NCAA has posted the Muhlenberg/Union game on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/zIOD1wVfCns?si=wHyX3Bs5t8YRp03-

Quote from: UfanBill on November 25, 2025, 11:47:59 AM

Quote from: 8i Technique on November 25, 2025, 11:04:31 AM

Quote from: Ice Bear on November 22, 2025, 02:44:31 PMMulenberg moves on with a gritty impressive W against a never give up Union team. I am so proud of the way Union fought but in the end the fumble and int cost them. Muhlenberg made some big plays, capitalized on the Union mistakes, and made fewer overall mistakes today. They deserved to win and I am wholeheartedly rooting for the Mules next week. Absolutely no shame in losing to a great team and program in Muhlenberg.

I will say I was so disappointed as the entire game was unwatchable because of technical difficulties. Man that was frustrating but mistakes happen and overall I'm grateful I could at least follow the stats from start to finish.

Congrats to Muhlenberg on the win and Union on a great season!

An exciting game with 2 quality programs pushing each other to the limits.

Yes, the ESPN 'technical difficulty' page was woeful, but the stats updates kept us on the edge of our proverbial seats.

Hoping the Mules and the G-Chargers cross paths again in the very near future!

I'm not so forgiving as my good friend Ice Bear when it comes to responsibility for the streaming snafu. I know I wanted to watch the game, not just follow the live stats. I even emailed the Muhlenberg SID to get his take on what happened. While he was very apologetic he doesn't believe they did anything wrong on their end. At this point I still want to watch the game. The Mules SID says the video does exists but claims the rights to it are owned by ESPN. He vowed to contact them about releasing the replay. I know plenty of Union fans and especially player parents who would love to have access.

I feel like SIDs always deserve a little patience. They are all absurdly overworked and
understaffed.

On the other hand. I have zero tolerance for whomever in the Muhlenberg athletic department thinks providing a hallway with a few curtains counts as a "visitor's locker room." They should never get to host another playoff game unless and until that gets corrected.

Quote from: Bartman on November 23, 2025, 05:05:58 PM

Quote from: Jonny Utah on November 23, 2025, 04:22:12 PMWe might need to go to the top on this one.  ESPN is run by a Cornell grad.  They are owned by Disney who is run by an Ithaca (d3) grad. I will write an email to the top and get back to the LL board with the response. I expect nothing but the best on this one.

Jonny U.

Can you get us all free subscriptions, Disney Passes and any kind of free stuff as a refund?
Thanks , Bartman

Show no mercy in the negotiations.  If their offer doesn't include Goofy doing the coin toss at next year's Cortaca, tell them to pound sand. 

A tough way to end the year for Union. Heck of a football game to watch, and both teams battled hard. In the end, the difference was a two-minute stretch where the backup threw a deep pick that was returned to the 9, followed by a quick TD, on the one series Patch couldn't get on to the field. A lot of tough what-ifs with this one, but you've to turn the page.  It was a great year.

Having made the trip to Allentown, I was shocked by how poor the Mules' facilities were.  Bleachers seemed old and beat up, leaf debris all over the field, practice equipment piled up behind and around the visitors benches, and worst of all, the "visitors locker room" was just a hallway in their athletics building with some black curtain panels blocking off the ends.  A total joke. And a violation of the tournament hosting rules, I presume.  F*cking ridiculous.

Quote from: Former CAC Coach on November 22, 2025, 05:58:37 PM

Quote from: Pat Coleman on November 22, 2025, 02:55:35 PM

Quote from: UfanBill on November 22, 2025, 02:05:58 PM

Quote from: Pat Coleman on November 22, 2025, 01:53:53 PM

Quote from: UfanBill on November 22, 2025, 01:14:38 PMHalftime...Union 14 - Muhlenberg 14 ...ESPN has failed us. The media giant has bitten off more than they can chew.

These games are produced by the local schools. There's definitely a chance some of the issue is on ESPN's end, but it's probably the school's issue.

Then why would there be issues at multiple games? I've asked counselor/Mr. Mayor to start an investigation.

The ESPN broadcast requirements are different/higher than most D-III schools are really equipped to handle, and overworked SIDs are tasked with doing this on top of dealing with winter sports starting and all sorts of other things.

Pat - That may be true in some cases, but I was at the Muhlenberg/Union game and went up to the press box at halftime to find out what the streaming issues were (I kept getting calls from family saying they had no video or audio). The transmission problem was clearly on the ESPN side of things, as the folks had been in touch with ESPN and were aware of the issue.  On top of that, it was multiple games at multiple sites, so I don't buy the "it's a local D3 college technical (in)capability."   The NCAA needs to take ESPN to task and get it right for all games & all sites.  I realize this is D3 and ESPN probably doesn't give a hoot, but I doubt they will be refunding anyone's subscription .....

All of these schools have no problem streaming their games for every sport, more often than not for free, all year long.  This stuff happens because the NCAA never found something it didn't know how to f*ck up.  Rather than letting just stream how they always have, they put it behind an ESPN paywall, impose tech requirements schools have trouble meeting, and provide absolutely no help or support in meeting those requirements.  ESPN is a large, profitable broadcast network.  They know how to stream sh*t; it's their business.  I have zero doubt the problem here is an NCAA middleman who communicated poorly to all involved, provided no competent coordination or support, and probably didn't even answer the phone when there were problems - indeed, the person at the NCAA in charge of "coordinating" the school-to-ESPN connectivity is problem some 24-yard staffer who has no clue how any of it works.  This is the same NCAA that puts together a bracket where the selection head doesn't even know which seeds they're supposed to protect nor which schools can actually host. A total joke of an organization.

Patch had some kind of stomach bug, and was puking all over the sideline to start the second half. 

Quote from: CMU24 on November 19, 2025, 10:42:13 AM

Quote from: The Man on November 04, 2025, 07:39:15 PMIf you ever wonder what that sound is over here on the Centennial Conference Board...

Is it the sound of crickets 🦗
Or the sound of silence 🤫
Or the sound of domination 💪

Whatever you want to call it, there is only one cause - the Johns Hopkins University Blue Jays. 🏈

And they know that talk is cheap. All they do is win. 🏆

Not sure why you feel the need to post something like that "TheMan" but good luck to JHU as well as Muhlenberg and F&M. Would love to see the CC well represented and respected in the tournament.

Where did The Man go?  Much like the Jay's pass coverage on the last play Saturday, he seems to have disappeared.  Gotta love these six-post heroes.

Quote from: Machiavelli on November 18, 2025, 01:56:47 PMI was travelling and away all weekend so I haven't had the chance to recap the weekend. I listened to the first half of Cortaca, then the 4th quarter during the Shoes halftime. I think 1 thing that hurts the LL/E8 in rankings is that these rivalry games between top teams in Upstate NY seem to always be a coin flip, no matter how much better on paper one team is than the other. Any of the big 4 in the LL can always go either way. It's a different brand of football that I don't think exists in other parts of the country. The year RPI made it to the Final 4(2003), they got beaten pretty good by Hobart. 2022 Ithaca was 12-0 at one point, beat both RPI and Union by only 3, but blew everyone else out. 2022 Cortland was undefeated until Cortaca and got smoked by Ithaca. 2022 RPI beat IC/Union, and then very good Endicott and Cortland teams in the playoffs, but lost 10-9 to Hobart. I just don't think this parity with 'rivalry' teams exists elsewhere and it makes for great football, but low national ranks and respect. In a number of cases, our under-appreciated conferences do a little damage in the postseason. While I'm sure Ithaca and Union supporters were hopeful they could both beat RPI, I don't think anyone thought it would happen based on common results heading into those games, but anyone can win in these games every year.

As for the games themselves:

Cortaca
It seems to me at the end of the year, Ithaca may have been the best overall team in the LL, but they made the QB change too late. Their defense would likely give them an edge in the playoffs with the added offensive firepower. While Cortland had a few chances to pull it out, the IC defense came up huge in the 4th quarter. In the end, Cortland got a much more favorable playoff matchup than Union and COULD give JHU fits in Round 2(assuming they get there). Cortland still has the stank of playoff magic from 2 years ago, so it will be interesting how they perform.

Shoes
I was pretty livid about how RPI started. I couldn't watch, and I wasn't there, but I also heard there was some pretty lobsided officiating going on, though RPI just didn't come out of the locker room the same way Union did. Union definitely has a weapon in Flanagan. I fear it could be a little too 'one-trick pony-esque' against a team like Muhlenburg, but they definitely have a puncher's chance and hope they can win a game and continue to show that this league can compete with teams that seemingly get more national credit year in/year out... I had made mention of concerns about RPIs secondary from earlier the season. I called it out in the Buff St and Hilbert games. The problem is, during those games, while you may see it happen, it doesn't get exposed or as much attention as those games end up in blowouts.

I don't want this to sound like an excuse(though it will), because I think Union physically beat and outperformed RPI last weekend, but I can't help but wonder if RPIs schedule hurt them in the last 2 games. Breakdowns against Buff St and Hilbert didn't matter because it was like they were invincible against the competition, and maybe they got a little sloppy or lost some of their edge the minute Ithaca and Union smacked them in the mouth. And they didn't get their sh!t together until later in both games.

I give RPI a lot of credit for showing a lot of heart and never giving up the last 2 weeks. It turns out the offense wasn't as good as we thought they were(again based on some of their competition) and the secondary was exposed with all 3 losses this year. Hopefully it's a building block towards continued success next year, and hopefully they finish strong and beat the hell out of SJF. I also hope and expect Hobart to win handily.

Good luck to both Union and Cortland. While W's in the postseason only seem to skew reality in the moment, I still would love to see some success.

One last thing...Union still sucks, and I hope whoever owns the cowbells that I had to listen to the entire game had fender benders on the way home and needed the cowbells physically removed from their a$$ses.

I can't stand cowbells in the stands. I love that Ithaca bans them, and enforces it. It's almost always a mom. Yell and fry your vocal cords like a real fan, lady. 

It's interesting to see the standard post-bracket outrage at the NCAA's deviations from seeding and other principles to minimize travel costs and avoid flights.  I actually have a fair amount of sympathy for the NCAA. 

First, we're talking about a 40-team national tournament in a team sport with travel rosters of 60 guys.  Another way to think about it is gratitude that the NCAA is paying for flights at all.

Second, the NCAA has to grapple with two competing priorities.  One is to put the "best" teams in the tourney, seeded fairly.  The other is to limit costs.  Expanding the tournament makes this tension much more pronounced, because it makes it much more likely that geographical bubbles teams on the west coast and in Texas and the deep south will be included in the field. 

I looked back, and in the old days of regional brackets and a 16-team bracket, there was no more than one or two flights a year.  Occasionally a CA or TX school would qualify, and have to fly as long as it was in.  Even the semi-final matchups were almost always non-flights, because they paired East/South and Midwest/West. 

So, every time we expand the field, we make this problem worse.  And when we focus on getting the "best teams" in, regardless of region, we create more geographic disparities that lead to the same scheduling dilemmas (increased costs v. greater bracket fidelity).

I continue to think that the better way to reconcile the tension is to go back to four regional brackets, with the best ten teams in that region qualifying.  Sure, you'll still have to fly island teams, but you would get almost none of the other bracket shenanigans we see.  Yes, it's possible that would mean that Ithaca gets in over Coe when NPI or some other metric says Coe is better, but I don't care - anyone who tells you they can reliably discern that one of those schools is "better" than other (based on NPI, some other metric, "eye test") is full of crap; there aren't enough actual data points.  Within a region, where there is plenty of interplay and common competition, it's a lot easier to compare an Ithaca to a Utica to a Curry. 

I also see lots of complaining that the "two best teams" (Mount Union and NCC) would meet in the semis.  Again, who cares?  The goal is to crown a winner, not scientifically determine the first, second, third-best teams, etc.  Same thing when it comes to who hosts in the semis.

In the end, I think the NFL is a good comparison.  Every year, because of the AFC/NFC bracketing, we know we are not getting the best X teams in the league in the playoffs, and no thinks that's an injustice.  Similarly, it is only very rarely the case that the Super Bowl is played between the two "best" teams."  Again, no one thinks it's the end of the world.  The problem with D3 is we are pretending that we are trying to pick the best teams and seed them accordingly but then we're trying to save money, and so we make a mess of things.  I'd rather we divide all of D3F into four regions, put the best ten teams in each region (after accounting for AQs) in an honest bracket, and let the four winners square off in preordained pairs.  It would be at least as cost effective, and it would be objective and honest.

I was surprised by the Rochester score, too. They are hard to figure out, but I think they are getting better at a fundamental program level (depth, OL/DL line quality, etc.) each year.  One year they have to finally break out, I guess?

Excited that my Dutchmen get to play another week.  Muhlenberg's a fun first round matchup, and should be a good game between two pretty similar teams.  Heck of a job by Drach and the team leadership to immediately get the program back on track. 

Quote from: Jonny Utah on November 16, 2025, 10:17:33 AM

Quote from: unionpalooza on November 16, 2025, 09:53:55 AM

Quote from: Jonny Utah on November 16, 2025, 08:32:36 AM

Quote from: ICGrad on November 15, 2025, 06:53:40 PMAccording to the NPI playoff tracker, of the 13 at-large bids available this season, 6 will go to schools with 2 losses.

Ithaca, not even an honorable mention entering this weekend, ended 8-2 and 4 spots out of the final playoff spot. Their two losses were to the eventual LL champion, and to JHU, who entered the weekend with the #1 NPI but lost and ended #7.

Kind of have to wonder where Ithaca lands without Hilbert in the LL this season.

^ oh, and source for the above:

https://d3datacast.com/2025/11/09/2025-d3-football-playoff-npi-tracker/

Now this is actually important. 

Buffalo State in the league doesn't bother me as much because Ithaca might just play them anyway regardless of the conference, but Hilbert is probably a program that Ithaca would say "no thanks" to if Hilbert asked to play.  So that brings us to the question of what other OCC game would have impacted their SOS number.  Curry?  Bridgewater State again?  Endicott, Utica and Brockport are also possibilities but those aren't automatic wins either. 

I tried to throw in some random numbers in to some AI calculators and if Ithaca had scheduled and beaten Curry at home (they played there last year) instead of Hilbert, then Ithaca's NPI would be 65.8 instead of 63.2.  This would have put them at the 11th pool C spot and in the playoffs. 

If someone can confirm this either way please go ahead.  The numbers are the numbers on this one it appears.  I didn't factor in Curry's other game that would have been off the schedule (that Ithaca would have replaced) so not sure if AI factored that in.  It appeared that d3's datacast NPI page uses an embedded sheet that AI can't access easily so many of the calculations were estimates on what was available.

If this is right, than Hilbert 100% impacts the LL's pool C playoff spots.

You can see the full decomposition of Ithaca on Rossi's site: https://npi-gridiron-6dee1401.base44.app/publicteamdetail?team=Ithaca&season=2025&from=PublicTeamsRecords.

Because wins against both Hilbert and Buff St. would reduce Ithaca's NPI, they are excluded; thus, Ithaca's win/loss record for NPI's purposes is 6.2-2.2.  (The weird decimals are because NPI treat home/away wins/losses differently.)  If you had instead won a game against a team that about average relative to Ithaca's other countable games (NPI of ~55 - think TCNJ), your NPI win/loss record bumps up to 7.2-2.2, which is enough to boost your NPI ~1.2 points. (So, not quite the boost AI suggested.)

That would have been enough to make Ithaca the final Pool C bid this year.

That makes sense thank you.  But imagine Ithaca had two wins (looks like most top 25 teams had more) that don't even help you?  Those wins actually hurt Ithaca (and every other LL team who beat them). 

I guess there are other teams like Ithaca who could say the same.  Even Union played Morrisville State which doesn't count.

And another question.  Does beating Buffalo State by 22 points instead of 50 help Union or hurt them in terms of NPI? (EDIT it hurts them as like you said any NPI in a win less than that teams overall NPI isn't counted.....so does beating them by 200 matter?)

Yes, the more bad wins you can't count, the worse it is.  Union's NPI will make it a 10 seed; it's NPI W/L record is 5-2, because it had to drop Buff St., Hilbert and MoVille (because each actually lowers its NPI if included). The more of those games you replace with a decent team, the bigger the NPI boost.

On the Union-Buff St. score, doesn't matter, even if that game were included in Union's NPI.  NPI does not take margin of victory into account - it just looks at win, loss or tie (and whether you were home or away).

Quote from: Jonny Utah on November 16, 2025, 08:32:36 AM

Quote from: ICGrad on November 15, 2025, 06:53:40 PMAccording to the NPI playoff tracker, of the 13 at-large bids available this season, 6 will go to schools with 2 losses.

Ithaca, not even an honorable mention entering this weekend, ended 8-2 and 4 spots out of the final playoff spot. Their two losses were to the eventual LL champion, and to JHU, who entered the weekend with the #1 NPI but lost and ended #7.

Kind of have to wonder where Ithaca lands without Hilbert in the LL this season.

^ oh, and source for the above:

https://d3datacast.com/2025/11/09/2025-d3-football-playoff-npi-tracker/

Now this is actually important. 

Buffalo State in the league doesn't bother me as much because Ithaca might just play them anyway regardless of the conference, but Hilbert is probably a program that Ithaca would say "no thanks" to if Hilbert asked to play.  So that brings us to the question of what other OCC game would have impacted their SOS number.  Curry?  Bridgewater State again?  Endicott, Utica and Brockport are also possibilities but those aren't automatic wins either. 

I tried to throw in some random numbers in to some AI calculators and if Ithaca had scheduled and beaten Curry at home (they played there last year) instead of Hilbert, then Ithaca's NPI would be 65.8 instead of 63.2.  This would have put them at the 11th pool C spot and in the playoffs. 

If someone can confirm this either way please go ahead.  The numbers are the numbers on this one it appears.  I didn't factor in Curry's other game that would have been off the schedule (that Ithaca would have replaced) so not sure if AI factored that in.  It appeared that d3's datacast NPI page uses an embedded sheet that AI can't access easily so many of the calculations were estimates on what was available.

If this is right, than Hilbert 100% impacts the LL's pool C playoff spots.

You can see the full decomposition of Ithaca on Rossi's site: https://npi-gridiron-6dee1401.base44.app/publicteamdetail?team=Ithaca&season=2025&from=PublicTeamsRecords.

Because wins against both Hilbert and Buff St. would reduce Ithaca's NPI, they are excluded; thus, Ithaca's win/loss record for NPI's purposes is 6.2-2.2.  (The weird decimals are because NPI treat home/away wins/losses differently.)  If you had instead won a game against a team that about average relative to Ithaca's other countable games (NPI of ~55 - think TCNJ), your NPI win/loss record bumps up to 7.2-2.2, which is enough to boost your NPI ~1.2 points. (So, not quite the boost AI suggested.)

That would have been enough to make Ithaca the final Pool C bid this year.

Quote from: IC798891 on November 14, 2025, 11:19:32 AM

Quote from: unionpalooza on November 13, 2025, 03:57:54 PMYeah, this is a dumb take.  You took the worst four-year run in modern history of a team that was a founding member of the league and its predecessor going back to 1995, during which three decades it has had five losing seasons.  Buff St. is a football-only member that has nothing institutionally in common with the rest of the LL and has won seven games in its six years in the league.  Hilbert is a football-only member that has nothing institutionally in common with the rest of the LL and has won no games in its first four years. Neither school has recently demonstrated an institutional willingness to invest anything remotely comparable to the resources other LL teams invest in their program. They are both 90 minutes to the west of the farthest edge of the league's geographic footprint. Neither are needed for the LL to earn an AQ.

To put this another way, can you think of a single compelling reason that Buff State or Hilbert SHOULD be in the LL?

You guys (all of you complaining about this) don't want to boot Buffalo State because they're not a "good fit" for the LL and they're an outlier geographically.

You want to boot them because they're bad and it's easier to blame Buffalo State being bad for the lack of Pool C bids than it is to blame your own teams for losing winnable out of conference games.

Okay, so what happens if Union, or Ithaca, or RPI start being lousy and Buffalo State gets better? How bad is bad enough? How long does it have to last?

I know we're all off scoffing at that idea because uh...well... come on bro, but no one's immune to being terrible, and no one is prohibited from hiring the right coach and fixing their program.

I want to boot them for all of the above; there are many cons and no pros to their being associate members.  Unless your primary goal is a game you can win by 50+ points, you could instead schedule a nonconference game against any one of the 90 or so other R1/R2 teams, and you could literally do no worse, and in almost every case, better. As associate members, they make no more sense than Maine Maritime, Norwich or Fitchburg State.  Maybe we should make scheduling even easier and fold those guys into the league as associate members too?

 

It's funny, no game really stands out, though I think the best overall playoff run has got to be 2003 RPI.  Only LL team to every reach the national semis, I think (at least during the LL era).  The middle years are interesting - four games against Mt. Union in eight years, three of them first round matchups.

Quote from: IC798891 on November 13, 2025, 12:06:51 PM

Quote from: ICGrad on November 12, 2025, 02:32:58 PMThat doesn't mean I think it's a good idea, long-term, watering down the LL brand with the inclusion of Hilbert. We now have not one, but two associate members in football, and both are, to put it mildly, bottom feeders - or to be more scientific, both are bottom 30 (out of 240) programs. That only significantly weakens the league, and hurts the standing of each and every team in the league.

There's a certain level of irony in people complaining about LL teams missing the playoff as an at-large when the conference has shown, repeatedly, an inability to beat playoff caliber teams — and even fringy non playoff teams.

Replacing an 0-10 Hilbert with some 6-4/5-5 type team may get the job done in terms of fooling the computers and earning a bid. But it's not changing my mind about the quality of the league.

And if Ithaca/Union/RPI can't beat Utica, Cortland, or Susquehanna, why should we think replacing Hilbert with, Grove City or W&J is going to result in a win?

Also, to continue with a point I made earlier.

Records from 2013-2016:

St. Lawrence - 32-9
Buffalo State - 25-17
Ithaca - 25-18
Union - 8-32

Heck, even RPI, who isn't included here, went through a stretch where they had a different head coach every 6 weeks*

*Okay, it wasn't that bad, but still
 
Treating these "bottom feeders" like they're a permanent underclass is really baffling to me.

Yeah, this is a dumb take.  You took the worst four-year run in modern history of a team that was a founding member of the league and its predecessor going back to 1995, during which three decades it has had five losing seasons.  Buff St. is a football-only member that has nothing institutionally in common with the rest of the LL and has won seven games in its six years in the league.  Hilbert is a football-only member that has nothing institutionally in common with the rest of the LL and has won no games in its first four years. Neither school has recently demonstrated an institutional willingness to invest anything remotely comparable to the resources other LL teams invest in their program. They are both 90 minutes to the west of the farthest edge of the league's geographic footprint. Neither are needed for the LL to earn an AQ.

To put this another way, can you think of a single compelling reason that Buff State or Hilbert SHOULD be in the LL?