FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Second, I wasn't wrong. This is a Wheaton team that can beat almost any team outside of the top 2-3. That's just how good North Central is.

We have to acknowledge the fact that, for the second time in CCIW football history, we are in a period in which the reigning dominant program is so far beyond the rest of the league that its CCIW schedule is really nothing more than incidental. It's basically prep work for the playoffs.

I just began following the CCIW very closely when my son joined the conference a few years ago. How does the league close the gap on NCC? When I played in the WIAC in the early/mid 1990s, UWLAX was the dominant team. They won 2 national titles in the 90s, but the conference was able to compete with them. They had a tie and a one-point win one of those title years, and a couple close calls the other title year. When UWW was going to 6 straight Stagg Bowls, the conference still provided competitive games. Whitewater even lost conference games during that stretch. The WIAC is better top-to-bottom than the CCIW, but how does the conference catch up? Is it solely about recruiting, facilities, commitment to winning? Is it about waiting for a regime change at NCC? How can the rest of the league close the gap?

First, the CCIW isn't the WIAC, so those comparisons aren't helpful in understanding the issue. So much of the CCIW's current situation has to do with North Central having recruiting hegemony over the arc of suburbs that bracket Chicago on three sides that it can't be analyzed through the lens of another conference. The only useful comparison goes back to my earlier statement:

We have to acknowledge the fact that, for the second time in CCIW football history, we are in a period in which the reigning dominant program is so far beyond the rest of the league that its CCIW schedule is really nothing more than incidental. It's basically prep work for the playoffs.

(Emphasis added.)

There is a saying, often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Well, CCIW football history may not exactly be repeating itself in this era in terms of North Central's so-big-the-league-doesn't-really-matter-anymore-for-them total eclipse of the circuit, but it has certainly turned into a limerick that starts, "There once was a team from Naperville ...".

You see, from 1983 to 1986 Augustana won four straight Stagg Bowls. Notice I didn't lead my point with CCIW titles, I led with national championships. That's because it was understood by one and all around the CCIW in that era that Augustana had bigger fish to fry when football season rolled around.

There have been other lengthy dynasties in CCIW football. Wheaton under Harve Chrouser went 40-2-2 in a seven-season span from 1953 until the school was not-so-gently invited to leave the league by everybody else after the 1959-60 school year (because of football and especially basketball dominance). Wheaton won all seven of those CCI (no "W" in those days) titles, sharing one with Millikin and one with then-member Lake Forest. Carthage, under the great Art Keller, commanded the heights of the league when Nixon was in the White House, going 37-1-1 and winning all five CCIW titles from 1969 through 1973. And North Central itself won eight straight CCIW football titles (three of them shared) from 2006-13, going 52-4 in the league during that span. The difference is invulnerability. All of those dynasties could be beaten and on rare occasions were beaten, and they played plenty of competitive games against their CCIW peers.

Not so the case with this current North Central team ... and not so the case with Bob Reade's Augustana teams of most of the '80s. Their utter mastery of the league really came out of nowhere; the team was a good-but-hardly-dominant 6-3 in 1980, Reade's second season in charge. But in 1981 it all changed. With one exception, Augie won all of its CCIW games by three touchdowns or more. The one exception (Wheaton, which lost to Augie by 10) was likely irrelevant, because not a single CCIW team managed to reach double digits on the scoreboard against Augustana. Scoring-wise, it was the most ferociously proficient defense in CCIW history.

That set the stage. From that point onward, Augustana not only kept winning CCIW games -- 40 straight CCIW wins, 58 straight CCIW games without a loss -- but it was extraordinarily difficult to even stay close. After that shutdown-defense season of 1981, Augie would only have five CCIW games over the next four years in which the final margin was a touchdown or less. Now, a touchdown or less seems like a low bar, especially since North Central routinely posts final scores more reminiscent of a high-school girls basketball rout than a college football final score. But Reade's Augustana teams were a very different beast; rather than having a strong passing game that could either move the team rapidly down the field underneath and at medium depth or go over the top for a quick strike multiple times in a game -- which in turn opens up lots of big rushes because no one dares to put an extra defender in the box -- Augustana almost never passed the ball. Reade used his wing-T offense to wear down opponents with bulldozer linemen and hard-running ballcarriers (always at least three good ones on the field at any time) at 4-to-8-yards a tote. You couldn't get them off the field, because you couldn't come up with three straight plays in which you tackled them three yards or less upfield from the line of scrimmage. And yet they didn't necessarily reel off huge chunks of yardage in one play, at least not all at first. That's where the "wear you down" part comes in. So they didn't score the gaudy numbers NCC does today, and the scores look like the games were closer ... but, honestly, they really weren't. Add in Augie defenses that featured the cream of the crop of what northern Illinois and eastern Iowa had to offer once the scholarship schools had had their pick, and it was clear that if you were down by two touchdowns to Augie by the third quarter in the heyday of Reade's wing-T, you were already out of the game.

Like the current situation with NCC, Augustana in that era was playing for November already once summer camp began.

The two national-power dynasties had different styles, but they had something in common: mastery of the common footprint of CCIW football, the Chicagoland suburbs. Augustana, of course, also had the farming-community schools of northern Illinois and eastern Iowa to draw upon (this was before someone in the Augustana administration discovered that Colorado was more than just another one of those big rectangles located somewhere on the other side of the river). But it was almost as though they had first dibs on CCIW-level Chicagoland kids as well, just as North Central currently does.

How does the league close the gap on NCC?

It doesn't. It can't. Most schools aren't set up to push a football program through the roof that way, so the league isn't going to catch up en masse with North Central. That's why I said that any comparison to the WIAC, where that more or less happened with regard to the Warhawks, is irrelevant.

But one or two can. That's how it happened when the Reade juggernaut in Rock Island suddenly stopped running over the rest of the league at will. Two programs caught up with Augustana all of a sudden: Millikin under Carl Poelker, which began playing Augustana close and would continue playing Augustana close for the next several seasons, and Carroll under Merle Masonholder, which went Millikin one better and beat the Rock Island juggernaut on October 8, 1988 and thereby set the league on its ear. Carroll finished in a tie for first with Augustana that season, although Augie went on to the playoffs and Carroll didn't (Reade's boys had won their non-conference game; the Pioneers had lost theirs).

Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. Carroll couldn't sustain its success beyond that magical season and was back in the middle of the pack by the time the Pioneers decamped for the MWC following the 1991 season, but Millikin could and did continue to go toe-to-toe with Augustana in terms of recruiting and developing top-notch teams, as Poelker's Big Blue went undefeated and won the league in '89 (smashing Augie, by the way, 33-8) and sharing the title with Reade's Augie team the next season. While Reade would continue to have success right up until his retirement following the '94 season, with co-championships in '90 and '94 and outright titles in '91 and '93, the tail end of his career was spent coaching a very good program that was no longer head and shoulders above its peers; in fact, the wing-T began to look very much like a dinosaur as the rest of the league began adopting pro sets and favoring the passing game, and Chicagoland kids saw that and wanted to be a part of today-football rather than yesterday-football. In the wake of the Carroll/Millikin breakthrough came another hungry competitor for Chicagoland football players, Illinois Wesleyan, as well as an emerging Wheaton program that marched to the beat of its own drummer as far as recruiting was concerned and thus didn't have to worry about competing against Augustana for football players at all.

Winning the recruiting wars in the Chicago suburbs isn't the whole ball of wax, of course. If Wheaton could manage to parlay its prospect-lead sources across the nation well enough, Wheaton could be the giant-killer. It's also possible that a team with a more conventional recruiting methodology could engineer a dominant couple, three recruiting classes focused heavily upon southern- and southwestern-state players and thus bypass the 'burbs in terms of creating a team core. But in order to make North Central just another annual competitor rather than the team that gets put at the top of every preseason poll ballot in ink rather than pencil, it'll likely take some coach and his staff cracking the Chicagoland code to do it.

I don't know when it will happen, and I don't know which school or schools it will be, but someone will finally put together a team that will break the stranglehold and go toe-to-toe with NCC on the field and, more importantly, divert at least part of the stream of local talent away from Naperville. Wouldn't surprise me if, like the late '80s, it'll be two teams rather than one, one that's competitive and one that actually does the breaking-through part. Nobody stays king of the hill forever, you know. This is football, not cross-country.

[USee]

Greg describes the disparity accurately. Put succinctly, similarly to Augie in the 1980's, NCC enjoys a unique alignment of Administration, admissions, financial aid and athletics. For example, they have 7 full time assistants whose only job is football. Wheaton has 4, Whitewater has 4, Mt Union has 5. Each of these teams has part time assistants and/or graduate assistants in addition tot he full time roles. For NCC, that's a massive advantage in number and quality of recruits and in detailed coaching during the week. Wheaton is never closing that gap.

[Cardinal773]

Wow.  Thank you, Greg.  I really enjoyed reading your post. 

There have been a few blips over the years since Reade's departure that, when they were happening, had some people thinking we were all witnessing the birth of a new dynasty.  I'm thinking of IWU in the mid 90s and then the big years from Carthage and Elmhurst.  In Carthage and Elmhurst's case, they seemed to rely heavily on a few key players rather than a system, but they did have success.  I think with the transfer situation we have, there's a better chance to see a breakout season from someone else out there in the CCIW.  Admittedly the bar is kind of high to do that, but there is talent out there that could easily join the league.  Perhaps a breakout season would make some local kids consider an alternative to NC and building the foundation for a new power to emerge.  Then again, NCC football has that cross-country mentality, so this could take a while!

[Cardinal773]

NCC enjoys a unique alignment of Administration, admissions, financial aid and athletics... ...Wheaton is never closing that gap.

NCC has a holistic approach toward its athletics department.  They certainly realized that if they're going to keep the doors open, encouraging athletes to become students in Naperville is a big plus and that a good football team pushes alumni engagement more than most sports.  If football is the cash cow, it helps to feed it, I suppose.

As for Wheaton never closing that gap, I hope you are right, USee.  I really, really do.  If history tells us anything, Wheaton will continue to attract high quality players at a high volume.  They'll be back and I'll be back to complaining about it!

[robertgoulet]

Really enjoyed that, Mr. Sager.


I will also add that I think NCC caught lightning in a bottle with Thorne's hire. Hiring a HC who was an Chicago suburban legend coach from a nearby HS, who also happened to have a kid who would turn into a great coach and a former player who also happened to turn into a great coach (with VERY strong ties to the school)...something we likely won't see for a long time.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg describes the disparity accurately. Put succinctly, similarly to Augie in the 1980's, NCC enjoys a unique alignment of Administration, admissions, financial aid and athletics. For example, they have 7 full time assistants whose only job is football. Wheaton has 4, Whitewater has 4, Mt Union has 5. Each of these teams has part time assistants and/or graduate assistants in addition tot he full time roles. For NCC, that's a massive advantage in number and quality of recruits and in detailed coaching during the week. Wheaton is never closing that gap.

Yes, this is a pretty relevant example of my statement that:

Most schools aren't set up to push a football program through the roof that way

There are a lot of other ways in which North Central has geared itself for football success that other CCIW schools can't or won't emulate (and it should be pointed out that the austere outlook for American small liberal arts colleges in the near future makes it even less likely that a CCIW school will try to run the NCC football program operating manual through the copier), but the disparity in full-time coaching assistants (and staff size in general; I swear that NCC football has GAs whose assigned job is to tell players when and where to stand on the sidelines) is a directly obvious one.

I will also add that I think NCC caught lightning in a bottle with Thorne's hire. Hiring a HC who was an Chicago suburban legend coach from a nearby HS, who also happened to have a kid who would turn into a great coach and a former player who also happened to turn into a great coach (with VERY strong ties to the school)...something we likely won't see for a long time.

There's a strong parallel between Thorne and Bob Reade, in that Reade had won the Illinois 3A title three straight years at Geneseo when Augie hired him.

[Gregory Sager]

There have been a few blips over the years since Reade's departure that, when they were happening, had some people thinking we were all witnessing the birth of a new dynasty.  I'm thinking of IWU in the mid 90s and then the big years from Carthage and Elmhurst.  In Carthage and Elmhurst's case, they seemed to rely heavily on a few key players rather than a system, but they did have success.  I think with the transfer situation we have, there's a better chance to see a breakout season from someone else out there in the CCIW.  Admittedly the bar is kind of high to do that, but there is talent out there that could easily join the league.  Perhaps a breakout season would make some local kids consider an alternative to NC and building the foundation for a new power to emerge.  Then again, NCC football has that cross-country mentality, so this could take a while!

I'm not sure that you're seeing my point here. The point I'm making is that there are two completely separate types of dynasties in CCIW football annals. First, there's the standard type of dynasty in which a program reels off a string of consecutive CCIW titles -- the Eisenhower-era Wheaton teams under Chrouser, the Nixon-era Carthage teams under Keller, and the 2006-13 Thorne years for North Central. They're comparable to similar dynasties in other leagues: they lose a conference game once in a great while, they play at least a couple of close games every year while still winning titles. They're dominant, but they have to work at dominating.

You're talking about speculation that "we were all witnessing the birth of a new dynasty." This is the kind of dynasty that you were talking about (and that none of the programs you mentioned ever came close to achieving, of course). Winning the league was an end in itself for those teams, the dream that their players shared along with all of the other players in the CCIW, and getting to that end was a struggle that came with pains that in retrospect made the reward taste sweeter.

But the essay I sorta dumped on this page last night is about a different sort of dynasty entirely. Let me requote myself:

The difference is invulnerability.

The Augie teams of Bob Reade's glory days could not be beaten by a CCIW opponent. It was impossible. Other CCIW schools would have had just as much luck playing the Illini or the Badgers or the Hawkeyes as they had against Augie. The same conditions currently apply to North Central, and when the next-best team in the CCIW takes a 35-0 licking at that hands of the current dynast -- and that next-best team is itself currently one of the premier teams in all of D3 -- and it's coming on the back of a lengthy ongoing string of Stagg Bowl appearances, then you're looking at Bob Reade Augustana v. 2.0. See the difference? There really are no other parallels to the Reade dynasty and the current NCC dynasty that exist, aside from the one in Alliance, Ohio.

Again, the difference between Reade's Augie teams and the current North Central string of teams, versus the other three CCIW dynasties of the first type, is invulnerability. And because the Cardinals are invulnerable to CCIW opponents, the league is therefore irrelevant to them. These Cardinals were already physically and mentally preparing for the final three rounds of the 2025 D3 playoffs when they held their first practice in August, as they should be. The rest of this league is a series of speed bumps to them, the games mere rehearsals for honing performances and for sorting out O-line combinations, trying out different formations and personnel, etc. This was never the case for Chrouser's Crusaders, Keller's Redmen, or emergent-era Thorne Cardinals. So let's not confuse dynasties, nor speculate as to who's going to form the next one that's like the two I've discussed. If we've only seen two of these rockets manage to break the CCIW's gravity well and soar beyond the league in the three-quarters of a century that there has been postseason play made available to CCIW teams, the odds are not high that many of us will live to see another one.

[GoIrish7]

I do not see anyone catching NCC anytime soon. Can someone make a jump and become competitive for a handful of years like Cardinal773 suggested, yes. But long term, they have gotten too far our ahead of everyone else. They truly are the perfect storm, and credit to their leadership, they capitalize on damn near every opportunity that is presented their way.

No one in the league has a downtown Naperville within walking distance from their campus. Closest things to it could be considered Elmhurst or NPU being able to be in the big city. Naperville provides a direct train line to the city, a town with a population of over 150,000 residents, a town that is safe to be a college student in, and a social scene with balance for whatever you are looking for. They have bars, clubs, restaurants all within a few football throws of the football stadium. The town itself has also a balance of nice for their residents while also providing establishments for college aged kids with lesser budgets, something Elmhurst / NPU both lack. The city of Elmhurst wants the wine and cheese, the places for college kids to go has diminished overtime. The remainder of CCIW lacks a larger city presence. The one who I think over the next handful of years has a chance to make major headway is IWU. Bloomington/Normal is growing, ISU is right there, and with the hires made from leadership, Athletics will be on the forefront of making decisions with scale.

NCC's campus growth has also been impressive. They are taking advantage of every square foot of campus and are consistently building. Where as, Elmhurst's campus is still over 50% parking lot. The health and Science building is the first ground breaking on campus since I was there starting in 2008. Everything else from a campus perspective quite literally looks exactly the same minus some upkeep on facilities which is lipstick vs new.

The investment into the football program after sustained success also pulls them ahead. As mentioned above, FT coaches and GA/Support is far and away better than competing schools within the league. Also, the pay of those FT coaches is far and away better than other schools. NCC position coaches make what most of the league pays their coordinators, and their Coordinators pay competes with what league member pay their HC's..... This has set up for the core of the staff having no intention to leave unless an opportunity is so good they cant pass it up (Getting a Division 1 Job).

I was at the Wheaton / NCC game this past weekend, and I would say it was different than any D3 experience from a game-day atmosphere than anywhere else in the country. This cant / doesnt just happen with hardworking coaches. The school's leadership put on a display and spent money to do so... Moving homecoming game to night which opened up tailgating opp where members of student life were passing out bells, shirts, pom pom's, thunder sticks. The amount of inflatables, face painting, games, activities for young kids to participate in. The community bars running drink specials for homecoming through the day and night. An alumni tent offering food, drinks, and giving a spot for former players to come together. Topped with a firework show to end the game. It was a spectacle of an event that will keep everyone coming back. This, paired with the growth and organization of their golf outing, is something that at most places will fall under the coaches having to do more is supplemented by NCC's leadership to take experiences to new heights.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg describes the disparity accurately. Put succinctly, similarly to Augie in the 1980's, NCC enjoys a unique alignment of Administration, admissions, financial aid and athletics. For example, they have 7 full time assistants whose only job is football. Wheaton has 4, Whitewater has 4, Mt Union has 5. Each of these teams has part time assistants and/or graduate assistants in addition tot he full time roles. For NCC, that's a massive advantage in number and quality of recruits and in detailed coaching during the week. Wheaton is never closing that gap.

One more point I forgot to make:

* The first CCIW teams to have 100+ players on the roster were Bob Reade's Augustana teams in the 1980s. Reade actively cultivated the concept of a supersized roster. This was partly because he had that old-school mentality that his role in life was to mold young men into positive and productive members of society, and if they happened to win a few football games along the way while growing into their potential as men, well, so much the better. (Reade was a very big advocate for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at Augie.) The more young men he could positively influence, the more successful he was at his life's calling. It was also partly because he felt an obligation to his employer to help it out by boosting enrollment. This felt obligation would, of course, later be flipped onto the shoulders of CCIW coaches as an actual obligation when they were informed by their bosses that they were, in effect, adjunct members of the admissions staff who were expected to achieve assigned recruitment quotas.

[Jbothe]

Gregory Sager.  Fantastic posts about Augie in the 80's. Sounds like an inside job.  I went to school there during that time and I think you know more about the place than you do.

When we were in school at Augie at that time there were two things that didn't make sense that have since come to fruition.

1.  Why isn't North Central better?
2.

[Jbothe]

Gregory Sager.  Fantastic posts about Augie in the 80's. Sounds like an inside job.  I went to school there during that time and I think you know more about the place than you do.

When we were in school at Augie at that time there were two things that didn't make sense that have since come to fruition.

1.  Why isn't North Central better?
2.  Why are the Wisconsin D3 schools not dominating D3. (WSUC at the time better).

Obviously both landscapes have changed dramatically there.

Also at Augie in 1985 we drew a second round opponent based out of Alliance, OH that no one had ever heard of before??

I wonder if they had any success after that....

[CarollFan]

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2025/10/8/media-center-di-administrative-committee-adopts-proposal-to-allow-student-athletes-staff-to-bet-on-pro-sports.aspx

[Gregory Sager]

Logan sez:

Augustana 36, Elmhurst 13	(AC 93%, EU 7%)
Carroll 29, North Park 20	(CU 72%, NPU 28%)
Washington MO 42, Carthage 17	(WUSTL 95%, CC 5%)
Wheaton 40, Illinois Wesleyan 21	(WC 89%, IWU 11%)
North Central 61, Millikin 0	(NCC 100%, MU 0%)

Home teams in bold.

I find it interesting that the Hansen Ratings have Millikin's odds for victory at Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium on Saturday set at 0.0%. In other words, there's not even a fragment of a percentage point upon which Millikin fans can hang their hopes. There's no space for a Lloyd Christmas Dumb and Dumber meme in this instance. The Big Blue have just as much of a chance to win Saturday's game if they don't pack their gear and board the buses for Naperville than if they do ... or, to belabor my earlier point, they have just as much of a chance to beat the Illini, the Badgers, or the Hawkeyes on Saturday as they do the Cardinals.

[CarollFan]

Looks like NPU @ Carroll predicted to be most competitive game.

Whoever loses it has a rough road just to .500.

[CarollFan]

Gregory Sager.  Fantastic posts about Augie in the 80's. Sounds like an inside job.  I went to school there during that time and I think you know more about the place than you do.

When we were in school at Augie at that time there were two things that didn't make sense that have since come to fruition.

1.  Why isn't North Central better?
2.  Why are the Wisconsin D3 schools not dominating D3. (WSUC at the time better).

Obviously both landscapes have changed dramatically there.

Also at Augie in 1985 we drew a second round opponent based out of Alliance, OH that no one had ever heard of before??

I wonder if they had any success after that....

Wait a minute. You went to Augie and I had to build a case for Augie finishing over IWU?
What is it with you Augie guys underestimating Augie? In the beginning of the season they are predicting 4-6 and they are going 4-1 this weekend.