FB: American Rivers Conference

[Patrick Coleman]

Couple more conference team's schedules have been released.

https://duhawks.com/sports/football/schedule

Loras starts with St Olaf which is a new opponent for the Duhawks but should be familiar to our new coach coming from St Johns. Loras fills its noncon with NW (MN) as discussed previously (11 AM kick off??). They follow that up with another game against Benedictine which has developed into a decent little noncon rivalry. And I enjoy that the key game will be the last game of the year. The ARC appears to be doing "rivalry week" to end the year.

https://simpsonathletics.com/sports/fball/2026-27/schedule

Simpson as mentioned will play Howard Payne in Frisco Texas which should be a fun cross regional game and a good experience for the student athletes. Simpson the will return home and homes with Crown and Augustana. Simpson will finish the year with conference rival Central for rivalry week. 

https://bvuathletics.com/sports/football/schedule

BV starts the season returning a home and home with Benedictine (lost 35-0 last season). They then have two new teams on their schedule with Lawrence and Minnesota-Morris. I would imagine the Beavers would be favorites in both of these games as Lawrence went winless last year and had to forfeit a game due to low numbers. Minnesota Morris went 3-7 in the UMAC last year. They will end the season with rival (?) Nebraska Wesleyan. I'm not sure if NWU and BV actually consider each other rivals or if they are just the last two single kids who didn't get asked to the dance and chose to go together.

This leaves Coe/Wartburg as the last set of "rivals". Both of them have more traditional rivals who have both left the league in pursuit of "more academic peer institutions". I do think that Coe and Wartburg have started to develop a nice rivalry as the two schools are not far from each other and both have been fairly competitive across most sports so I think it works.

Calling Coe/Wartburg a rivalry might be a bit of a stretch...I define a "Rival" as someone you want to beat no matter the season records...and it helps when both sides of the rivalry have the same passion about the game...nothing against Coe, but i think if you asked 100 Wartburg and Central grads, all 100 would say that if they could only beat 1 team every year, it would be Wartburg or Central.

Rivalry? Or just matching up teams which are most closely located?

[DriftlessDuhawk]

I know conference realignment has nuked it, but Coe's traditional rival is Cornell, correct?  At least that's how I understood it when I was being recruited by Cornell a quarter century ago. 

This is correct. The two schools compete for an all sports trophy called the Bremner Cup. While it has not been competitive in football for almost a quarter century, the Bremner Cup has changed hands a number of times.

https://cornellrams.com/sports/2021/6/21/3057_132687561132739401

[New Tradition]

I know conference realignment has nuked it, but Coe's traditional rival is Cornell, correct?  At least that's how I understood it when I was being recruited by Cornell a quarter century ago. 

This is correct. The two schools compete for a all sports trophy called the Bremner Cup. While it has not been competitive in football for almost a quarter century, the Bremner Cup has changed hands a number of times.

https://cornellrams.com/sports/2021/6/21/3057_132687561132739401

Interestingly, when I was being recruited, Cornell was coming off a 7-3 campaign in 2001, and head coach Steve Miller had just retired.  They hired Ray Reasland internally, and there was huge optimism for the direction of the program.  Conversely, NCC was coming off a 3-7 season, the coach was let go, and they hired a successful high school coach, but one who coached at a public school and had zero recruiting experience.  Had I based my decision strictly on football as a senior in high school, I'd have actually gone to Cornell.  I just felt NCC was a better overall fit for me personally--if we took some lumps on the scoreboard, at least I got to experience a bit of success with my high school team and what they accomplished.  Little did I know...