Alright, these aren’t as immediate as they could be, thanks to the server problems we had last night. Thankfully, we found out this morning that the issues were not related to the amount of traffic on the site, but a memory problem on the machine.

Carthage continued to struggle on offense. The Redmen can skate by another two weeks because they face Benedictine in Week 3 and have a bye in Week 4 but Millikin starts off the CCIW portion of the schedule in Week 5, followed immediately by North Central and Augustana.

Speaking of Augustana, the Vikings looked pretty good on Saturday at Catholic. The final score is somewhat misleading — it was 49-7 when Augustana put the second string in and Catholic’s first string scored three times. Catholic looks like it’s on the road to recovery, however. The Cardinals moved the ball somewhat consistently between the 20s but threw two picks in the end zone and missed a field goal.

Principia needs to go back to the drawing board on special teams with three failed conversions in a 20-18 loss to Trinity Bible. (Been a while since anyone’s used those words.)

Lost in the shadow of the numbers put up by Earlham, Manchester and Washington and Jefferson yesterday was the offensive onslaught by St. John Fisher. The Cardinals posted 672 yards of offense and got three touchdowns apiece by Mark Robinson (one was 86 yards) and Noah Fehrenbach (one was 55 yards) in beating Rochester. That’s pretty good from an offense that looked like it had been simplified last week for Nick Suchyna’s first career start.

Along with Carthage, worried about Albright (34-33 win at Ursinus), Hampden-Sydney (allowed 40 points to Gettysburg) and Wheaton (23-16 win against Gustavus, which has lost 12 of its past 14 games).

Don’t overlook: Fitchburg State beating Curry in an NEFC crossover game pitting last year’s two division champs. It’s Curry’s second loss in 23 regular-season games. … North Park starts off 2-0 for the first time in goodness knows how long. In Kickoff, remember, we projected they would actually win a conference game. … Of course, we also thought Puget Sound would play nine games. … John Carroll had eight takeaways against Hope (six picks, two fumble recoveries).

By Adam Johnson
D3football.com

I thought when Macalester decided to drop out of the MIAC to an independent football schedule in 2002 it would be a wake-up call for other struggling teams across the nation.

I guess it wasn’t.

As I read the announcement from Lewis & Clark president Tom Hochstettler, I felt like I was sitting in the Macalester auditorium in 2001 as a current player, listening to former Macalester president Michael McPherson give a similar announcement.

The announcements were eerily similar, as if there is a Micrsoft Word template for how to give up on your institution’s football team by making it sound like you have their best interests in mind.

McPherson’s letter said,

“Our concerns included not only the difficulty of competing effectively against teams with so many players, but also about the risks to health and safety that might be imposed by this imbalance.”

Hochstettler’s letter said,

“…come to the difficult conclusion that having too few players on the Pioneer football team puts our players at undue risk for injury, to the point of constituting an actual endangerment to their well-being.”

So, the two main concerns appear to be roster size and fear of injury.

Macalester’s roster has hovered around 40 players for as long as I have been associated with the program. With injuries, there were times when we dipped down around 30 players throughout a season. When we went 5-5 in 2002 we had 35 guys on the team. Don’t let any administrator tell you that you can’t compete or win with 35 players. They just have to be the right players.

Currently, the 2005 Macalester roster has 40 players on it. This independent experience, which was supposed to help improve the team and increase the roster, has not helped to increase our roster size at all. Yet, rosters of the teams we are playing are in the 70-80 range. Carleton, our MIAC academic foe, has nearly 90 players on their team — the most since WWII.

The concern for injury is the second reason for the actions these school presidents have taken. Injuries are a part of football that every player who straps on a helmet accepts. Injuries tend to occur in blowouts when players on opposite sides of the ball are likely moving at different speeds.

In 2004, Macalester lost by more points per game (36 ppg) than they did in their last season in the MIAC in 2001 (29 ppg). Yet, the concern for injury has not been mentioned.

So, what am I trying to say here? These schools who are struggling need more than a temporary fix. They need people who care and a concrete plan for improvement.

Macalester now has a new president and new athletic director who both seem to have the passion and energy to turn around the Macalester program. If the Scots’ 21-10 defeat in Week 1 is any indication, the team is already starting to improve.

It’s a shame that Lewis & Clark chose the forfeiture route but what will be an even bigger shame is if they don’t put the time and effort into making a plan to turn the program around.