Category Archives: General

Looking ahead to Saturday

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Week 4 doesn’t have a ton of big games — a lot of focus will be on Ithaca hosting St. John Fisher.

Game that won’t live up to previous years: DePauw at No. 13 Trinity (Texas). Yeah, so this is an obvious one, since it isn’t being played. Unfortunately it sets up the conference for some pretty messy tiebreaker decisions. This game coming off the schedule makes the schedule significantly less interesting.

Game that will live up to previous years: RPI at Hobart, and that’s not a good sign for RPI. Hobart has won the last three, and has outscored the Engineers 82-20 in the past five quarters. And those games were both at RPI.

Game that won’t live up to the hype: No. 17 St. John Fisher at No. 15 Ithaca. No game can live up to the pregame chatter this matchup has generated.

Best game nobody is talking about: UW-Platteville/Augustana has become a very competitive rivalry. The past three games have all been decided by three points or less, except for the 2002 game, which wasn’t decided at all — it was halted by a lightning storm in the third quarter.

Top 25 team most likely to get upset: No. 8 Occidental. Cal Lutheran could be the second-best team in the SCIAC (although Redlands will have something to say about that later). But I would be hard-pressed to call a game between No. 15 Ithaca and No. 17 St. John Fisher an upset possibility since the teams are so close together. I also don’t think No. 19 UW-Eau Claire will win this weekend, but the Blugolds are playing the No. 2 team in the NAIA — this wouldn’t be an upset either.

Off the schneid: There’s a chance for a couple of teams with long losing streaks to end up in the W column this week. Catholic (0-14) hosts Randolph-Macon, who has three wins in that span. Concordia, Ill. (0-13) hosts Eureka, which has three wins in its past 13 as well.

Mass independence: Mount Ida was looking like a possible 6-4 or 7-3 team this year (against, admittedly, a less-then competitive schedule). But that was before an 0-3 start which included allowing 42 points to Norwich. Norwich has scored 12 points in two games since. Becker has gone from having no chance at all in this game for the mythical championship of Massachusetts independent programs.

More mythology: Cortland State can wrap up the mythical SUNYAC football title with a win against Buffalo State (it has already beaten Brockport). … Mass Maritime hosts Maine Maritime for the last undisputed Maritime title. (SUNY-Maritime adds varsity football in 2006).

Guaranteed to have no playoff impact: This isn’t even a comment on the NESCAC, although that conference does finally start play this weekend. It’s the Chowan/Newport News game, which features a former Division III team (Chowan, which announced last year it was dropping to D-II) and a non-Division III team (Newport News, which isn’t an NCAA member but whom we recognize to complete ACFC standings).

Insider: One play as a QB

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This past Saturday was another good win for our program. It kept us on track for what we want to do. We played a good team in Western New England College, and they came in fired up, looking to get a little revenge for some previous meetings between the two schools. Three years ago it took a 60 yard touchdown pass with 2 minutes left to beat them, and then a year later I kicked a 52 yard field goal as time expired to beat them. Saturday was a well played game on both sides, but in the end our line just played a little harder and the running backs got the job done.

Saturday was also the first time in my 4 years that I attempted a pass, and it turned out to be a 19 yard touchdown; the first since the high school days and the first touchdown pass of my college career. It was definitely fun to get out there and feel like a quarterback again…even if it was just for 1 play.

This week for the first time we are going on the road. We get to wake up early and board a bus, to travel across the state and face a very good divisional opponent in Westfield State. Before we won the division last year, Westfield was the three time defending divisional champs, and their turf is always tough to get a win on.

It has been a tough last two weeks for me. I strained my quad and I have been trying to get as healthy as I can for the run through the divisional games. We have a good training staff so they are doing everything they can to make sure I stay on the field.

Other than that the internship is going well and I am learning a lot. I go out every day with the detectives to see what they do and some of the stuff they have to deal with. I also am in charge of entering all domestic violence cases into the computer.

Slow justice means no justice

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More than two years ago, Ohio Northern placed Tom Kaczkowski on administrative leave and named Stacey Hairston interim coach. Eventually, Kaczkowski was fired.

The violations were significant and were undisguised. The team had held extra positional practices over the summer and camp started one week earlier than allowed. Under the coaching change, Ohio Northern suffered and a team that was in the preseason Top 10 finished 4-6.

The coaches in question are gone. The players who benefitted from the extra contact are pretty much gone as well, unless some of that year’s rising sophomores who participated are now seniors. There have been a lot of repercussions already that this program has had to deal with. Other schools have been able to use Ohio Northern’s admission and self-imposed penalties against it in recruiting.

The long time frame goes contrary to the committee’s own documentation of the enforcement process. This from the committee’s FAQ:

The enforcement process is designed to provide a timely, fair and equitable resolution of infractions cases in order to uphold the high standards set for NCAA member institutions, their student-athletes, coaches and athletic administrators in the conduct of intercollegiate athletics.

I suppose fair and equitable is debatable here, though I personally do not believe the punishment fits the crime. Timely resolution, however, is lacking. In its lack of timeliness, the committee has gone contrary to its mission:

It is the mission of the NCAA enforcement program to reduce violations of NCAA legislation and impose appropriate penalties if violations occurred. The program is committed to the fairness of procedures and the timely and equitable resolution of infractions cases. The achievement of these objectives is essential to the conduct of a viable and effective enforcement program. Further, an important consideration in imposing penalties is to provide fairness to uninvolved student-athletes, coaches, administrators, competitors and other institutions.

It shouldn’t take this long. The Division I committee just reported three weeks ago about violations that happened in 2004. Even the case against Baylor men’s basketball, a complex case with significant punishment (the elimination of the program’s non-conference schedule, among others), appears to have taken only nine months.

This punishment should have been imposed in 2003, or 2004 at the latest. One can only hope that the appeals committee can find an alternate punishment that doesn’t punish coaches and players who weren’t in the program when the violations were committed.