FB: American Rivers Conference

[MediaGuy]

Thanks for the charts Logan! I do think that the trend is something to note, as the top of the conference is separating itself from the bottom of the league. I would assume that I am one of the younger people on this board, as I have only followed the conference for about 8 years now. But in those 8 years, it has felt like the haves (Central/Wartburg/Coe/ud) and the have-nots (the rest) have not done much flip-flopping. Now I think this is pretty normal for most football conferences, as we typically don't see teams going from worst to first in this particular sport. But it does beg the question, how much longer will this go on for, and what does one of the teams in the have-nots group need to do to break through? I would love someone to hear the opinions of those who are a bit more seasoned on this board on the matter, as they have probably seen and know more about the history of the league.

I would say that there are definitely some leagues where there are pretty stark differences in institutional priorities that drives a lot of the stratification (the MIAC and former makeup of the ASC immediately come to mind), but that's not really the case in the ARC. Wartburg as an institution definitely puts a premium on athletic success, but if you look at federally-reported revenue/spending numbers, the whole conference is basically on the same playing field. Some institutions have other issues (general financial health of the college, dwindling nearby population), but there's nothing on the scale of St. Scholastica vs. St. John's to overcome.

This is anecdoctal, but for me coming out of high school (class of '08), I had barely functional dial-up internet at home, and I was only going to hear about a school from in-person visits or mailers, and then everything I knew about them was essentially learned from my on campus visits. Now a kid from Arizona can meet a coach from Iowa at a recruiting fair, and then in the next fifteen minutes they'll know who the best teams are in their conference and send a DM to their coaches on Twitter. That can make it more difficult to climb the ladder, but not insurmountable.

I also look at success in other sports. There's abosultely no reason for a school like Luther to be struggling as much as they have been in football. If you exclude football from the All-Sports Trophy last year, Luther finishes first in the conference, and they're regularly finishing in the Top 3 in the All Sports Trophy even including football, and have the third-most outright All Sports Trophy wins all time, behind Wartburg and Central.

The stasis right now can feel entrenched, and I do think the availability of information for recruits can make that entrenchment more "real," but I think pretty much every school in the ARC is only 1 great coaching hire away from moving into the upper half of the conference.

This has been an interesting dynamic in the 20+ years I've been around the conference and I've seen some teams fall and almost get over the hump.  In the late 90s, Simpson was the conference power, then fell slowly down to where they are now.  As a Wartburg guy, I think Coach Hoskins will get them on the right track if the administration gives him the tools to be successful.  Luther had a good thing going for a while with the triple option coach and I thought they would be the next team to get to the next level, but he left.  Which bring me to my point.  You said a team is 1 good coaching hire away from moving up in the world, but in my time, it has taken more than a good coach to turn a program around. 
1. Coach...obviously it takes a dynamic, motivated coach who is committed to winning but also changing the culture of a program.
2. Administration support...if a coach doesn't have the bosses who are willing to change and let the coach create the culture, it might get good for a year or two, but you can't build on a poor foundation.  I think that's what we saw at Luther and Simpson.  Good young coaches who tryed to build something, but didn't get the support or "buy in" from their bosses to craft a culture of success.
3. Local recruiting...Wartburg and Central without question, built a fence around their local recruiting territory.  That's not to say they get everyone in a 50 mile radius, but they are definitely in the top 3 for every good high school player in their local area.  Coe and Dubuque have done a decent job as well, but haven't really locked the gate of their territory quite yet, but they've done a much better job than everyone else at getting local kids.  That comes from having a culture kids and parents want to be a part of.
4. Local Support...Once you have steps 1-3, it's much easier to get local support, boosters and fans to build your program.  Its much easier to have businesses and fans continuously fund and support your program when they see the kids from their hometown on your team.  It might seem like a shortcut to just recruit texas, florida or Arizona, but it's hard to get fans and businesses to support a team full of "outsiders".

Long post, but my point is that the "haves" are playing by that playback and the "have-nots" seem to be trying different recipes that haven't panned out yet in my humble opinion

[HansenRatings]

I agree with a lot of your perspective there, wrt the administrative support, recruiting, and local support, but that's a huge reason why I think Hafner holds a fair deal of blame for Luther's struggles lately. I remember them posting their recruiting class on Twitter his last season there, and they had zero recruits from Iowa. ZERO. I remember because I DM'd the Luther football account and asked when they were going to post their recruits from Iowa, and they replied saying, "At this time, we don't have any recruits in this class from Iowa."

Running a niche system and recruiting zero kids from your home state is not going to leave a place better than you found it.

I would also point out that Hafner's resume wasn't actually all that great; it just looks better in hindsight because they've struggled so much since he left.
Luther's average rating from 1997-2012: +2.9
Luther's average rating w/ Hafner 2013-2018: -0.2
Luther's average rating since 2019-2024: -22.1

[HansenRatings]

I was bored today, so I decided to do some digging. This is using my team ratings (which is actually a weighted average of 3 different models).

Percentage of Weeks since 1997 Ranked in the Top __

School	Top 1	Top 2	Top 3	Top 4	Top 5
Wartburg	52%	76%	92%	99%	100%
Central	32%	75%	91%	99%	100%
Coe	7%	24%	54%	71%	89%
Dubuque	6%	13%	32%	54%	60%
Simpson	4%	11%	22%	38%	62%
Buena Vista	0%	1%	7%	21%	31%
Luther	0%	0%	1%	10%	23%
Loras	0%	0%	0%	8%	33%
Nebraska Wesleyan	0%	0%	0%	0%	2%

Some takeaways - Wartburg & Central own the top 2 spots in the conference, with a considerable gap between them and Coe, and then another sizeable gap between Coe & UD/Simpson.

UD in the early aughts was noticeably worse than any of the current teams have been recently (yes, even Luther). They got better, but it took consistent coaching, institutional support, and a nice influx of funds to the athletic department.

If the benchmark for success is just being better than average, every team (except NWU, who has struggled mightily since making the switch from NAIA) has shown the ability to consistently rank in the top half of the conference.

[DriftlessDuhawk]

I was bored today, so I decided to do some digging. This is using my team ratings (which is actually a weighted average of 3 different models).

If you don't mind me asking, which three models do you use, and how do you weight them?

[HansenRatings]

If you don't mind me asking, which three models do you use, and how do you weight them?

About 90% is my own "adjusted efficiency" model that I've been modifying for years. It's pretty similar to what KenPom does for DI basketball, but with some additional/different bells & whistles.

Then about 5% each is a traditional Elo model and a margin-of-victory-adjusted Elo model.

If you want to waste an afternoon, I wrote about it in excruciating detail here: Hansen Ratings Model Explanation.

[doolittledog]

100 days until the 2025 season.

[Pat Coleman]

Luther will be leaving the ARC after this upcoming season:
https://d3sports.com/notables/2025/06/luther-leaves-arc-for-mwc

[DriftlessDuhawk]

Luther will be leaving the ARC after this upcoming season:
https://d3sports.com/notables/2025/06/luther-leaves-arc-for-mwc

WOW. I did not see this coming whatsoever. Losing a founding member of a conference is not something you will ever think will happen. The ARC will hate to lose a member who has been around for 100+ years.

All that being said, I do understand the move on Luther's part. The MWC is a league that prioritizes academics above athletics. If Luther feels that this fits them better than the current makeup of the ARC, then they will do much better competing among the schools that they consider their peers. I imagine that they will immediately compete for conference titles in many sports in the MWC, and they should be able to tally a couple of wins (?) in football over the first few seasons in the league to get that program off the ground.

In terms of where the conference go from here? I do not think that the league is going to start looking for a replacement for Luther in the short term. Having 9 teams never really made sense from a scheduling standpoint, and having one team have a bye week for week 11 was never ideal. Taking Luther off the schedule should raise the SOS of the entire conference. Each team will be able to schedule 3 nonconference games, which should also help in the world of NPI (assuming teams can win these games). While I'm sad to see Luther go, this may be a net positive for the conference.   

[DriftlessDuhawk]

In terms of where the conference go from here? I do not think that the league is going to start looking for a replacement for Luther in the short term. Having 9 teams never really made sense from a scheduling standpoint, and having one team have a bye week for week 11 was never ideal. Taking Luther off the schedule should raise the SOS of the entire conference. Each team will be able to schedule 3 nonconference games, which should also help in the world of NPI (assuming teams can win these games). While I'm sad to see Luther go, this may be a net positive for the conference.   

This being said, where will these extra nonconference games come from? Well, the obvious answer is the WIAC. I'm sure those teams are very happy to see Luther go, and more ARC teams desperate for nonconference matchups. Will most of the conference be willing to step up to this challenge? Wartburg/Coe/ud/Central have scheduled multiple of these teams in the past and do not seem fazed by this challenge.

Moving farther away, the UMAC teams are always looking for non-conference games, but at that point, the league should have just fought to keep Luther in the league. The next closest leagues that play at least 3 nonconference games are the MIAA and the HCAC. The MIAA has produced some good teams recently, but also has some teams that the bottom half of the conference could play some competitive games with. The HCAC has not quite produced the same level of higher-end teams the MIAA has produced recently, but I think that the bottom half of the ARC would fare well against most of the conference and that the HCAC teams would eat up some of the needed nonconference games.

With all this being said, I'm sure that the SCIAC/NWC/ASC/SCAC teams will also be more than willing to pick up the phone if any of the ARC teams call. Central made the trip to Cal Lutheran last season, so these types of trips are not out of the question. I don't think ARC teams will want to make these a mainstay on their schedules, but this could provide some more national matchups for the teams in the conference.

There are also some options out on the East Coast, but most of the ARC teams have not ventured in that direction in the past when looking for games.

[MediaGuy]

If someone wants to do a deep dive into the last 10 years of schedules to confirm this, it might open some interesting NPI opportunities for us.  In an ideal world, we could pick up the non-con games that the other 9 MWC teams can't play now.  For an ARC team to now get to schedule a bottom half MIAC, CCIW, WIAC or NACC team with a good SOS and a .500 record, might make for a better NPI than Luther.

[HansenRatings]

Luther will be leaving the ARC after this upcoming season:
https://d3sports.com/notables/2025/06/luther-leaves-arc-for-mwc

Football related: This will obviously improve the overall quality of teams in the ARC. By my math, this will bump the ARC up from around 12th in conference rankings to around 7th, ahead of conferences like the MIAC, OAC, and NWC. I posted that analysis here:
https://x.com/LogHanRatings/status/1929952572535611696

Other sports-related: Luther can be very competitive in most sports. Looking at Massey ratings or track & field ratings in a few different sports (I found ratings for 14 of the 18 sports sponsored by the MWC). Luther is above average in 7/14, an immediate title favorite in Men's Soccer, Men's Tennis, and Softball, and would be the second-best team in Baseball.

[HansenRatings]

If someone wants to do a deep dive into the last 10 years of schedules to confirm this, it might open some interesting NPI opportunities for us.  In an ideal world, we could pick up the non-con games that the other 9 MWC teams can't play now.  For an ARC team to now get to schedule a bottom half MIAC, CCIW, WIAC or NACC team with a good SOS and a .500 record, might make for a better NPI than Luther.

With the way NPI works, if you're trying to make the playoffs, scheduling a team that's likely to have a below-average NPI isn't going to give you a boost - they're likely to get "dropped" from the calculation. So picking up a lot of the MWC's former non-con games against UMAC/NACC/bottom-feeder CCIW/MIAC schools isn't going to do us any good. Now, not having Luther drag down everyone's cumulative NPI will help, though.

[DriftlessDuhawk]

With the way NPI works, if you're trying to make the playoffs, scheduling a team that's likely to have a below-average NPI isn't going to give you a boost - they're likely to get "dropped" from the calculation. So picking up a lot of the MWC's former non-con games against UMAC/NACC/bottom-feeder CCIW/MIAC schools isn't going to do us any good. Now, not having Luther drag down everyone's cumulative NPI will help, though.

What does taking Luther out of the SOS numbers and replacing them with a completely average 5-5 team do for the conference? Would it elevate the NPI numbers that much?

Love the math Logan!

[HansenRatings]

With the way NPI works, if you're trying to make the playoffs, scheduling a team that's likely to have a below-average NPI isn't going to give you a boost - they're likely to get "dropped" from the calculation. So picking up a lot of the MWC's former non-con games against UMAC/NACC/bottom-feeder CCIW/MIAC schools isn't going to do us any good. Now, not having Luther drag down everyone's cumulative NPI will help, though.

What does taking Luther out of the SOS numbers and replacing them with a completely average 5-5 team do for the conference? Would it elevate the NPI numbers that much?

Love the math Logan!

If every team in the conference still wins that game? It would provide a pretty sizeable boost - probably moving each team up a seed or two in the playoffs, and giving an 8-2 team a good shot at an at-large. If the conference overall goes 5-5 against an average 5-5 team, it would be more moderate boost. Probably only moving each team up couple spots in NPI rankings, and probably not enough to get an 8-2 team into the playoffs.

[Pat Coleman]

With the way NPI works, if you're trying to make the playoffs, scheduling a team that's likely to have a below-average NPI isn't going to give you a boost - they're likely to get "dropped" from the calculation. So picking up a lot of the MWC's former non-con games against UMAC/NACC/bottom-feeder CCIW/MIAC schools isn't going to do us any good. Now, not having Luther drag down everyone's cumulative NPI will help, though.

What does taking Luther out of the SOS numbers and replacing them with a completely average 5-5 team do for the conference? Would it elevate the NPI numbers that much?

Love the math Logan!

If they can win two non-conference games against decent teams, they can raise the NPI.