We’re told to expect some more conference shuffling today, as the SCAC made the foregone-conclusion addition of Birmingham-Southern official on Thursday afternoon.
Today, we’re expecting to see Centenary and Notre Dame (Md.) added to the increasingly misnomered Pennsylvania Athletic Conference. Notre Dame is effectively an independent with the breakup of the Atlantic Women’s Colleges Conference. But Centenary becomes the fourth team to leave the Skyline in nine months, joining Stevens (which left two conferences in that time), Kings Point and Manhattanville.
Oh, sorry, Kings Point has finally decided between its two interchangeable names and wants to be known as the United States Merchant Marine Academy. We’ll settle for Merchant Marine.
Remember, Manhattanville joined the MAC Freedom, Stevens the Interstate 8, then the Empire 8, and Kings Point the Interstate 8.
We’re expecting a name for the Interstate 8 … which is currently 7 … but not an eighth school. That’s yet to come. The only word we’ve heard around namewise for this league contains “Chesapeake.” That would be interesting for Drew and Merchant Marine, since I am reminded every time I drive north on 95 (the Interstate, remember?) that the Chesapeake Bay watershed terminates significantly south of Northern Jersey.
I still like my name better.
But the question remains over the future of the Skyline. They’d be down to seven teams in men’s. Having Russell Sage on board (still no word) would help the women’s side, though with SUNY-Maritime struggling to field a women’s basketball team there isn’t much of a buffer. And the league wouldn’t have too many automatic bids outside of basketball. What’s next? Raid the NEAC? They’re at 10 teams and falling for 2007-08 after losing Villa Julie (CAC) and Chestnut Hill (moving down to Division II). Polytechnic and Bard are in the Skyline’s footprint. Perhaps the Skyline could be absorbed by the NEAC (or vice versa) and form a “super” conference.
I use the term loosely.
The dominoes are still falling.
It makes sense for the USMMA’s sports teams to call themselves Merchant Marine rather than Kings Point for two reasons:
1) People aren’t all that familiar with the institution and its purpose, so why not go with the more clearly identifiable name?
2) The two most famous military academies in the United States are commonly known by their location (West Point and Annapolis), but are referred to in college athletics by their service identity (Army and Navy).
At this point, I’ll resist the temptation to revive the old collegiate joke [?] that Sam Houston State University was formerly known as Sam Houston Institute of Technology …. 😉
Sager,
Absolutely. But their letter jackets and helmets read “KP” so that’s what we used. 🙂
Ahh wt, Sam Houston State was never affiliated with the technical colleges in the state.;-)
SHSU has always been a “teacher’s” college.
Founded as Sam Houston Normal Institute in 1878, it was renamed Sam Houston State Teachers College in 1923.
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/kcs2.html
So it could have been Sam Houston Institute of Teaching?
Ah well, Ralph, it was funny … back in the 8th grade or so. 🙁
🙂 🙂 🙂
The off-season is tough!
Interstate seven choose a name, front page.
I know that about Kings Point, Pat. My youngest brother went to college near there. He bought a sweatshirt from the USMMA bookstore that says “Kings Point” on it. 🙂
Warren, I’m having trouble understanding the gist of that old collegiate joke to which you referred. Was it supposed to be funny because Sam Houston was never an engineer or any sort of techie? If so, SHSU’s actual old name would’ve been funny as well, because Sam Houston was never a teacher, either.
Or are tech schools looked down upon in Texas? Was that the point of the joke? I have to admit that this one probably sailed right over my head.
It would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened with the NCAA if SHSU was called the Cherokees rather than the Bearkats. One of the odd facts about Sam Houston — who was definitely one of American history’s more colorful characters — is that he was adopted into the Cherokee tribe as a teenager after he ran away from home and went to live with them in Tennessee. His second wife (of three) was also a Cherokee.
Let me explain:
Sam
Houston
Institute of
Technology
Although the Academies for the Army and Navy are popularly known by their host cities, I have never once heard the Air Force Academy referred to as “Colorado Springs.” Locally (at least), this institution is known simply as “the Academy.”
Army, Navy, and Air Force comprise 60% of the answer to a popular trivia question: what are the only 5 Division I-A football-playing schools not to have the word “University” in their names? Who would like to supply the other 40%?
The “Raven” or the “Big Drunk” (pick your nickname) would have been honored if SHSU had taken the nickname of the Cherokees.
As for technology schools in Texas, any disparaging of technology is tempered by the realization that the next Endowed Department or Professorship is coming from the money of technology fortunes.
D3’s UT-Dallas was the “research institute” for Texas Instruments before it evolved into a 4-year institution in 1990. UT-D may not have the panache that a Wash StL or Carnegie Mellon has, yet, but there is lots of money flowing into a college that is less than 50 years old.
http://www.utdallas.edu/utdgeneral/utdhistory.html
Boston College is one, although they are actually a University.
Boston College and Georgia Institute of Technology 🙂
I beat you to one of them.
Bingo. A lot of people think Virginia Tech is one of them, but that school has the clumsy name “Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.”
In eighth grade, I thought Sam Houston Institute of Technology was funny. Then I joined the Sigma Alpha Tau fraternity, and really wanted it to exist so I could transfer. 🙂
D’oh! Now I know how April felt when people began snickering in regard to her comment the other day about Wheaton making “a big ice sculpture of a #2”.
Did I just hallucinate this from my childhood, or did the Prudential College Football Scoreboard on ABC use to refer to Virginia Tech as “VPI” back in the day, long before the Hokies became a part of the college football elite?
Virginia Tech used to be called Virginia Polytechnic Institute, I believe, but it definitely is not any longer.
I guess ol’ Sam Tech would have some justification if they were to chant “we’re number two! We’re number two!” 🙂
The Blacksburg school was indeed referred to as VPI for many years, so that’s no hallucination. I hope your actual hallucinations are much more interesting than that.
In case you’re wondering, in the poll where Sam Houston Tech is #2, the #1 team is Presque Isle Secondary School.
Okay, enough of this silliness, back to Poland/Ecuador.
And, so, Sager … see the things you can grasp by regressing your brain back to middle-school mode. 😉
The PAC changes are official:
http://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2006/06/notre-dame-centenary-head-to-pac
Wow! The “Interstate 7” is now the “LANDMARK Conference”? That’s either pretentious, in that the member venues believe they are truly “landmark” institutions — and hence better than the rest of us; OR very practical, because teams trekking to games via the Interstates will need a landmark to arrive safely at their destinations.
Whatever the case, congratulations to this cockamamie collation for at last coming up with an official name. LONG LIVE THE LANDMARK! 🙂
I saw the credit on the picture of the Washington Monument and thought,
“Well, it looks like Ryan Coleman gets to write the last visit to his brother off his income taxes! D3-Lampoon Vacation!”
Actually Stevens Tech used to be the Stevens Hoboken Institute of Technology.
Warren, perhaps the conference plans to add a school that is affiliated with the Landmark Baptists.
Sager:
That would be appropriate, given that the Landmark Baptists are a schismatic movement; they defected from the Southern Baptists, as I recall, over questions of academic quality … er, sorry, I mean theological orthodoxy. 😉