Monthly Archives: May 2005

Open coaching jobs: Where do we stand?

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There are three open head coaching jobs that we’re aware of, and here’s what we know about them:

Kings Point (3-7, 3-4 Liberty League in 2004)
Tim McNulty resigned at the end of March and the school intends to introduce his replacement tomorrow afternoon. All indications from the rumor mill point to Mike Toop, head coach at Division I-AA non-scholarship Davidson. Toop is an alumnus of the institution, also known as the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. He’s 17-22 at Davidson, which has moved recently to playing almost exclusively I-AA schools instead of mostly I-AA and a handful of D-IIIs.

Pomona-Pitzer (4-5, 3-3 SCIAC)
Roger Caron left the school in early April to coach at Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, Conn. The school still has his name on the Web site and his voice and name are still on the voice mail. That’s because Pomona-Pitzer believes Caron is taking a one-year leave of absence, according to athletic director Charles Katsiaficas, who expects Caron to return next spring. Scott Rynne will coach the team in 2005.

Waynesburg (7-4, 3-2 PAC)
Jeff Hand left for conference rival Westminster (Pa.). The school says it intends to go through a search and hire a “permanent” replacement but time is awful short for that.

Also, Brent Becker was named interim head coach at Lake Forest in February, but will be coaching there in 2005. A search will begin at the end of the season.

The least wonderful time of the year

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Empty stadium, Ohio WesleyanTell me you don’t feel the same way.

I’m definitely ready for football to start. I’ve ridden the high from Division III basketball as much as I can. I love major league baseball, but that’s not the same. But it’s been almost five months since the Stagg Bowl, and football needs to start.

It’s the worst time of the year. The NFL Draft is done. Schedules are basically finished. Graduations litter the May schedule … and it’s still more than three months until kickoff!

Don’t get me wrong — I enjoy the opportunity to spend extra time with my kids, especially with the newborn taking up a lot of our time. The lawn needs to be cut. The kids like to play outside. I need to get the brakes checked and some tires replaced after putting another umpteen hundred miles on the cars during the football and basketball season. But it’s a long time until kickoff and I’m sitting here ready to go.

Let’s skip June and July and get it on.

Indiana, it’s about time!

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Folks in Indiana have been well aware; people in neighboring states, not always. But with most of Indiana refusing to observe Daylight Savings Time, it’s been a curse on football schedule-makers.

For those who don’t know, most of Indiana, the part in the Eastern Time Zone, has not observed Daylight Savings Time, the time between the beginning of April and the end of October in which most of the USA turns its clocks forward one hour. Therefore, games scheduled in Indiana from Weeks 1-9 actually start one hour later to those based in Michigan, Ohio, etc.

Most of the Indiana schools get their schedules right year-in and year-out. They know that if a game starts at 1:30 in Ohio, then they need to list it as 12:30 on their schedule if listing it in Indiana time. But it often confuses opposing schedule-makers, who will list a 1:30 Indiana Time game as 1:30, rather than 2:30, and say “All Times Eastern.”

It even causes headaches on our schedule, since the change in time comes during the football season. We have to manually change the clocks between Week 9 and Week 10, when Indiana comes back into line. It also affects people calling the NCAA’s national office, in Indianapolis.

Thankfully, starting in 2006, this will no longer be an issue. The state’s legislature passed a law restoring Daylight Savings Time in Indiana for the first time since the early 1970s.

We can hardly wait.