed on is that they wouldn't be awarding scholarships.

Outside of that, many schools are more different than they are alike. Enrollments run from around 300 at Principa College to around 30,000 at NYU. There are schools where athletics are very important to keeping the lights on (more than 65% athletes) to places that have a relatively small percentage of the students participating in athletics.

I made a point on the NCAC board when Wash U became an affiliate for football, that your conference is really the one area where you can seek to find like minded institutions in things like enrollment, athletics, academics, and even geography. That's really the best you're going to get at the D3 level. That's why you can have conferences like the WIAC and the NJAC that exist right alongside the NACC and GNAC.

There are 3 essential requirements to be D3 - must sponsor at least 5 sports for men and 5 for women(minus title IX requirements, thanks for the update!), you must not award athletic scholarships, and you can't use any pre-enrollment form. That is IT.

A big tent means that there is never going to be true equality, in athletics or academics and that's just how it is. So, you can see why schools may want to create a division IV, but at the end of the day, all of the schools decided on a very limited set of criteria for the division, and it certainly makes for a wild run of differences from top to bottom. Of course, everyone wants to give their student athletes a chance to compete for and win national championships, so I get why some schools want a Division IV.

With all of that said, D3 is currently pay to play, and the 400+ schools offer that in spades, so if the worst case outcome is that students get four more years playing sports they love, even if they're not winning titles, that seems like it's really fulfilling the stated athletic mission for the division.

Quote from: wabashcpa on September 10, 2025, 01:19:48 PMlast time Ohio State football lost to an in-state team

I'm not sure if the Ohio State Police count, but I seem to remember Ohio State football losing plenty to them over the years.

Quote from: IC798891 on September 08, 2025, 02:58:48 PMIs this in line with the ages this stuff should be getting introduced?

I'm too old to have played flag football competitively, but I started playing full tackle football age 8, and this is not that far off of the kind of stuff I remember. The information was presented a little less digitally in 1991, but the playbook contained a more dumbed down route tree in it (because we'd throw like 8 passes a game - it was 1991 after all). So my thought is to say...yes-ish.

But it could be more that the rules of flag football necessitates much more passing than running, and so this is really the core everything else builds on. 

Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on September 08, 2025, 08:42:38 AMor is it not unusual for a D3 school to beat an FCS school??

I not only think it's unusual to win, I think it's generally just unusual to even have them play. With that said, I also forgot that Hanover played Butler last year, and will be playing them this year.

Hanover 0 - Butler 53
Wabash 21 - Butler 47 (in 2023)
Depauw 24- Butler 49 (in 2021)

I think the Pioneer remains one of the only non-scholarship conferences in d1 (the Ivy being the other) but for OOC they're mostly scheduling d2 or NAIA teams in the Pioneer, while the Ivy generally schedules other local FCS teams.

Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on September 08, 2025, 08:42:38 AMWell, Adrian won vs. FCS Valpo, so congrats to them!

Good on them! Based on that sample I think we can conclude that the MIAA is superior to the Pioneer Conference. 

In the last 5 or so years both Wabash and Depauw played Butler, and both got boatraced. While I appreciate that all three schools used to have rivalries back in the 1970s, I do NOT like d3 teams scheduling d1, even the non-scholarship pioneer schools. The Pioneer schools made a choice to play at that level and not be really competitive nationally (or the MIAC kicked them out), so schedule at that level.

Other than making sure the players/fans get the full 10 games, I just don't think it adds anything.   

Quote from: WRMUalum13 on September 05, 2025, 09:57:08 AM

Quote from: BergAlum2 on September 04, 2025, 10:37:37 PMMarietta's defense still looks great,  Westminiter went nowhere until like their last drive of the first half, I have them as the #2 OAC team this year 

Breaks me to have to pay to watch my OAC games, got the subscription 5 minutes before kickoff

That game was free to watch through Westminster's website

I assume that as the OP was BergAlum he was referring to Heidelberg's game as the one that required a Flo subscription. I enjoyed watching the OAC games in years past in between NCAC games, so I'm going to enjoy these inter-conference games while I can get them for free.

If anyone else is headed up to SNC for tomorrow's game, I'll see you there! I like all of these games in Wisconsin. It makes seeing at least one Lil Giants game a year easy for me. Last year UWP and this year SNC. Let's go Wabash!

Quote from: y_jack_lok on August 21, 2025, 02:30:55 PMor people like me, who know virtually nothing about UW-P football

Well, for a starter they got the name of the school wrong, it's Platteville (with no s),in the title, but other than that, not terrible. The writing is...not great, but nothing a little human editing couldn't fix up.  

Quote from: Gregory Sager on August 12, 2025, 02:01:49 PMAnd don't you dare go even one mph over the speed limit if you have Illinois plates.

Yeah, in and around Madison where I live, the FIBs and the folks from Iowa speed demon down the belt line and get pulled over at a much higher clip than anyone with Wisconsin plates. It's unfair, but I feel like that goes both ways when you're in another state. When I was in grad school at Western Kentucky, there was always a KY state police officer on one side of the border, and an Indiana on the other, dying to pull over speeding motorists from out of state.

It's never too early to get excited for some football. As a Wisconsinite and a Wabash graduate I've been blessed to have my Little Giants playing in state the last two years. A buddy and I are planning on heading up to watch SNC vs WC. Anyone got any recommendations or thoughts for a first time visitor to SNC?

Also, fun note - I'm a graduate of UWSP as well, so for at least the first two weeks of this season I'll be rooting against the Green Knights, but after that I wish everyone in the NACC well. I'd love to see Aurora get some competition this year.