After a little over eight months in Connecticut, it’s time for me to go home.

Last August, I left USA Today, where I had been for more than a dozen years, and embarked on a new adventure. I was offered and accepted a job as copy desk chief at NBCSports.com, in Stamford, Conn. The plan was to sell the house and move the family from Virginia.

Ehh, but we never got around to the selling of the house. And then NBC laid off nine of my co-workers. And I got to thinking perhaps this wasn’t the most secure place I could work.

This is the way journalism is these days, and when I left a job of 12 years behind, that was a risk I was running, no doubt. But if I’m going to be in an insecure situation, I might as well be with my family. So I began to pursue other employment, and will start as sports editor for Verizon’s news portal on May 1, back in Northern Virginia.

But it was a risk I had to take, and I think it’s been a success. But it was a good season in New England. I got to see Amherst play four times before the Final Four, including the fall of the last unbeaten team. I saw WPI and Stevens, enough to posit on Hoopsville that Stevens was not to be written off in the first round. I witnessed a great atmosphere for Division III basketball at Keene State and got to a sectional at St. John Fisher I never would have attempted to see otherwise.

A couple of years ago, when Keith McMillan and I were still at USA Today, we ticked off which conferences we had seen and which we hadn’t in Division III football. At any rate, Keith and I started keeping a running tally of football teams, and in basketball this season I got up to 127 men’s programs and 74 women’s programs. Thank you, New England. 🙂

I’d never seen the York (N.Y.) women play, or the NYU men, or Farmingdale women … or the Howard Payne men and women as well as other teams on the Tour de Tejas.

It was certainly fun, don’t get me wrong. I had a lot of time to work on the sites this season, and I think it showed.

Still, it’s hard to think of my time away as anything but a term of nine months in exile. You should see me in the Mid-Atlantic area again this season. And my wife and kids thank Division III for keeping me sane while we were apart and returning me to them safely.

The ASC is responding to the difficult situation facing its members by asking the Division III championships committee chairs to put more weight on seedings, and less on savings, when selecting sectional hosting sites during the tournament.

In one sense, there isn’t a lot the ASC can do to control this trend. They can’t change their geographic isolation in Division III. They probably can’t single-handedly change the committee’s frugality. But there is one thing they do – they can win more of the games they do play, even when they are on the road.

The Miss College men got a tough draw by traveling to the defending champs, so I can’t pick on them. But the HPU women missed a huge chance to make a statement about conference strength.

Instead of hosting as the seeds suggested they should, the Yellow Jackets headed to Iowa where Luther hosted the sectional. HPU could’ve showed the committee the error of their ways by winning the sectional. Even winning one of two games would’ve helped their argument. Instead they played one of the worst games in the sectional semis that I’ve ever seen.

The statistics are brutal but they don’t tell the full horror story. The Yellow Jackets looked frustrated and out-of-sorts through most of the second half. They forced shots in hopes of drawing fouls that weren’t called all game, pulled back on open fast breaks and failed to foul when they needed to after a missed attempt to tie the game.

“Well, things would’ve been different had HPU hosted instead of getting stuck on the road.”

Maybe. But their opponent, Puget Sound, had an equally long trip and still found a way to win. Plus the small crowd made for a very neutral environment. It’s not like HPU had to play in front of thousands of blue-painted, screaming Luther fans. That was left to Wash U, who won the sectional.

I’m not trying to kill Howard Payne. They have a ton of talent. Maybe the Yellow Jackets just had “one of those days” on the wrong day. And this conference has made big strides in its depth.

But for the ASC women to make a stronger case for hosting sectionals, they’ll need to do better than the one-win performance the confernece had in this year’s tournament. Asking is fine, but it’s even more persuasive when you win.