D3football Daily Dose

Hopefully better late than never, D3football.com welcomes Pacific University to the Division III football-playing fold. In a year where D-III football was dealt a few blows, losing Blackburn, Principia, and most surprisingly, Colorado College, it’s good to see administrations are still seeing the value of football at their schools.

I was contacted by an AP reporter in Oregon for my take on why Pacific added football — she said it was added as a revenue generator. And while that sounds odd at the Division III level, for a sport that costs a lot of money to sponsor, it can still make sense. I wrote a piece about schools adding football several years ago and there are a few basic reasons, one of which is increased enrollment.

This isn’t to say that Pacific will bring in 200 extra new freshmen when it holds its first football camp, the way Mary Hardin-Baylor did, but football is about the biggest driver of undergraduate enrollment a school can add.

Here’s hoping Pacific, and Hendrix too, find success in Division III football.

This letter was sent to the Colorado College administrators named below and later posted to the Save CC football mailing list:

Richard Celeste, President
Ken Ralph, Director of Athletics
Susan Ashley, Head of Faculty
Colorado College

Dear Mr. Celeste, Mr. Ralph, and Ms. Ashley,

My name is Ray Urban and I am the father of Luke Urban, CC class of
2012 and starting linebacker this past season for the CC Tigers. I am
writing this letter not to argue whether or not football should be in
CC’s future but to outline a road map that is more in the spirit of
what CC is (or should be) about.

PERCEPTION

Let’s face it, canceling an 0-9 program is much easier than canceling
a 9-0 program. To the casual observer and general public, the team was
uncompetitive. Even with living in Boston I managed to attend three
games and watched video feeds of all of the rest. This is a team that
with a few breaks, a few less injuries, and offensive play calling
that better matched the players skills could easily have been 4-5.
From the DePauw overtime loss to the final game against Centre College
we saw a team that deserved to be on the field.

PROCESS

Yes, the fiscal crisis demanded attention and football is a relatively
expensive sport. What should have happened is an open, transparent,
frank discussion amongst all stake holders including the players,
alumni, and the larger CC community as to the best course of action.
What actually took place was the exact opposite; closed, opaque,
dictatorial.

SCHEDULE

The proposed three year time frame is right; it just needs to be
implemented 180 degrees from the way proposed. Commit to playing for
three more seasons while the future of the program is discussed and a
plan is implemented to either continue or end the 124 year tradition.
That allows CC to honor the commitments made to the football players
in the classes of 2010, 2011, and 2012 and builds on the strong
athletic and football core represented by those players. Discontinuing
the program for three years guarantees its death.

SUPPORT

The talk of requiring the football program to raise a sufficiently
large endowment to would allow CC to not support it at all is patently
unfair. Surely the 124 year old program should receive at least the
level of financial support from CC that the average CC Division Three
sport at CC receives.

Football is indeed old fashioned. It rewards teamwork more than
individual excellence. It is complicated, rewarding studiousness. It
demands practice. It is never easy. Colorado College owes to the
history of the program, the players, and the integrity of the College
to make this important decision the right way.

Sincerely yours,

Ray Urban

There are professional football leagues in many European countries, and Division III football players often play professionally for a few years, earn a living and see the world.

Consider it an extension of the liberal arts education.

I recently stumbled across the blog of one of those players, former Grinnell wide receiver Nick Merklin. He’s playing for the Kragujevac Wild Boars and paints an interesting picture of what it’s like as a Division III football player in Europe.

The blog can be found at http://footballinserbia.wordpress.com/

Two SLIAC teams dropped football this offseason, and now the rumblings are growing that the SLIAC and UMAC are getting back into their alliance.

The leagues split up a couple of years ago as each tried to pursue an automatic bid independently. The SLIAC got close and was on track to get a tourney bid as early as 2010 before Blackburn and Principia dropped the sport this offseason. Huntingdon and LaGrange, which joined the league as football-only affiliates, brought the SLIAC’s total to eight, but with just six playing the sport next season, the league won’t qualify.

The UMAC has just five football-playing members, and not many opportunities to add to that total unless other schools in the league add the sport. St. Scholastica brought the total to five.

A renewal of the UMAC-SLIAC alliance would bring the total to nine teams and restart the two-year waiting period clock, with, potentially, 2009 and 2010 as waiting years and 2011 as an automatic bid. Of course, that would likely leave Huntingdon and LaGrange back out in the cold, as two teams in the Southeast with nine teams scattered from St. Louis to Duluth, Minn.

One school reportedly jumped the gun and released news on its Web site, though that release has since been pulled. The SLIAC declined comment, while UMAC commissioner Corey Borchardt would not take questions but gave the following statement to D3sports.com: “We currently only have five institutions that offer football. Certainly any time that we can look to expand the number of institutions that offer football, we would want to do that. We want to see that number increase and hope to do so for the AQ and for scheduling purposes.”

Hopefully Huntingdon and LaGrange are calling all of the SCAC schools left in the lurch by Colorado College, because if they end up with eight conference games plus a Dome Day, then that’s nine games and I doubt many will choose to play a 10th game and honor their commitment to Huntingdon and LaGrange.

It came without warning, the dropping of Colorado College football. It appears the school might not have even had the courtesy to call its own conference and let them know that football and softball were going away, as was women’s water polo, not an SCAC sport.

In fairly short order, we’ve lost three Division III football programs, after we’d lost just three in the previous decade. Mass-Boston and Swarthmore were cut loose after the 2000 season, while New Jersey City shut it down after the 2002 season.

Chris Jarmon, who has been blogging since choosing Division III on a blog we’ve previously cited called The D3 Experience, tells the story of Colorado College football being eliminated.

He’d been writing all season as Colorado College struggled and finished winless. But this was basically a surprise to everyone on campus.

Jarmon isn’t letting his career end: “As soon as I heard the news, I knew I had to transfer. Football means almost everything to me, and I couldn’t live with myself not knowing I’d exhausted all playing opportunities. To be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to live without football once my senior season is over. So to not play my remaining three seasons would be the biggest regret of my life.”

Read the full story.

This makes Jarmon’s blog even more interesting than expected. But not in a way he wanted.

A short story in the NCAA News today says that Wayne Burrow is leaving the national office’s championships group effective at the end of the week. A source tells D3football.com that he is leaving the NCAA entirely.

Photo by Ryan Coleman, D3sports.com Wayne Burrow accepts a token of appreciation from Carey Harveycutter and the City of Salem at his final Stagg Bowl luncheon.

It is not like me to wax poetic about the NCAA liaisons. They hold the purse strings of the NCAA and have to enforce the budget rules that the Division III member schools and conferences have put in place. But I’m going to wax about Wayne.

While Wayne certainly did many, many things with the NCAA in his long career there, his lasting impact upon Division III football fans is the attention he paid to the sport and the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. While the NCAA is certainly a target of wrath from misunderstanding fans, Wayne’s work elevated the level of Division III football’s championship game and worked with the City of Salem for more than a decade to make this a centerpiece event for not just Division III football, but Division III athletics in general.

As the article notes, he has worked as the liaison for D-I baseball, D-III football and D-I swimming and diving. He also had been the championships manager for D-II baseball, D-II women’s basketball, men’s and women’s fencing, men’s gymnastics, women’s lacrosse, D-III women’s soccer, D-II swimming and diving, women’s water polo and D-I wrestling.

To me, it was clear that Wayne brought a lot of the Omaha mentality from his time as the Division I baseball championships liaison into his work with Salem. From all I’ve heard, every time the Stagg Bowl is able to be played at a time other than 11 a.m. ET, it’s been because Wayne used his influence behind the scenes to nudge the game into the later time slot. If Wayne weren’t committed to the Stagg Bowl in Salem, Va., it may not have stayed beyond the first couple of contracts, but instead, the long-term relationship has helped the city gradually improve the stadium and the events surrounding the Stagg Bowl to what we see today: better lights, field turf, video replay board, new locker rooms, the whole nine yards.

Wayne’s last year as the football liaison was 2007 and we do have high hopes for Shonna Brown, as there are certainly many places where she can have an impact herself on the Stagg Bowl.

But Wayne is missed by Division III football already. And we wish him well in his next endeavor.

The cancellation of the 2009 Arena Football League season can’t be a good sign for Division III football players looking to go pro in something other than something other than sports. After losing NFL Europe (or NFL Europa, if you prefer the latest name the NFL gave it), chances to participate in a high level are getting more constricted.

Those aren’t the only pro leagues, of course. AF2 and a host of other indoor leagues are still planning to play. And there’s one new opportunity: The United National Gridiron League.

The league holds its inaugural draft on Jan. 8. Players hoping to be considered should act quickly. Go to http://network.ungleague.com to arrive at the UNGL Player Network. After signing up, log in using your email and password, click Edit Profile and fill out all fields and upload a highlight video (or embed if you have one on YouTube or elsewhere).

The UNGL will not look at players without a profile and video, or so we’ve been told. And we were also told to expect about 20 percent of the league to be made up of former Division III players.

There are eight planned franchises, primarily in the Southeast but at least one also in a Division III hotspot.

Who knows if this league will survive, but with so few opportunities available, hopefully this league will pan out for Division III players.

For those of you who just finished your senior year this season, keep in touch! We hope to hear from you in the future.

Last year we broke this file up into four pieces, but only the first piece made it into the RSS feed and was downloaded in iTunes. So this is a big file, but it’s all here.

We pick up this broadcast archive from the final minutes before kickoff and cut off right before the postgame news conferences. We’ll post those separately.

Pat Coleman, Keith McMillan and Frank Rossi on the call. Gordon Mann anchors our halftime and postgame coverage.

 

 Stagg Bowl XXXVI [215:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Note: This is the final entry of the Stagg Bowl blog by sideline commentator Frank Rossi. To read his previous entries, click the following links:

1) 12/17/08 - The Road (Sky) to Salem;
2) 12/18/08 - Cold Weather, Warm Reception;
3) 12/19/08 - A Night of Celebrations;
4) 12/19/08 - Meet the Teams (and Miss Virginia); or
5) 12/20/08 - With Nine Hours to Go.]

Since I wrote my first blog entry on an airplane heading toward Salem, it’s only fitting that I begin to write the last “Sideline Guy” entry from the plane ride I’m taking from Dulles Airport to Laguardia Airport. It’s tough to fit in all of the stories from the day in one entry, but I have plenty of them to share with you and am writing this over the period of a day.

I didn’t fall asleep until about 4:00am on the night before the big game because of the adrenaline that I had been experiencing through much of the week. Unfortunately, that meant I was ripe for a rough morning since we were aiming to leave for the parking lot by 7:30am. After falling out of bed and getting dressed up for the sidelines, we were ready to roll. Gordon Mann, Ryan Tipps and I threw together our equipment within 45 minutes and began broadcasting our pregame show at 9:00am.

I have to be honest – our 90 minutes of the show flew by. The weather cooperated (the temperature hovered around 50 degrees until the fourth quarter and no rain fell), and the crowd began filing into the parking lot around the same time. My favorite moment of the show is when Mr. Allison, a Whitewater fan who had his tailgating station set up nearby our pregame set, asked if we wanted some of what he was serving. I motioned for him to bring us some – and much to my surprise, he brought us steamed oysters on the half-shell with cocktail sauce! Now, granted, I didn’t have any breakfast and had no time to really eat before manning the sidelines, so I threw caution to the wind and ate my share. It was a good choice, because I didn’t eat again until 4:00pm. Thanks Mr. Allison and to your crew for thinking of us this morning.

Now, unlike the events I wrote about earlier in the week, this was actually my second Stagg Bowl game day. However, having spent a few days with many of the participants made Saturday feel extremely different from the start. When I walked the Whitewater sideline, I heard a lot of hooting and hollering above me from a few Bridgewater fans. Next thing I know, they’re chanting my old college nickname that has made its rounds on the message boards, “Frank the Tank! Frank the Tank!” That took me by surprise, but it was amazing how many people today took time out to say hello to me – even people I met only briefly this week. I kept harping on the family aspect of the game and related events this week, but I can’t overstate how true it really is.

My feet were killing me after the game because I kept walking both sidelines a lot more than I did last year. I wanted to gain the feelings on both sidelines during their offensive and defensive possessions – and gauge what factor the crowd played at times. My only gripe about the crowd was from the Whitewater side of the field early in the game, although it was an isolated incident. After failing to convert in an early possession, Whitewater quarterback Jeff Donovan came over to talk with his offense on the benches when a small group of Whitewater fans got on him a bit, barking out some negative statements concerning his play on that drive apparently in the name of motivation. Donovan, who always is smiling when I see him, lost that smile from his face – and I think other fans noticed. The next words I heard from the crowd a few seconds later were positive toward Donovan who nodded and smiled once others in that area applauded and repeated those comments. These players will hear enough criticisms from their coaches throughout the day – although, that’s part of a coach’s job, not the fans’ jobs. The sudden expectation of championship wins on the part of some Whitewater fans needs to remain positive in order to be productive.

There were a lot of laughs had and memories created on the sidelines – like when the Mount Union mascot decided to try to fake me out about losing my iPhone on the ground (yeah, I’m gullible since that was how I was getting my feed to the Press Box). Other memories include when I admitted to Springfield Head Coach and Selection Committee member Mike DeLong that I was nervous to interview Mount Union Head Coach Larry Kehres at halftime (I know Coach Kehres has a certain dislike of the mundane “how is your team playing” questions since those answers should be obvious and are a waste of his time). DeLong assured me that, as a fellow East Region guy, he had my back if anything happened. Well, Coach Kehres was a great interview at halftime, as was Coach Leipold after I broke the 100-meter dash record to get across the field before halftime was over to interview him (it was wind-aided, so I don’t get in the record book).

One of the roles of a sideline guy is to report on injuries to either team’s players, and there were about three injuries of any importance all day that I saw. The amazing thing to me was watching these hobbled players insist on getting back out onto the field. Obviously, the training staffs checked out their players fully before allowing such a return, but these players proved to me that no matter how many Stagg Bowls they have played, each one is just as important to them as the last. Coach Leipold spoke Friday at the luncheon about how his team, though appearing in their fourth consecutive Stagg Bowl, does not take the appearances for granted. After watching the sidelines on Saturday, I can confirm that message for both teams.

The best memories of the day, however, came from the post-game award ceremony. Mount Union looked like a team that had won their first Stagg Bowl ever. It was a team that really wanted to end the careers of quarterback Greg Micheli and running back Nate Kmic with the fitting conclusion – and they worked hard, even in the face of a Whitewater comeback, to do just that. When I interviewed Micheli Thursday after the Gagliardi Award ceremony, he was smiling and relieved that the speech portion of an individual award was over. Saturday, when I tracked him down on the field post-victory, he was elated, modest and team-oriented with everything I asked him. Yet, I know that there is an enormous level of personal satisfaction he derived from being able to get the “walnut and bronze” back in the hands of his team. I had never been a real Micheli fan prior to this year’s Stagg Bowl week – not that he had done anything negative, but because his per-game passing stats were never something that jumped out at me and his demeanor seemed somewhat quietly overconfident. I hate admitting when I’m wrong… I especially hate admitting when I’m completely out of my mind. This was one of those occasions – his modesty isn’t overconfidence, but rather, it is truly who he is. He hates the spotlight, and he just lets his arm do most of the talking. And when you look at his per-season and career statistics, you realize that his arm never shut up over the last couple years. Micheli is a true role model – and I hope there are a lot of young players that will learn from his example.

After the postgame interviews, I headed upstairs and reflected for a while as the D3football.com crew put the finishing touches on their stories, photos and the broadcast. I was one of those people this year who was really exhausted at the end of the regular season because of the level of travel I put in covering Union College’s away games for the radio from an average of 1,300 miles away this year (all that while being a full-time student). I’m not looking for kudos, but rather, I’m trying to give an example of the fatigue level that all of us in D3football.com end up with by the end of the season because of the amount of work and travel we put into Division III Football coverage. Yet, I was reinvigorated on Saturday and throughout the week. My energy level was well beyond what it’s been in the last month thanks to the energy and positive regards I received from the players, coaches, fans, families and many of you readers (and, of course, Miss Virginia 2008, Tara Wheeler). I now understand what drives Pat Coleman and the rest of the D3football.com crew to do this every year, and I realize how lucky I was to be in Salem and Roanoke this week.

Some quick words of thanks are due here to Brad Bankson (ODAC Commissioner), J.J. Nekeloff (Asst. ODAC Commissioner and ODAC Sports Information Director), Sara Rechnitzer (ODAC Intern) and Carey Harveycutter (Director of Salem Civic Facilities) – these were the folks who really painstakingly made sure this week went off without any hitches. You succeeded and deserve much more than this brief mention, folks. Also, thanks to Kyle in the Press Box elevator, who always made sure we were walking around with a smile on our faces, and to the entire crew at the Stagg Bowl Stadium for keeping the facilities in tip-top shape, even in the wind, rain and cold weather we experienced throughout the week.

So, this ends the “Sideline Guy” blog for this year – although, let me pass on one final story. On my way home Saturday night, I got on the plane from Dulles to NYC to find the entire Iona Mens’s Basketball team on the plane heading for home. I sat next to the Gaels’ freshman guard Kyle Rawson and had a nice conversation with him after the Gaels’ defeat at Ohio State Saturday. We hit the topic of football, when I brought up the fact that Iona disbanded its football program. Kyle told me that there was still a lot of anger about the decision, although I’ve understood that the travel costs Iona faced after several local FCS teams disbanded their programs made the decision necessary for Iona. I received a good closing lesson from this encounter related to the value of Division III Football programs and what they can do to add a sense of pride and commitment toward the schools that have them. Sure, Division III Football can create Title IX (gender equity) issues because of the male/female athletics ratios that must be maintained by such schools that have programs. However, when you see 104 young men represent their schools as well as Mount Union and Whitewater players did this week, you understand why football is such an important staple in American colleges and universities today, especially those in Division III. It was a fitting end to a tremendous week.

SALEM — You shoulda got ‘em this year.

Mount Union and UW-Whitewater each had to replace significant chunks of their lineups for 2008, with the graduation of dominant senior classes. There were questions coming into the season, and frankly, the Road to Salem was as wide open as we’ve seen in years.

But now that the Purple Raiders and Warhawks have traveled that road, mostly in dominant fashion, once again, it’s fair to look ahead and wonder how anyone can overcome them.

Certainly in football there are upsets, injuries, weather and other factors that play into who emerges victorious at the end of a 10-game season backed by a 32-team playoff. That’s half the fun, nothing is a given.

But Mount Union started eight seniors today: QB Greg Micheli, RB Nate Kmic, T Luke Summers, G James Bird, TE Chad Reynolds, DE Joseph Millings, LB Chas Yoder and CB Daryl Ely. They also started 12 juniors and two sophomores, a nucleus that — while without their stars in the backfield — will likely be favored to return to Salem.

UW-Whitewater, which started three seniors (Ts Mike Sherman and Rob Gilbreath, and MLB Jace Rindahl), is even better positioned to make a run next season. QB Jeff Donovan is a junior, RB Antwan Anderson is a sophomore and RB Levell Coppage is a freshman. Altogether, Whitewater started 12 juniors, five sophomores and two freshmen in the Stagg Bowl.

One thing that doesn’t sound like it will be happening is a Purple Raiders-Warhawks regular-season matchup. Mount Union has nine conference games locked and UW-Whitewater has seven, and a game in the first week of ‘09 and ‘10 is possible. The teams played in that slot in ‘02 and ‘03, but Mount Union coach Larry Kehres was jokingly noncommittal after the Stagg Bowl.

“I was stupid enough to wear a stocking cap this week and get caught on video,” he said, referring to an incident at the Stagg Bowl luncheon where Kehres’ picture was shown on a big screen. “But I’m not stupid enough to schedule Whitewater in the regular season.”

Perhaps its a show of respect from Kehres, who now has a rival program capable of beating his team in any given season. But if UW-Whitewater is considered on Mount Union’s level, or close to it, that’s not good news for the rest of us. Sure, we have our conference titles to chase and playoff games to participate in, but if there are two dominant powers, and no one could stop their inexperienced rosters from getting to Salem, what makes us think we’ll be able to stop them any time soon?

Are we destined for more of the same?

The floor is open for well-supported arguments for teams that might break the Purple cycle.