Looking ahead to Week 4

Posted on September 23, 2006 by Pat Coleman

I’m having a good time in Connecticut — once you take away the high gas prices, the traffic, the Joe Lieberman/Ned Lamont ads, the fact that my family is 300 miles away, etc.

Hmm, let me rephrase. Living in Connecticut has given me the opportunity to see three new D-III fields already and five new teams. It’s never been my goal to see all 234 football teams or stadiums (think about it, that would take almost another two decades at one game a week) but it’s nice to get a look at some different environments.

Hobart at RPI is a game I wouldn’t have considered making the trip to if I still lived in Virginia, but it’s only a three-hour trip for me now. Even if upstate New York doesn’t repeat last season’s success, it’s better than anything I could have gotten to in the D.C. area.

Life begins at 30: Trinity (Conn.) gets back on the field this weekend, hosting Colby and putting its 30-game winning streak on the line. We get this question so often I think I’m going to put it in the FAQ: How come Trinity has won 30 in a row and I’ve never seen them in the playoffs? FAA: The NESCAC chooses not to participate. NESCAC’s loss. FAQ: How come Trinity doesn’t get ranked? FAA: Our voters don’t think they’re good enough and without any non-conference play it’s hard to tell. FAQ: Wait, doesn’t the Ivy League get ranked? They don’t go to the playoffs. FAA: Yeah, but Ivy League teams play non-conference games. When was the last time Trinity played someone from outside the NESCAC?

Colby went 7-1 last year but did not play Trinity. There are 10 NESCAC teams, so each team could play a limited schedule and still hit all nine opponents, but no, it only schedules eight games. The ninth is a scrimmage.

But then again, this is the league that listed its standings alphabetically until not that long ago.

Defying convention: Let me be the first to say … at least the first on this blog … that this year the Ithaca/St. John Fisher game will not come down to the last play. Three years ago, Ithaca won 20-19. Two years ago, St. John Fisher won in double overtime. Last year, Ithaca won in overtime. This year … Ithaca wins comfortably. A hunch. We’ll have John McGraw there to undoubtedly tell me otherwise.

Military madness: SUNY-Maritime is still looking for its first win. Even last week the Privateers lost to the club team from Gallaudet. When Gallaudet returns to varsity status next year it will have a 30-plus game losing streak, the longest in Division III, to shake off. They’ll face Norwich, which still has some military ties.

Then, just plain madness: Washington and Jefferson travels to Oberlin this weekend. Why, why, why? W&J, preseason Kickoff ranking, 15, at Oberlin, the preseason 186. And that 186 is about the highest Oberlin’s been.

Another upset pick: Gordon Mann and I each told Around the Nation’s Keith McMillan that Lycoming is the pick against Delaware Valley this week. Gordon and I both saw Delaware Valley struggle offensively last week and that is a big part of the reasoning. But I’ll throw out another and say UW-Stout will beat Whitworth. Couple reasons — first is the long trip for Whitworth to Menomonie, Wis., likely flying to Minneapolis and then piling in the bus for another couple hours. Second reason? Ask Hardin-Simmons about its trip to Stout a few years back.

Seriously, people like to pooh-pooh the concept of an air trip having an effect on a team but a prominent coach told me a few years back it absolutely makes an impact. Similarly, a team that hasn’t made an overnight trip all year could have trouble when taken out of its rhythm, say, in the postseason.

Someone tried to get me to say UW-Oshkosh would beat UW-Whitewater, but I don’t see it. We’ll have a photographer there anyway, however, just in case.

Major Payne: Note to Howard Payne — you guys are not in the NAIA. Play some D-III schools in non-conference play so we can find out how good you actually are. This week? Paul Quinn College, which is — not surprisingly — 0-2 after playing Division I-AA Jackson State and Division II Western New Mexico on the road.

In-house rivalry: The much-ballyhooed Catholic/Randolph-Macon rivalry returns this weekend. Not familiar with it? Well, it’s the D3football.com staff rivalry — Catholic is my alma mater and Keith McMillan played for Randolph-Macon. I first came to learn of Keith when he was picking off four passes against Catholic in a game I called on campus radio after graduation. It’s also Catholic’s longest-standing current rivalry, as the teams have played every year since 1987. Randolph-Macon leads the series 14-12-1, though Catholic leads 10-8-1 since the series was revived and leads by just 32 points over those 19 games.

The tie? Only the highest-scoring tie in Division III history, a 50-50 … let’s say spectacle back in 1995. And since there’s overtime now, the tie is built to stay that way.

I think Keith and I need some sort of traveling trophy associated with this game.

Soul-searching: Linfield has a bye this week after starting the season 0-2. Rowan gets back on the field after back-to-back bye weeks.

Kickoff is coming up quickly. Any thoughts in the waning hours?

D-III entertainment notes

Posted on September 22, 2006 by Pat Coleman

Just a couple of quick items that crossed our desk earlier today:

1. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will be on campus at Framingham State on Friday filming The Game Plan. The Gridiron Gang star told NBCSports.com that acting allows him to live out his NFL dreams.

That’s the greatest part about being an actor. I had those aspirations about playing in the NFL, about going to the Super Bowl. Now, I get a chance to play in the NFL, go to the Super Bowl, be the MVP. It’s like a dream come true.

2. Former Cortland State student-athlete Michele Celestino Falco faces an offer on Deal or No Deal Friday night of about $170,000. (For those who don’t understand the show, well, there’s amounts of money, suitcases, buyout offers, etc. It can’t be explained in 25 words of less.) Falco played field hockey and ice hockey and is supported by her husband, former Cortland State football player Anthony Falco. He’s ranked ninth in school history with 104 career receptions.

Hey, don’t forget to keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. Or something.

Supporting participants in a positive manner

Posted on September 19, 2006 by Pat Coleman

That phrase above is the key part of the Division III sportsmanship statement, but in some places it is ignored by administrators and trampled on by fans. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from my experiences this past weekend.

As you may know, I went to three Division III football games over the weekend. At two of them, the fans did support the participants and officials in a positive manner. (More so the participants.) However, fan behavior at Wilkes was appalling, to an extent on both sides, but especially from the Wilkes fans.

As it stands right now, I would never take my children to a Wilkes game and I would recommend nobody else do so either.

And I’m not even talking about the inebriated mob standing in one end zone at the end of the game. It’s the fans in the other end zone who chose to berate individual players from the opposing team, loudly and with the foulest language I’ve ever heard at a D-III event. (And I’ve been to a lot.) At one point in the game Delaware Valley was punting from its own end zone. While several fans in the corner of the end zone were yelling at the punter, one person stepped up and yelled at the top of his lungs, “You f—ing f-g–t, you’re nothing but a f—ing f-g–t! Pressure’s all on you, you f—ing f-g–t!”

I shot a picture of the fan and it’s in our gallery if anyone wants to follow up.

Security? Nowhere in sight, of course.

I wouldn’t mention it if it were an isolated incident, or if the university had shown any interest in policing its crowd. But this harkens back, unfortunately, to many problems that we have had with MAC fans on the message board in the past, and echoes other problems reported regarding MAC fan behavior. You’d have to have been around the league a fairly long time to remember a brawl between Wilkes and Lycoming fans after a men’s basketball game in the late ’90s, but I remember full well, since it was part of a pattern of fan behavior, and a previous MAC commissioner and a since-departed basketball coach had the gall to blame us for it.

At the time, I pointed out that the MAC had no sportsmanship statement and if it did, it was not on the conference’s Web site.

This is going on eight years later and the MAC still does not. It doesn’t even pay lip service to sportsmanship, and it shows at the games. It is long past time for the MAC to take this seriously.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the NCAA promotes good sportsmanship by student-athletes, coaches and spectators. We request your cooperation by supporting the participants and officials in a positive manner. Profanity, racial, or sexist comments, or other intimidating actions directed at officials, student-athletes, coaches or team representatives will not be tolerated and are grounds for removal from the site of competition. Also, the consumption or possession of alcoholic beverages at the site of competition is prohibited.”

Let’s see, profane, racial, sexist and intimidating. Yeah, that pretty much covers it.

The MAC should take direction from its like-minded neighbor to the north, the Empire 8. That league has been at the forefront of sportsmanship efforts in Division III for years and commissioner Chuck Mitrano has been the driving force. Sportsmanship in Division III was the subject of a lengthy piece in a recent edition of the NCAA News. (NCAA News stories were lost in an NCAA.org redesign, so the link is no longer available.)

“You could educate until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have a policy under which to monitor and enforce things — to hold people’s feet to the fire — it just isn’t going to be beneficial,” Mitrano says in the NCAA News piece. “To really have an impact, be successful and have longevity, all three things have to work together.”

But that requires work. The MAC needs to roll up its sleeves and get to it, like other conferences have already done.

And this to the fans, though I’m repeating something I wrote in December:

These players do not deserve your abuse. A Division III football player gets no special treatment above and beyond what you get. They’re not on scholarship, don’t get special dining halls or treatment in the classroom (in fact, you can count on some professors being harder on football players than on the rest of the class).

If you need to get all liquored up in order to enjoy a football game, stay home. The football should be reason enough. If you’re of legal age, there’s plenty of time to drink after the game. Otherwise, act like the adults you allegedly are.