Dallas and the NEAC

In an era where the price of a barrel of oil has gone through the roof, where air travel has become slower, more expensive and less convenient and where conferences as big as the WAC have talked about making changes to their schedules to save money, the North Eastern Athletic Conference has expanded into that bastion of the Northeast: Dallas, Texas.

I almost don’t have to say anything more, do I?

This is what pursuit of the automatic bid can do to you. We don’t know how the conference will schedule itself this season or how it will actually determine who gets the AQ (remember, that’s the conference’s decision, not the NCAA’s), but at some point, someone will be getting on a plane from New York or Pennsylvania to Dallas and seemingly vice versa.

I’m not sure this is what Division III is all about. I can’t imagine what the Division IV crowd would think of such a thing. I also can’t imagine what these schools are thinking: It’s not like these are the University of Chicagos, NYUs and Case Western Reserves of the world, large research institutions with endowments to match. The NEAC is made up of athletic departments so small that one coach told me a couple years ago their program could only schedule 22 games because that was all they could afford, not the Division III standard 25.

I feel for the University of Dallas, which has lived the lonely life of an independent ever since leaving the American Southwest Conference early this decade in hopes of gaining admission to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. And I feel for the NEAC, which has seen its membership change faster than the Law & Order cast,  but I can’t see spending all this money in pursuit of an automatic bid. And if the conference doesn’t play a full round-robin in order to save money, then why bother? You’d only be crowing an illegitimate champ.

Championship access is all well and good, but at what cost?

10 thoughts on “Dallas and the NEAC

  1. OK… SERIOUSLY! I understand a conference’s concern about lsoing the AQ and I understand a school’s want to be in a conference vs. trying to survive as an independent, but come on this is ridiculous! How in the world is this supposed to make sense, work, or even get approved by ANYONE?!

    Of course, when I heard about this earlier this afternoon, I was dumbfounded. But when I read that there won’t be any conference games and they apparently hadn’t thought about how to determine an AQ, I was dumb-struck! Dallas could win an AQ considering their overall schedule will probably be easier than the rest of their “conference partners.” (That is said without looking at anyone’s schedule in the conference at this time.)

    I am going to go back and keep shaking my head, wondering if I can get some of the AD’s and Presidents of some of these schools in a room to hear their explaination, while you all ponder this.

  2. Funny, just the other day I noticed that (D1) Great West Conference is expanding and will soon include members ranging from the Atlantic (NJIT, Newark NJ) to the Pacific (Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo CA) and from border (UT-Pan American, Edinburg TX) almost to border (UND, Grand Forks ND), and I thought I’d seen everything. Ridiculous.

    Somebody needs to put the “college” back in college sports.

  3. You’re right! UDallas has been trying to find a conference at someplace-other-than-the-ASC since they left the ASC in 2001.

    UDallas added a Phi Beta Kappa chapter as part of its strategic plan about 5 years ago, but could not get enough interest to start a club football team about 2004. IMHO, this was to make themselves more attractive to the SCAC. There were message boards discussions on the old server about UDallas and Thomas More joining the GSAC around 2004-05 as well. UDallas has played several SLIAC schools in the several sports. I assume that this was to find a new conference.

    They (UDallas) have earned Pool B bids while an independent, but have spent a considerable amount on their travel budget just to get a full schedule. They have made several trips to California to play in the “West Region Independent Tourney” in basketball to try for a Pool B bid. (Read that “long plane flight”!) However, Pool B’s are very hard to earn. (I thought that Huntingdon deserved a Pool B in Men’s Hoops in 2006, and thought that Chapman Men’s Hoops was better than the Landmark schools that got the Pool B bids in 2008!)

    The NEAC has been aggressive as a conference. In fact, they seem to be the point of entry into the NCAA and an NCAA conference for anyone in that part of the country! (I met a SUNY Oneonta Men’s Tennis player on a flight to Denver last Christmas. We discussed access to the playoffs, and am glad that his school was able to arrange this.)

    I think that the scheduling becomes creative. Two NEAC teams can fly to UDallas and give UDallas two home games and then can play each other in a conference game on a neutral site (UDallas) while they are gone. As for the AQ, seed the post-season tourney brackets by some “power index”, NCAA or otherwise, and determine the AQ that way. I do not know what UDallas returns in NEAC sports, but it will not surprise me to see UDallas walk away with some AQ’s, or be more competitive in the NEAC than they would be in the ASC or the SCAC.

    Athletics is now an enrollment-driver at “that end” of institutions of higher education. “Access the playoffs” is deemed a strategic component of an institution’s business plan for attracting student-athletes to enroll at one’s institution.

  4. Absolutely ridiculous. On another message board, I suggested the powers that be (president, dean, board in control) at the institutions that now comprise the Great West Conference should be fired for dereliction of duties. Namely, wasting their institutions’ resources.

    In this case, I demand that powers that be should all be fired immediately. How do any of these students benefit by a cross country commercial flight not to mention travel to and from the airport? We all know how reliable and cheap commercial flights are.

    These schools cannot afford (in every sense of the word) with the majority of Division III programs. They really must think about either dropping sports or moving to NAIA.

  5. I would assume we are basically the entirety of it. 🙂

    Interesting information that probably should’ve been included in the original release. But perhaps they were trying to downplay the fact that this is a blatant “land grab” attempt to keep their automatic bid. There should be some rules in place that require a “conference member” to play more than one game a season.

  6. Initial update on UDallas in the NEAC.

    The Men’s Soccer team won the NEAC’s AQ by virtue of winning the conference tourney.

    The UDallas Women’s Cross Country team won the Cross Country Title over SUNY-Cobleskill 50 points to 52 points in a 7-team field.

    UDallas Men’s Cross Country finished 4th in an 8-team field.

    Both Men and Women’s Cross Country Teams are anticipated to participate in the South/Southeast Regional Meet in Seguin TX this Satruday.

    Women’s Soccer did not compete in the NEAC this season. (SCAC member Colorado College’s Women’s Soccer team competes in D-1. UDallas served as Austin College’s “travel partner” this season in the SCAC schedule. UDallas women went 0-17-2 on the season.)

  7. Pingback: D3hoops.com Daily Dose » Blog Archive » CAC loses an original member

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