FB: USA South Athletic Conference

[jknezek]

Huntingdon has a roster posted with 170 players. 19 seniors, 19 juniors, 48 sophs, and 84 first years.
Comparing to the previous several years, still smaller junior and senior classes so we will still be a young team. The sophomore class is a bit larger than it has been so it seems we had better retention this time. That may have something to do with how many of them got playing time last year? I see seven sophomores who weren't on the roster last year and most seem to be transfers from FCS and D2 so hopefully are guys who can help right away.

Go Hawks!

There are a lot of schools that do this, so I'm not just picking on Huntingdon, but my stomach twists every time I see it. There should never be 84 first years. Someone is selling these kids a load of horsesh!t, and it has nothing to do with getting an education, good or otherwise. It has to do with filling beds, cafeteria plans, and large intro courses.

These colleges know a huge percentage of these kids aren't going to sniff the field, and when they don't, a large percentage are either going to transfer or drop out. The schools bring them in, milk them for the highest profitable year, and send them off to another school or just in debt with barely a partial degree. It is so much of what is wrong with private higher education, d3 sports, and starting young people off with debt that will follow and cripple them for years if not decades.

If your college needs to play these games to survive, it's such a disservice to these young people I really can't mourn much when they fold up shop. Frankly, I think it would be better if loads of them did and stopped taking advantage of kids who should be doing things other than college, but get sucked into debt with the promise of continuing to play the game they love.

Sorry, rant over.

[Ron Boerger]

St. John's (MN) has 99 first years, 198 total.  That means the football team makes up somewhere around 15% of total enrollment by itself (SJU is a male-only school like Wabash; unlike Wabash they have an associated women's college, St. Benedict), likely the big reason they do this.  I don't get it either but there are a number of D3 schools with pretty decent teams that make this model work.  Some of these schools have JV teams which I guess gives some of the guys who will never play a down of varsity ball a chance to get on the field while getting their education (SJU's JV team will play four games this season).

Like jknezek, I prefer a model where the school recruits primarily guys who will have at least a chance to contribute to the (varsity) team's success at some point in their college career. 

[AndrewB]

Huntingdon has a roster posted with 170 players. 19 seniors, 19 juniors, 48 sophs, and 84 first years.
Comparing to the previous several years, still smaller junior and senior classes so we will still be a young team. The sophomore class is a bit larger than it has been so it seems we had better retention this time. That may have something to do with how many of them got playing time last year? I see seven sophomores who weren't on the roster last year and most seem to be transfers from FCS and D2 so hopefully are guys who can help right away.

Go Hawks!

There are a lot of schools that do this, so I'm not just picking on Huntingdon, but my stomach twists every time I see it. There should never be 84 first years. Someone is selling these kids a load of horsesh!t, and it has nothing to do with getting an education, good or otherwise. It has to do with filling beds, cafeteria plans, and large intro courses.

These colleges know a huge percentage of these kids aren't going to sniff the field, and when they don't, a large percentage are either going to transfer or drop out. The schools bring them in, milk them for the highest profitable year, and send them off to another school or just in debt with barely a partial degree. It is so much of what is wrong with private higher education, d3 sports, and starting young people off with debt that will follow and cripple them for years if not decades.

If your college needs to play these games to survive, it's such a disservice to these young people I really can't mourn much when they fold up shop. Frankly, I think it would be better if loads of them did and stopped taking advantage of kids who should be doing things other than college, but get sucked into debt with the promise of continuing to play the game they love.

Sorry, rant over.

I blame the movie Rudy. 

But Coach Turk just did a Round Table discussion with Carlo (Dingo Talk) and this came up.  (How the subject came up was quite funny.)
But Coach talk of how they don't cut players, and that in Alabama only 1 D3 school has football.  The students just want to give it a try.  It's more so the D3 stigma where anyone who plays high school football can compete with D3 athletes. 
I would be more worried about the major's these incoming students pursue.  If students drop out after 1 semester, they should be OK.