Tag Archives: Wilkes

Where we’ve been, who we’ve seen

Posted on by

Keith McMillan talks at length about some of the trips he has taken since starting the Around the Nation column back in 2001. Some of those trips he and I have taken together, sometimes he’s been on his own, but the goal, at least unofficially, is to see every Division III team play someday, and see a game in every home stadium.

Now, to be honest, that isn’t very realistic. The fact remains that it’s very difficult to see more than one game in a weekend, which limits the number of teams either of us can see in a season. And I recently moved away from the east coast, where I had a much better chance of knocking teams off the list. But I’ll continue to give it a try.

I’m only counting the teams I’ve seen play (must have seen at least half of a game to qualify) and stadiums I’ve been in for a D-III game. I’ve also visited a bunch of campuses and walked through, or around a bunch of stadiums: Aurora, Beloit, Concordia (Ill.), Delaware Valley, Hamline, Huntingdon, Illinois Wesleyan, LaGrange, Lake Forest, Lebanon Valley, Lewis and Clark, Millsaps, Mississippi College, North Park, Northwestern, Oberlin, St. Thomas, Susquehanna, Trinity (Conn.), Wittenberg, Wooster, WPI. But I’ve seen 108 teams play, by my count, and seen games in 61 stadiums.

This doesn’t count Swarthmore, which I saw play back in the ’90s. Unfortunately, it seems that was a one-time occurrence.

Some of the places I’ve seen games have changed quite a bit. I mean, I was at St. John Fisher in 1994 but I know the stadium isn’t a bit like that was. I saw FDU-Madis… excuse me, FDU-Florham in a different era. Soon my view on RPI will be outdated. But they all count. And maybe I’ll get back there again.

Here’s who I’ve seen play, starting in 1991: Albright, Alfred, Augsburg, Augustana, Aurora, Benedictine, Bethel, Blackburn, Bridgewater (Va.), Brockport State, Cal Lutheran, Capital, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Catholic, Central, Chicago, Christopher Newport, Coast Guard, Coe, Cortland State, Crown, Curry, Delaware Valley, Dickinson, East Texas Baptist, Elmhurst, Emory & Henry, FDU-Florham, Franklin & Marshall, Frostburg State, Gallaudet, Gettysburg, Greensboro, Grove City, Guilford, Gustavus Adolphus, Hampden-Sydney, Hanover, Hardin-Simmons, Hobart, Howard Payne, Huntingdon, Ithaca, John Carroll, Johns Hopkins, Kean, King’s, Linfield, Louisiana College, Lycoming, Macalester, Maranatha Baptist, Mary Hardin-Baylor, McDaniel, McMurry, Merchant Marine, Methodist, Millsaps, Mississippi College, Minnesota-Morris, Montclair State, Mount Union, Muhlenberg, North Carolina Wesleyan, New Jersey, Newport News, Nichols, North Central, Northwestern (Minn.), Pacific Lutheran, Principia, Randolph-Macon, Rockford, Rowan, RPI, Salisbury, Shenandoah, Springfield, St. John Fisher, St. Olaf, St. John’s, St. Scholastica, St. Thomas, Susquehanna, Thiel, Thomas More, Trinity (Conn.), Trinity (Texas), Union, Ursinus, UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse, UW-Stout, UW-Whitewater, Washington and Jefferson, Washington and Lee, Washington U., Waynesburg, Wesley, Western Connecticut, Wheaton, Widener, Wilkes, William Paterson, Williams, Wittenberg, Worcester State.

Key gets: I went out of my way to see Cal Lutheran when they came to Muhlenberg in 2002. Saw a bunch of teams last year at the UMAC’s Dome Day. Picked off both Macalester and St. Scholastica just this past weekend. Saw both Susquehanna and Grove City play at Dickinson, in 1999 and 2000, and never since. Traveled with Catholic when I was a student to a game at the University of Chicago.

And the schools at which I’ve seen games: Albright, Augsburg, Benedictine, Bridgewater (Va.), Capital, Carnegie Mellon, Catholic, Central, Chicago, Coast Guard, Cortland State, Dickinson, Elmhurst, FDU-Florham, Franklin & Marshall, Frostburg State, Gallaudet, Gettysburg, Hampden-Sydney, Hardin-Simmons, Johns Hopkins, Kean, King’s, Linfield, Lycoming, Macalester, Mary Hardin-Baylor, McDaniel, McMurry, Merchant Marine, Montclair State, Mount Union, Muhlenberg, New Jersey, North Central, Randolph-Macon, Rowan, RPI, Salisbury, Shenandoah, Springfield, St. John Fisher, St. Olaf, St. John’s, Thiel, Trinity (Texas), Union, Ursinus, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, UW-Whitewater, Washington and Jefferson, Washington U., Wesley, Western Connecticut, Wheaton, Widener, Wilkes, William Paterson, Williams, Worcester State.

New this year: East Texas Baptist, Macalester, St. Scholastica, Wartburg,

There are certainly some holes in this list. Never seen Wabash (or DePauw, take it easy, people!). I’ve never been to a SCIAC school or seen anyone from the Midwest Conference. Didn’t take nearly enough advantage of my year in Connecticut. But I’ll get the list down, slowly but surely.

Not sure if Keith will chime in with his list, but anyone else is welcome, of course.

Supporting participants in a positive manner

Posted on by

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.