Author Archives: Pat Coleman

Dallas and the NEAC

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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?

Goodbye to a D3 lifer

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Earlier in the offseason Pat posited an interesting theory that there are two kinds of successful Division III coaches – lifers who spend a long career at a particular college and those who pursue jobs at other levels after gaining success here.

By that theory, today we say good bye to a Division III lifer in Southern Maine Coach Gary Fifield. He spent his entire college coaching career in Gorham, Maine after coaching high school ball in Vermont. Over that 21-year run, he won an astounding 541 games, took his team to five Final Fours and became the face of a highly successful program.

I only interacted with Coach Fifield a couple times during the Huskies’ recent playoff runs. My impression is that he was very loyal to his players and inspired the same loyalty in return. One of his players told me that the thought of winning a national championship for him gave her goose bumps.

He never engaged me in small talk – it’s fitting that there isn’t a standard quote from Fifield in the University’s release – but his answers to my substantive questions were thoughtful. And I felt that his program was focused on his players, and not him. He was calm and composed on the sidelines in intense situations, whether it was a jubilant win or a heart-breaking loss.

Loyal, thoughtful, calm and focused on his players. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why he inspired loyalty and enjoyed such a successful run.

Brandon Adair overseas

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Two-time D3hoops.com All-American Brandon Adair spent last season playing in Germany, which I was aware of. He blogged about it for a while last season, however, which I was unaware of.

Adair has started blogging again and so far it’s an eye-opening look at the life in Germany, playing and practicing, even some thoughts about personnel moves. Worth keeping an eye on.

And Brandon, best of luck.

Wabash always ranks

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Every year Princeton Review releases a set of rankings that colleges trumpet (“One of the Top Schools in the Country!”) or down play (“Rankings, schmankings”). Here is a quick look at which Division III schools cracked the lists related to sports. I wouldn’t take them too seriously after seeing who made the list of places where intercollegiate sports is supposedly unpopular. But they might help people pass the time through a slow off season.

    Students pack the stadiums

1. University of Florida
14. Wabash College

    Best athletic facilities

1. University of Maryland
3. Wabash College
20. St. Lawrence University

    Intercollegiate sports unpopular or nonexistent

1. Eugene Lang College (NY)
14. University of Chicago
15. NYU
16. SUNY-Purchase
17. Harvey Mudd College (part of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletics)
20. Emerson College

Note: Originally I had shown St. John’s (MN) on this list. The website says St. John’s (NM). I’m not sure if I read it wrong or the site had the letters of the state transposed and fixed it. I assume its the former and I apologize for my mistake. I still question the credence of this list given the inclusion of NYU.

    Jock Schools

1. Clemson University
3. Wabash College

Incidentally Wabash was also ranked #3 in best career/job placement services behind Northeastern (MA) and Claremont McKenna (CA). You can look at the all the rankings, including those not related to sports here.

Homeward bound

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I came out to the East Coast in August of 1990, 17 years old, about to start my freshman year in college.

And other than going home for the summer between that and my sophomore year at Catholic University, I’ve been out here ever since.

It’s been a long 18 years; it’s time to go home. We’re doing our own version of the Mid-Atlantic Shuffle, leaving Northern Virginia in August and moving to Minneapolis.

I’ll miss the vast number of Division III schools there are here on the East Coast, where I can basically stumble over a D-III school every 20 minutes on the highway. I’ve seen 222 Division III football teams play, as near as I can tell, and been in 67 teams’ stadiums. Now I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new group. I’ve been to Hamline’s gym and Macalester’s now-defunct gym, seen St. Ben’s and UW-River Falls, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville. How many Iowa gyms will I get into this year?

There will be a lot of new things to experience.

Like flying to the Final Four. 🙂

So I apologize that it’s been a bit of a quiet offseason around here, other than the silly season with all the coaching changes. We’ve spent a lot of time repairing, painting and packing. I’ll keep the same day job, as sports editor of the Verizon Central Newsroom, and simply work from there instead of Virginia.

Thanks to everyone who has been so hospitable over my years here on the East Coast. Hundreds of SIDs and coaches have made time to help us cover Division III in the past decade. Now I’ll get a different perspective, meet new people and spend a lot more time on I-94 and I-35 rather than I-95 and I-66.