Quote from: Dave 'd-mac' McHugh on May 13, 2019, 09:23:44 PM
Wow ... finally listened to someone who said basically what others said. Phew.

I tend to listen more to people who are not condescending and don't try to make it personal.  I should hasten to add that listening does not necessarily imply agreement. 

Quote from: sncsid on May 09, 2019, 03:15:14 PM

Quote from: GK79 on May 09, 2019, 01:29:40 PM

Quote from: sncsid on May 09, 2019, 11:32:13 AM
I would say anywhere within a 500-mile radius of De Pere is in play since that is what the NCAA uses to determine busing/flights. I will point out that this past weekend's trip has been on the schedule since this time last year, so it was not a surprise to any of the players. As you know, time management is a key life skill acquired for student-athletes. Not everyone has finals on Monday as well. They are staggered throughout the week.

But this example is a big reason to move to the NACC - so we don't have to do this sort of thing anymore, or at least far less of it. In baseball for example there will be 24 NACC games. If the MWC ever went to full round-robin play in baseball who is to say St. Norbert wouldn't be playing at Illinois College the day before finals start? In the near future that will no longer be a potential hazard.

Well stated. 

Thanks for answering my question.  I would like to think that, while anywhere within a 500 mile radius is in play,  round trips approaching 1000 miles on the weekend before finals are not optimal and closer options would be preferable if they exist.  Perhaps that is a given. 

Quote from: sncsid on May 09, 2019, 11:32:13 AMAs for your last comment, I will repeat that football was not a driver in this move. This was done with the whole of the program in mind - almost 600 student-athletes. You may not believe that, but that is your choice.

Fair enough.  I still wrestle with the stated rationale given the frequency with which it has been subordinated when it comes to non-conference scheduling, combined with the fact that not all student athletes are making these trips to the far flung reaches of the MWC each year given the divisional alignment in several sports.  Perhaps as NACC membership plays out, that will change.

I agree closer non-conference options are preferred, but not always possible. And sometimes you want to give your athletes a different experience or have them compete close(r) to an athlete's hometown (track and cross country going to Lower Michigan due to the Tarsa sisters, for example). You don't want to get too rote in your scheduling to the point you are perceived as boring. It does impact recruiting.

As I mentioned in my first post, I would rather have scheduled UW-Stout this past weekend for baseball but never heard back, so we had to go to Decatur. Not ideal, but if we had qualified for MWC Tournament it wouldn't have been good to have not played at all last weekend, either.

Congrats to SNC on winning the MWC All Sports Award for both men and women. 

Quote from: sncsid on May 09, 2019, 11:32:13 AM
I would say anywhere within a 500-mile radius of De Pere is in play since that is what the NCAA uses to determine busing/flights. I will point out that this past weekend's trip has been on the schedule since this time last year, so it was not a surprise to any of the players. As you know, time management is a key life skill acquired for student-athletes. Not everyone has finals on Monday as well. They are staggered throughout the week.

But this example is a big reason to move to the NACC - so we don't have to do this sort of thing anymore, or at least far less of it. In baseball for example there will be 24 NACC games. If the MWC ever went to full round-robin play in baseball who is to say St. Norbert wouldn't be playing at Illinois College the day before finals start? In the near future that will no longer be a potential hazard.

Well stated. 

Thanks for answering my question.  I would like to think that, while anywhere within a 500 mile radius is in play,  round trips approaching 1000 miles on the weekend before finals are not optimal and closer options would be preferable if they exist.  Perhaps that is a given. 

Quote from: sncsid on May 09, 2019, 11:32:13 AMAs for your last comment, I will repeat that football was not a driver in this move. This was done with the whole of the program in mind - almost 600 student-athletes. You may not believe that, but that is your choice.

Fair enough.  I still wrestle with the stated rationale given the frequency with which it has been subordinated when it comes to non-conference scheduling, combined with the fact that not all student athletes are making these trips to the far flung reaches of the MWC each year given the divisional alignment in several sports.  Perhaps as NACC membership plays out, that will change.

Quote from: sncsid on May 08, 2019, 02:15:27 PM
I've sat and watched this verbal jousting over St. Norbert's move to the NACC for the better part of a month and feel compelled to chime in at this time...

I will address this past weekend's baseball scheduling, since I was the person who originally arranged it to help out then-coach Tom Winske with scheduling. St. Norbert had the bye in the MWC North this past weekend. Whenever our bye falls, the baseball program's scheduling philosophy has been to try and schedule the WIAC team with the corresponding bye, and if that fails try the CCIW's corresponding bye. I emailed UW-Stout last spring and didn't get a response. Which meant my next email was to the Millikin coach, who immediately agreed to a three-game series. A good weekend of competition. If Carroll or Carthage had the bye instead of Millikin, I would have reached out there as well. No one wants to be idle an entire weekend.

Fast forward to last week; Millikin needed to cancel the Sunday game of the series to play a makeup CCIW doubleheader with North Central. No problem. Mike Wallerich then worked the phones and Blackburn agreed to play us twice on Sunday. Heavy rain at Blackburn on Saturday rendered its field unplayable. To Blackburn's credit, its coach secured the field at MacMurray to get the games in. Whenever you have an entire weekend off, you are fortunate to find an opponent, and you take what you can get. During St. Norbert's bye weekend in 2020 we are playing UW-Platteville in a three-game series. More good competition. In the end, filling out your schedule takes two to tango.

I am not going to address football being the driver of the move or other veiled innuendo thrown around on here, since it is so baseless it doesn't even merit this much of a response.

So good of you to chime in.

I surmise from your handle that you are the SID.  I admire your work over the years.  Really.

I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Greg.  It's the one that he didn't bother to answer.  It's pretty simple, really.  How far is too far to travel on the weekend before finals?  In this particular case, the SNC baseball squad traveled 800+ miles round trip, plus they played in four games. 

Assuming that the players returned to campus Sunday night to take whatever finals they might have that week and that no special accommodations were made, how far is too far to travel to "take what you can get?" Obviously, we know that roughly 800 miles is acceptable in your book to get four non-con games in two days.  What wouldn't be acceptable?

As for my assertion about football being the driver at SNC, as SID you have to say it's baseless.  I get that.  What you likely can't publicly admit to is the reality that football and other sports don't all have the exact same amount of internal clout/political capital within the college community in general and the SNC athetic department in particular.

Quote from: WW on May 08, 2019, 11:00:19 AM

NACC is a competitively worse football conference than the MWC, per Hansen, although the MWC is just one place ahead.

Interesting.

In 2018, here are the head to head results between the two conferences:

SNC 16, Aurora 7
Eureka 49, Knox 24
Lake Forest 38, Wisconsin Lutheran 30
Concordia Chicago 36, Beloit 10

So you have the top school in the MWC in a low scoring contest with a team that tied for second in the NACC.  You also have arguably two of the least competitive schools, Concordia and Beloit, in each conference playing each other with the NACC school winning handily.  The previous year, you had Benedictine, the second place finisher in the NACC, spanking SNC which was the second best school in the MWC that year by a score of 29-7 at SNC.

I understand that Hansen crunches lots of stats from all schools in the conferences, and that this is just a snapshot, but I still think it is interesting.  It's also interesting that Eureka, the top conference in the NACC last year, beat Knox 49-24 in the opening game, while SNC shut Knox out by a score of 34-0 just three weeks later. 

As for your argumentative masturbation comment, 

Quote from: Gregory Sager on May 07, 2019, 01:30:08 PM
Wow. You really don't know how D3 baseball works, do you? Everyone in D3 -- with the exception of a few schools that have extremely eccentric academic calendars (e.g., the University of Chicago, which starts in late September and runs into June) -- plays baseball into the runup week before finals week, into finals week and commencement themselves, or beyond finals and commencement. My alma mater, North Park, has to schedule a separate commencement ceremony for its eleven senior student-athletes on the baseball team this week, because the CCIW's baseball tournament is this coming weekend and the Vikings may still be playing when the school's commencement ceremony is held on Saturday morning. I'm 100% positive that other schools do the same thing. The typical process in D3 is for a school's athletic department and faculty to work together to accommodate baseball (and, to a lesser degree, softball and t&f) in order to allow student-athletes who have to compete and/or travel to take their finals and/or receive their diplomas.

Wow.  You really are fond of the straw man argument aren't you?   My argument has nothing to do with with conference tournaments or commencement ceremonies or with playing baseball in the runup to finals week.  It has everything to do with scheduling four non-conference games over 400 miles away in the two days preceding the beginning of finals week.  Tell me, Greg, how far away would be too far for SNC to schedule four non-conference games on the weekend before finals?  1000 miles round trip?  No limit?  At what point do you abandon your argument and start thinking that maybe an 800+ miles round trip plus four non-con baseball games in the two days prior to the beginning of finals is not in the best interest of these student athletes?

Quote from: Gregory Sager on May 07, 2019, 01:30:08 PMAnd what I'm telling you is that you're arguing from ignorance with regard to the specifics of D3 baseball. This is how D3 baseball has to operate in order to function. What's more, there's no weight behind your point in the context of non-conference travel. St. Norbert is moving from the MWC to the NACC, and the four games that the Green Knights played last weekend were against a CCIW team and a SLIAC team. In other words, Mike Wallerich would do the exact same thing by late-scheduling Millikin and Blackburn for non-conference games in 2020 if he gets put in the same position. And last year he would've done the same thing as well. It has nothing to do with league affiliation. It's about getting in enough games where you can, when you can.

Again with the straw man argument.  League affiliation has very little to do with what I'm talking about in these last couple of posts.  It's the travel and time away from campus on the two days before finals begin. Again, how far is too far to get in enough games where and when you can?  The fact that these are non-con games we are talking about make it marginally worse in my estimation.  It's not like SNC had to schedule these games to play a full conference slate for conference tournament qualifying and seeding purposes.

Quote from: GK79 on May 07, 2019, 11:57:47 AM
Well, to put it bluntly, what you think is wrong. You don't know how D3 baseball works, and you don't know the history behind how D3 athletics departments and faculties have always developed work-arounds for the specific issues that baseball brings up, vis-a-vis the academic calendar. 

Perhaps I am not a D3 guru like you.  But, I am not wrong about SNC prioritizing getting those last four distant non-con games scheduled over any concern for their students being away from campus for as long as they were on the weekend before finals.  What is it if not prioritizing?

Quote from: GK79 on May 07, 2019, 11:57:47 AMI've had arguments that have lasted for up to a week, or even a week and a half on occasion. Never one that's gone on for an entire month. And never one like this, in which it seems as though the person with whom I'm arguing just doesn't pick up at all on any of the evidence that has been laid out for him by multiple posters.

I picked it all up, considered it, and don't agree with it.  Am I just howling in the wind here?  Perhaps.  I think it's a hoot, though, that your knickers are all in a twist that I don't just accept as gospel all that you and others have to say on this issue.

Quote from: GK79 on May 07, 2019, 11:57:47 AM... and that's the other shoe that we've all been waiting for you to drop. Why do you smell a cover-up? What is your basis for thinking that such a cover-up exists, aside from your travel-distance theories that have already been disproven? If you're so strongly inclined to think that SNC launched a disinformation campaign to conceal other reasons for moving from the MWC to the NACC that you've carried this on now for a month, then what exactly is it that you suspect that SNC is concealing? 

Ah, now it gets juicy.  But, first of all, I don't smell a cover up or a disinformation campaign. 

I think that the travel and time away from campus argument would be a fine argument for SNC to use IF they didn't do things like they did this past weekend by sending their baseball team on a 800+ miles round trip to play four non-con baseball games over the two days prior to the beginning of finals.  I'm still mystified as to why you can't see how this flies in the face of their conference switching rationale REGARDLESS of the idiosyncracies of scheduling etc.  If you don't see it, then I again ask how far would be too far before you started to think otherwise? 

What I do smell is a red herring of sorts with respect to the SNC distance and time argument.  I think that, once football playing Carroll announced they were leaving the MWC, that started the countdown for SNC to jump as well.  In my opinion, football is still very much in the athletics dept driver's seat at SNC.  With declining participation in football at the high school level, I think that SNC might have some concerns regarding the state of football within the MWC.  Grinnell and Beloit come to mind as schools with particularly small football rosters compared to that of SNC.  SNC is beating those two schools by crazy lopsided scores.  I think that it is reasonable for SNC to want better games, even from the least competitive schools in its conference.

Of course, IF the previous paragraph is true or closer to true than false, then SNC can't say that for public consumption.  They can't even hint at it.  Which would make the distance and time away from campus rationale a convenient primary rationale.

I appreciate your explanation, and it certainly makes sense on a number of levels.  Where it makes less sense to me is when that explanation is viewed in light of the stated reasons that SNC has provided for their conference move.  Where it makes zero sense to me is to do all that wonderful scheduling in south central Illinois over the two days prior to the beginning of finals week. 

From the FAQ document posted on the athletics page of the SNC website:  "Even more than missed class time, the time spent away from campus hinders our students' ability to have quality study time, meaningful recovery time, or simply participate in other campus activities."

I'm not arguing the scheduling brilliance of getting four games in one weekend relatively close to each other.  What I am arguing is scheduling them over 400 miles away from campus on the weekend before final exams, given the rationale the college has provided for making this move to a new conference. 

I think you think that somehow this scheduling brilliance is such stroke of genius that it renders the college's stated rationale to be moot or less important.  What I think is that the baseball team prioritized those four games over the college's stated concern that "the time spent away from campus hinders our students' ability to have quality study time, meaningful recovery time, or simply participate in other campus activities" on the weekend before final exams.  If that's the case, then how important can the stated rastionale be if it is so easily suborndinated?

Obstinateness?  Obtuseness?  Gimme a break.  I'm simply arguing a point.  Perhaps you are used to people here immediately backing down when targeted by your argumentative prowess, but I'm not apologizing for keeping the argument going.

I have no personal axe to grind.  In fact, it has been you and a couple of others who have tried to make it personal with a face palming image, calling me obstinate, obtuse, desperate, etc.  I have not responded in kind.

I've even warmed to the idea of SNC moving to the NACC from the standpoint of improved competition from the top tier conference teams in most sports.  I certainly have no axe to grind with SNC, but I do feel that there is more to this story than just distance and time spent away from campus.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on May 06, 2019, 10:59:38 AM

Forgot to mention that finals start today at SNC.



It's amazing to me how easily and willingly you folks accept the rationale that SNC is offering for this move when there are so many examples that contradict their rationale.

Quote from: sncdangler on April 21, 2019, 01:33:16 PM
I don't consider your examples random. I consider them outliers, chosen out of argumentative desperation, that do little to support your argument. And you didn't provide better, closer options than the outliers you provided that served the same competitive purpose. I won't speak for anyone at SNC but it seems pretty logical to me that you go south to Rose-Hulman in mid-March because no one any closer offers an outdoor track meet in that time window. Kansas Relays is a prestigious meet that I doubt draws more than a couple high-performing individuals from SNC, hardly a whole team. Scratch your head over that all you want. It's common sense. Doesn't seem to be much of that in this rabbit hole....

Other than the trips to the "big" meets to (I assume) face good competition, self-funded (again I assume) spring break trip and the indoor conference meet, St. Norbert is taking one trip out of state to Rose-Hulman to get in an early outdoor track meet when most of Wisconsin is still under a blanket of snow. With irresponsible scheduling like this I can see why they want to leave the MWC to save money. 

Over this past weekend, the Green Knights baseball team travelled 863 miles roundtrip to face two non-conference opponents from south-central Illinois; Millikin in Decatur and Blackburn College in Jacksonville.  More outliers, rabbit holes and argumentative desperation for you.   

Good thing they're changing conferences to save travel money and time away from campus for their student athletes.   

Quote from: sncdangler on April 21, 2019, 01:33:16 PM
Other than the trips to the "big" meets to (I assume) face good competition, self-funded (again I assume) spring break trip and the indoor conference meet, St. Norbert is taking one trip out of state to Rose-Hulman to get in an early outdoor track meet when most of Wisconsin is still under a blanket of snow. With irresponsible scheduling like this I can see why they want to leave the MWC to save money. 

You forgot the indoor meet at Rose-Hulman earlier this year.

Quote from: WW on April 17, 2019, 01:57:19 PM
Can't say I've often seen such a committed demonstration of one's own willful ignorance. Tip of the cap to ya, GK.

https://www.d3hockey.com/notables/2014-15/141025-st-norbert-vs-wisconsin-the-game-that-wasnt

Perhaps SNC should just make the jump to D1 instead of the NACC.   

Quote from: GK79 on April 14, 2019, 06:20:16 PM
I didn't go to Google maps for the drive times, but I did discover that there are 20 coed D3 schools (22 women's programs) in the state of Wisconsin, plus several NAIA schools. 

Perhaps I should have mentioned D1 schools in WI as potential NC opponents for SNC.  https://www.snc.edu/athletics/pressrelease/5078/

Quote from: WW on April 16, 2019, 11:31:55 AM
I don't consider your examples random. I consider them outliers, chosen out of argumentative desperation, that do little to support your argument. And you didn't provide better, closer options than the outliers you provided that served the same competitive purpose. I won't speak for anyone at SNC but it seems pretty logical to me that you go south to Rose-Hulman in mid-March because no one any closer offers an outdoor track meet in that time window. Kansas Relays is a prestigious meet that I doubt draws more than a couple high-performing individuals from SNC, hardly a whole team. Scratch your head over that all you want. It's common sense. Doesn't seem to be much of that in this rabbit hole.

Of course those examples are outliers.  For most sports, most NC opponents are outliers in that they make up a small percentage of the overal schedule.  And, of course, I specifically identified the furthest outliers to bolster my argument.  Why shouldn't I?  Had I mentioned all those NC trips to the Twin Cities area, you (and others) likely would have claimed that those examples were weak because they were not far enough to bolster my argument.

I did refer to closer options when I mentioned some 20+ D3 schools within the state of Wisconsin alone that do not already belong to the MWC. 

Your Rose-Hulman example makes some sense.  So, why, then, does SNC also go that far in the dead of winter  (mid-January) for an indoor meet?

Quote from: Pat Coleman on April 15, 2019, 04:52:20 PM
GK79, you've cherry-picked out a couple of super random events here that aren't super indicative of anything, let alone what you are trying to make them sound like.

Cherry picked?  Random events?  I thought I was providing examples to buttress my argument.  How many more events would I need to find before they are no longer random?

For several reasons, I feel the stated reason for this move is a red herring for something else. 

The first of which is their non-conference scheduling.  If travel time and money is such a concern for them as members of the MWC, it just seems to me that they are going farther than they have to in order to play in NC games and contests.  I provided examples of that, but apparently, they are not enough for you to be considered anything other than random.

Second, only a relative handful of SNC athletes will actually travel more than twice to the most distant MWC opponents over the course of their four years at SNC. 

Third, the distances to square off against the most distant MWC opponents in away games/contests do not seem too terribly far to me relative to the travel done by many, many colleges and universities.  When you compare that against some of the NC scheduling SNC does like KU, Calvin, and Rose-Hulman, then it just becomes a bit of a headscratcher for me.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on April 15, 2019, 02:26:54 PM
All you're doing is looking at schedules and coming to the conclusion that SNC coaches are profligate with time and money when it comes to non-conference scheduling, but you don't really seem interested in the why behind that schedule-making.

No, I'm not reaching that conclusion at all.  Profligate with time and money have zero to do with my position.  How do you reach such a depiction of me when all along I have been saying that the non-conference game scheduling seems to be at odds with the stated reasoning to leave the MWC?  For me, it's not about money or time.  It's about the stated rationale for leaving one conference for another and how that seems to be incongruent with some of their NC scheduling.  I love the fact that the SNC track teams go to a big meet at KU, but don't whine about a couple of extra hours between MWC and NACC opponents when you do schedule such NC opponents and when only a relative handful of your athletes are making trips to all MWC opponents during a given academic year.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on April 15, 2019, 02:26:54 PMI've given you ample evidence that the move to the NACC is a sound one for St. Norbert from the standpoints of both time and money. I'm at a loss as to why you're persisting in this line of inquiry.

Because I'm not arguing time and money.  I'm not saying that you are wrong about the average length of time between MWC and NACC opponents for SNC.  I'm not saying that you are wrong about strategic scheduling. 

I'm arguing rationale for the move relative who SNC is actually scheduling in terms of NC opponents regardless of the why.  If travel costs and time are such a concern for SNC, then that should play out in NC scheduling as well.  There are plenty of closer options that could be likely scheduled for NC contests without traveling to schools like Calvin, Wartburg, KU, and Rose-Hulman.