Quote from: Machiavelli on October 03, 2026, 09:28:04 PM

Quote from: Jonny Utah on October 03, 2026, 08:57:33 PMRPI lost the time of possession battle 34:32 to 27:26.

Embarrassing

Look, I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure you can't spell deliberative without the Dilbert. Their Dilbertiveness to win the TOP battle was on full display today. Every play RPI ran on offense, the Dilberts would just lay down on the field and let the RPI players, confused, run straight to the endzone. The Engineers understood it would be a TOP battle, but the TI-80s don't have timers. So RPI assumed the alternate option of having the ball for more plays would result in a TOP victory. Once again, they were wrong. The 22-2 first downs and the 495-6 total yards advantages felt good...until the last whistle. That is when they received the news that they, in fact, lost the TOP battle, and it wasn't close.

The irony of all of this is if you go to the Hilbert football site, they exploit the TOP victory right from the first paragraph:

'TROY, N.Y. – Hilbert College Football dropped a Liberty League road contest to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 83-0, Saturday afternoon at East Campus Stadium. The Hawks finished with 32:34 of possession time and totaled 48 offensive plays.
'

Hahahahah.  They are rubbing it in.

RPI lost the time of possession battle 34:32 to 27:26.

Embarrassing

Hilbert is #2 (tied) in the country for TOP. 

That is all.

Quote from: Patrick Coleman on September 13, 2026, 10:30:19 PM

Quote from: unionpalooza on September 13, 2026, 06:31:53 PM

Quote from: IC798891 on September 13, 2026, 06:02:38 PM1) It's simply not possible to rank 25 teams so that no one is ahead of a team they lost to and or behind a team they beat.

2) But even if you could, doing that takes it away from being a national rankings and turns it into a national standings.

To illustrate this using your specific example:

Dickinson, has not posted a winning record in the CC since 2006, and has one winning season overall since then. Hopkins ass been to the national semifinals two straight years, won 10+ games in 12 of their last 14 seasons, and beat Dickinson 55-10 last season. If you think they're *better* than Hopkins, well...

Besides, they're fun and they give us something to talk about.

Sure, but it still makes no f*cking sense.  A reasonable person can think Hopkins is the #13 team, or that Dickinson is not a top 25 team, but the only way you can think both at the same time is if you ignore what's happened on the field in favor of pre-history and personal bias. That said I agree it's fun and gives us something to talk about.  I just think one of the most fun things to talk about is how Week 2 polls are goofy exercises in radically uninformed and logically indefensible decision-making.  I'm a weirdo and think it was cool how back in the day you'd make the playoffs and by the second round draw a team you only vaguely knew, and if you made the quarters, you'd play a school you never heard of.  A littler mystery in life is under-rated.

Do you think the Top 25 is just a reflection of what a team has done this season? That still makes it way more like standings rather than rankings. The subjectivity allows us to share what we think will happen the rest of the season. We will see how those three schools end up compared to each other.

This discussion is exactly why many feel there should be no polls/rankings until after a few weeks of games.  So the poll is what it is at this point.  It isn't going to make sense for the most part the first few weeks.  No one is losing or getting a playoff spot based on week 1 rankings.  Gotta just keep all this in mind when looking at early season polls at any level.

Ithaca College will be playing its first ever night game Saturday night at 6pm.  Should be fun.

Quote from: Machiavelli on September 06, 2026, 09:12:42 AMWhat the hell is going on with this sudden clown show on the LL boards? Last time I checked Johnny Hopkins was ranked 4th in the country and Ithaca was unranked. That powerhouse was only able to be a lowly LL team by 9? Should be embarrassed.

Then we have this other doofus from Case Western Reserve doing a victory lap for beating a team with 8 LL wins in 9 seasons.

It's like the damn twilight zone over here.

Ha third division has a great Tik Tok channel which does some good stuff with d3 football.  I like the style and format he uses on his videos. 

His LLPP game though?  Rookie level trolling stuff. 

Quote from: The Third Division on September 06, 2026, 02:20:40 AMHow many more years does Johns Hopkins have to play Ithaca before Johns Hopkins realized they're just the better team?

Do you think they scheduled Ithaca because they weren't certain they could beat them? 

Quote from: Caz Bombers on September 05, 2026, 03:40:02 PMHop 30
IC 21

Honestly not that bad, I thought Hopkins would puree us.

Yea, JHU was the better team and was up 30-7 in the 4th.  But Ithaca played much better this year than last years game.  I thought the offense moved the ball well all game, and just couldn't punch it in or convert when they needed to in the first 3 quarters.  But JHU made it look easy when they had the ball.  Their QB had a lot of time and that set up some easy catches in space for the Bluejays.  On the other end, Reed had much more pressure on him but he was still able to make plays and run when needed.  JHU still had skill guys that Ihaca could not match up with except for Lang who may be the best player in the country when it comes to catching footballs in tight spaces.  Reminded me of the RPI game last year where Reed and Lang basically won that game on their own. 

Anyway it was good to see them give JHU a game (or they didn't roll over like last year), and makes me more optimistic for the season.  Definetly some talent there.

I was looking at the MIT schedule on their website and noticed "FLO College" has all of their games which leads me to believe that entire league signed up for it.  In the LL it looks like Rochester and Hilbert both use it, while everyone else has not sold out at the moment.

Driving by Curry the other day and the purple drank turf is in use already. 

Unknown what to expect from Ithaca this year but it looks like they have 17/22 starters back from last year. 

Nescac will be interesting.  They certainly will have some of the top players in the counrty, but I think their depth will be an issue. 

Quote from: lumbercat on July 27, 2026, 07:24:29 PMSurprised to see Colby has offered Cole Carney a rising JUNIOR at Lawrence Academy.

We are currently seeing rising seniors who are members of the graduating class of '27 starting to announce early commitments for the college class of 2031.

This recruit will graduate in 2028 and be a part of the Colby class of 2032 should he accept their offer.

Never seen this before in the NESCAC, didn't even realize this is in compliance with NESCAC rules.

Times are changing.

There is probably zero rule against any Nescac coach saying something like "Hey if you can get into Colby, you will make the football team and I promise you that."

Then the kid can say "If I can get into Colby, the coach said I can be on the football team."

Or just make a nice AI poster telling everyone you have been OFFERED by COLBY COLLEGE and have a generated photo of some white mules in a pasture throwing the football around. 

Quote from: Patrick Coleman on June 22, 2026, 12:17:11 PMNew coach at Hilbert -- third coach in five seasons.
https://d3football.com/notables/2026/06/another-new-coach-hilbert

So Hilbert is 0-35 since starting their program, and still uses an average HS stadium as their home field.  They play in the LL, which at the top (5-6 teams now) is a very good conference.  Then they have to play 2 E8 teams, and they have 3-5 solid teams.  I dunno, these guys just aren't setting themselves up to win IMO.  Are they building a stadium or is this a Mt. Ida/Anna Maria panic move where the school just adds a ton of sports to save itself financially. 

A Coast Guard coach told me way back that one of the reasons for leaving the LL was that they just didn't have the resources the LL teams had and at that point the travel and competition simply wasn't where CGA fit at the time.  We forget how great the LL and E8 conferences are in terms of depth at the top.  Both very competitive leagues with some great teams.   

Quote from: Bartman on June 16, 2026, 11:33:01 AM

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

Yea Ithaca has the advantage with the school size for sure.  Although we have heard rumblings (see Syracuse now) that finances are getting tight.  The "liberal arts" degrees are the ones that are gonna take the hit first.  IC has put some focus on their business programs for sure, but I have no idea how that music school is funded or how many liberal arts degrees are an issue.  Ithaca still does well with the Heath and Sciences Program as well as the Communication school although IC98891 will know much more about that than I do. 

I just see that Ithaca is 75K a year? That is an "estimate" by google. That same estimate has Hobart at 88K and Union at 91k.  I'm guessing these schools just raise those final numbers to whatever they want, hoping x% of students pay the whole thing while they can give aid to the other y%. 

Tough times for sure.  This was discussed here before.  If you want to be a teacher, do you go to IC with 100K in debt after you get out? 

 

Quote from: Bartman on June 10, 2026, 04:21:40 PMInteresting 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.

I always take a look at these once a year.  Ithaca had been in the top 30/20 for a long time.  Track and Field, rowing, swimming always gave them a boost if I remember correctly.  Having more sports helps as well.  Hobart just added a bunch so that's good and they have some niche sports as well the succeed in. 

So 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.

So Ithaca has still not announced the 2026 schedule, but Johns Hopkins has and they have Ithaca at home for the opening game.  This leads me to beleive that Ithaca will have Alfred at home the next week and the rest of the schedule is LL games and Cortaca.