Quote from: cuyahogacuse on November 25, 2025, 08:00:55 PMLatest forecast for Saturday in Waverly:

28° | 3-5" of snow

Who does this favor?

My weather app says 7-1/2" and 19 mph winds.

Who does this favor? My God's honest answer is "the team that wants it more." I don't think there's much more to it than that in terms of scheme, style of play, analytics, or what-have-you. It's going to be miserable, and the team who wants to stay miserable for longer is going to win.

I remember the UWL game in Waverly a couple years ago that was single digit temps. Wartburg's guys were hooting & hollering on the sideline, and UWL's guys were all huddled up in their sideline jackets. If this team has the same mentality as that Wartburg team, they'll be alright.

Quote from: hazzben on November 24, 2025, 05:23:35 PMIntersting matchup since while Wheaton is balanced, their strength isn't rushing, which negates a little of Wart's edge.

Wartburg's rush defense has the better stats, but I don't know if I would say the rush D is "better" than the pass D - it's just the nature of the defense (and teams have stopped even trying to run on them). I wouldn't be surprised if they have the lowest average depth of target against in the country, and they are second in the country in yards per reception allowed (8.6 yards/rec, UChicago is at 8.5 yards/rec). They're very, very good at perimeter tackling and preventing completions beyond 10 yards.

Quote from: doolittledog on November 17, 2025, 07:41:59 PMWith that information being almost 20 years old, I would be curious to know what typical HC or coordinator pay in the conference is these days.

This is 2023 data from the US Dept of Ed for all sports (not just football). This also only includes salaries paid directly via athletics. I know a lot of schools offset coaching salaries by having the coaches wear a lot of different hats in the offseason (teaching courses, administrative/managerial roles, etc.), and income from those sources aren't included in this data.

Institution_______	Avg HC Salary_	Avg Asst Salary_	Football Expenses_
Buena Vista	$48,385	$15,846	$425,052
Central	$53,390	$11,341	$454,055
Coe	$39,577	$8,585	$798,807
Dubuque	$64,178	$33,911	$574,264
Loras	$37,157	$10,678	$604,267
Luther	$38,144	$16,795	$554,695
Neb. Wesleyan	$49,304	$8,385	$387,039
Simpson	$38,458	$12,417	$572,205
Wartburg	$37,581	$13,641	$519,083

One thing I learned by perusing this data this morning was that Wartburg has 11 assistant wrestling coaches and "only" 10 assistants for football.

Quote from: FishHack76 on November 13, 2025, 11:26:44 AMDePauw at Wheaton

Quote from: FishHack76 on November 13, 2025, 11:26:44 AMWabash at Monmouth

There's no way DePauw and Wabash both make the field. Swap in a 4th WIAC school in that place (assuming UWW wins vs. UWO).

If DePauw or Wabash makes the field, they'll also be 7 or 8 seeds better than Wheaton, and will be one of the teams in line for a first round bye (the winner of Wabash/DePauw will get a good NPI boost when they win this week). DePauw is also one of the very few teams who can drive to Berry (Hanover and LaGrange being the other two). I suspect there is at least a chance they end up in that pod. Wabash cannot drive to Berry.

Another domino is the Central/Coe game. If Coe makes the field instead of Central, they'll probably be in one of the pigtail games, whereas Central would likely get a first round bye.

Quote from: Schipper Strong on November 08, 2025, 04:59:46 PMBoth starting QBs injured and out for the second half.

I didn't notice this... Any idea on their status for Coe?

Quote from: Schipper Strong on November 06, 2025, 01:31:48 AMThe teams that you would think would be easier aren't.

I'd like to say this is because the teams in the bottom half have gotten better, but the non-conference results don't bear that out.

35-0 BVU loss to Benedictine?
20-13 Loras loss to Benedictine?
62-0 Loras loss to Hope?
33-3 Luther loss to Millikin?
34-0 Luther loss to Martin Luther?

NWU's non-con was OK against a couple respectable-to-good NAIA teams, but it was still 0-2. The only non-conference win from that cohort, BVU>Wisconsin Lutheran, isn't anything to write home about.

Quote from: Pat Coleman on November 05, 2025, 10:55:42 AM

Quote from: Trin9-0 on November 05, 2025, 09:48:14 AMPat, what are your way too early thoughts on the likelihood of a NESCAC team earning an at large bid in 2026 and beyond?

I think I talked about it here last offseason -- basically any NESCAC team that finished with one loss or fewer should get a bid, whether it's the AQ or an at-large. With no non-conference games, and just nine games, I'm not as sure about a 7-2 NESCAC team -- doesn't look super likely.

It'll also depend on how the WP/SOS/QWB dials get adjusted. As they are right now, any team with 1 loss is going to be >99% to get in (it would take a historical anomaly in terms of exceeding the usual number of 1-loss teams nationally and the number of teams with 2+ losses winning conference AQs), and any team with 2 losses would be <1% to get in (it would take a historical anomaly in the opposite direction).

Quote from: MediaGuy on November 04, 2025, 07:43:38 PMhttps://share.google/images/K3B1Wrrp0ZpePoIAE

This is the generally accepted chart that most coaches follow.

Man... I have some major issues with that chart. Other than the obvious ones - going for 2 if you're down by 5 or 2 (to either go down by a FG or to tie) or going for 2 if you're up by 1 or 5 (to go up by 3 or 7), going for 2 if you're down by 8 late is the clearest positive value decision you can make.

You don't need fancy math for this to make sense. Assume field goals are a 100% proposition, 2pt tries are 50-50, and winning in overtime is 50-50 (close enough to accurate for this to work, but it doesn't really matter). Assuming you score 2 TDs (otherwise none of this matters):

PAT + PAT = 50% to win, pending OT
PAT + 2PT = 50% to win, pending 2pt try
In either scenario, you have a 50% chance to win

2PT(convert) + PAT = 100% to win
2PT(fail) + 2PT(convert) = 50% to win, pending OT
2PT(fail) + 2PT(fail) = 0% to win
(50% convert x 100% win) + {50% fail x [(50% convert x 50% win) + (50% fail x 0% win)]} = 62.5% win

In the latter option, where you go for 2 first, you have the information advantage of knowing if you convert your 2 pt try earlier. If you only have time for 2 possessions, you want to get that information as soon as possible. You're playing with the goal of winning the game. Not with the goal of going to OT.

Here's a comparison of that chart from Tennessee and two charts made by fivethirtyeight and ESPN analytics. The latter two used different methodologies to come up with extremely similar results:



Here's the full chart and link to the 538 analysis:



Here's the chart and link for ESPN's analysis:

Quote from: DriftlessDuhawk on November 03, 2025, 09:26:27 PMif you are down 14 points late in a football game that upon scoring a TD you should go for two.

Driftless gets it.

Quote from: Schipper Strong on November 01, 2025, 08:28:29 PMWartburg must have still been riding a high from beating Central last week. Clearly Coach Winter had a good halftime talk for that.

Coach Winter talked about this on the local radio show before going out to Lincoln this week, but Wartburg has started slow on the road all season, but they've been great in the first half at home. It's been even more apparent because most of the toughest opponents have been at home - you'd think jumping out to a great start against teams like Luther or NWU wouldn't be harder than Dubuque or Central

Scoring Margin on the Road
1st Half +22 | 2nd Half +85

Scoring Margin at Home
1st Half +59 | 2nd Half +6

Quote from: Fannosaurus Rex on October 28, 2025, 02:30:32 PMI will defend the time-outs by noting that five yards are too hard to get against Wartburg so you don't want to give them up to a delay of game penalty. It is much harder to defend not being able to get the right people on the field and a play called in the allotted time. It looked to me like Central was the team with the big game jitters. It is not what this old fan is used to seeing.

It's considerably harder to gain five yards with 0:00 on the scoreboard than it is at any other point in the game.

Quote from: Schipper Strong on October 27, 2025, 03:53:26 PMCongratulations to Wartburg on the win Saturday. Once again you were the better prepared team. 😢 Central did not seem to have either an offensive or defensive game plan which was very disappointing. It doesn't seem like we are able to make in game adjustments either. We made good adjustments at the half against UD, Loras and Wartburg, but we can't seem to adjust on the fly.

I am sure this is one of those "you can't win no matter what you do" situations and I have never played football, so those of you with game experience can give me your thoughts. Why when you are down 21-0 do you go for a field goal instead of the TD? To me it says we do not want to get shut out instead of we want to win. Then why do you do it a second time wheni  down 21-3? Yes, I know we made it and added a TD to get the game to 8 points, but you can't really expect that Wartburg won't score again.

I actually think 28-13 wasn't a disastrous outcome and give the players credit for that. I did not catch that our leading receiver was injured in the second quarter, but that is part of the game. I was just giving Wartburg too much credit for keeping him extremely well covered. Right now Central has to step it up just to get by a surging Simpson and a very tough Coe team.

The first field goal was on 4th & 14. You're stuck in a pretty rough spot there, even if you wanted to be aggressive. You're going to need 4 scores to win no matter what (3 scores to tie), so that attempt was defensible. The second field goal, on a 4th & 4 from the 8 yard line, was quite a bit less defensible. You're down by 3 scores, and you kick a field goal to end up still down by 3 scores?

Much less defensible than those field goal decisions was the timeout usage by Central in the second half. They used two timeouts on 3rd downs in the 3rd quarter, both while they were still down by 3 scores. You might need those later. The last timeout might have been the worst of the bunch, though. Down by 15 with under 4 minutes left, and calling a timeout to discuss your playcall for a 4th down? You have the ball... you cannot waste your timeouts in that situation when you are in control of the play clock. You have to save them for when the other team is in control of the play clock.

Quote from: DriftlessDuhawk on October 21, 2025, 06:50:21 PMimmediately got pressure on each play

This amuses to me, because I watched the first half and thought, "They're not getting pressure as much as they usually do."

The front four's ability to pressure QBs, even on 1-step (what we used to call 3-step) drops is the biggest difference between last year and this year. Teams have kind of known for a couple years now that the "don't even try to run" plan is your best bet against this D. Simpson has done it the last couple years (more successfully last year than this year), as has Central. Simpson last year ran the ball 13 times and dropped back 69 times.

Quote from: MediaGuy on October 20, 2025, 05:52:16 PM

Quote from: doolittledog on October 20, 2025, 05:00:23 PMSort of off topic for the current season.  But...any new rumors or news for potential new conference members in the near future?

Around the time that Luther announced their departure, I saw somewhere that Monmouth and Northwestern St Paul were names mentioned, but not in any official capacity...from a travel perspective, possibly Augustana would be an interesting invite

I think that was from me. I had a source that told me those two had both officially previously petitioned the conference for membership, but no word on whether they were the top candidates from the ARC's perspective. I believe DriftlessDuhawk mentioned that a "travel partner" would be a sticking point among the "Olympic sports" for adding a school outside the current footprint, so adding someone like Northwestern without a travel partner seems unlikely. Monmouth isn't bad for travel. The Dubuque & CR schools can get there in ~2 hours, and Wartburg/Central/Simpson can get there in 3-1/2 ish. BVU and NWU, though...

Quote from: DriftlessDuhawk on October 15, 2025, 08:00:52 PMthe ability to have 11 18-22 year olds all doing their jobs correctly on almost every single play

It takes (1) the depth to be able to plug in someone else if a kid isn't doing their job, and (2) coaches willing to actually play a "less talented" player who does their job every play. Once the "talented" kids start seeing people get practice reps/playing time for doing their job every play, they understand pretty quickly that they need to get in line.

I've coached at at several different schools by now, and have been places where coaches are very much not willing to hold themselves to the second point, or even worse (IMO), they'll have a "stud" who freestyles every few plays, but it works out every now & then for a great play, and the coaches convince themselves that "I can't bench him! Look at these amazing plays he makes."

I'll also say, breaking down film against Wartburg (as I did as a GA at UWP before our scrimmages) was a breeze. You could just watch the first step of every clip and know what they were running (granted, I had pre-existing knowledge of the schemes...).