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Post by joe on Dec 8, 2017 12:54:26 GMT -5
Do we actually want to again debate the notion that HC needlessly rejects certain student-athletes on the basis of academic merit, who may otherwise gain acceptance into other PL schools? Many posters on this board have seen it happen to fellow students, children, friends, on and on. Phreek there is no statistical records for you to quote on this. It's all anecdotal, but the anecdotes have been piling up for 20 years. Who has the time/interest to re-hash this for like the 10,000th time? It's been fairly well established that HC has a little bit of a distorted self-perception of itself as some highly selective elitist academic juggernaut. This is irritating to everyone, including me, as an alum. Lot of great kids out there who we should accept more readily, the salt-of-the-earth types who are vey good (maybe not the cream of the crop) students, good families, need the schollie for financial reasons, and are stud athletes.
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Post by bringbackcaro on Dec 8, 2017 13:20:04 GMT -5
We can’t even execute a coaching search.
The idea that we could execute as an Independent is bananas.
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Post by 6sader7 on Dec 8, 2017 13:50:22 GMT -5
If we can't win in the very league you disparage, then we shouldn't entertain such elitist and disconnected ideas. This is like the Browns crying that they should leave the AFC because it's a crappy conference and they'll never win there, while surrounded by strong, successful teams. It's not the league's fault, it's the BROWNS fault. It's not the PL's fault. It's OUR fault. Stop making excuses it's embarrassing. Yup. I hate this argument. If you think outside the box a little bit you may realize that the Patriot Leauge is the very thing preventing us from having a good football team. I realize you're saying "you're not good enough to win your own league" - The point is "exactly, and with the current structure of our administration as well as the Patriot league it doesn't seem to be very likely that we will be able to"
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Post by WCHC Sports on Dec 8, 2017 14:14:32 GMT -5
I hate this argument. If you think outside the box a little bit you may realize that the Patriot Leauge is the very thing preventing us from having a good football team. I realize you're saying "you're not good enough to win your own league" - The point is "exactly, and with the current structure of our administration as well as the Patriot league it doesn't seem to be very likely that we will be able to" I understand what you're asking for, but it's logically flawed-- at least tough to prove. You're saying that the league is what prevents us from winning, and that point cannot be proven until HC takes the more dramatic course and actually changes leagues. If HC stays in the PL and wins, all you need to do is claim that HC wins in SPITE of the Patriot League. A logical equivalent is me snapping my tigers at my desk in my office. You ask why I am snapping my fingers and I say, "To keep the tigers away." You say, "But there are no tigers in the office," and I say, "Well, I guess it's working!" What I am saying is that the steps HC would need to take to win in the PL are the same as anywhere else. A demonstrated commitment to the program, bringing in the recruits, coaching them so that they get better after four years, have the appropriate D1 facilities, and holding the program to demonstrable standards of success ON the field are all things that HC can do whether they played in the Patriot League, SEC, or Yonkers Turkey Bowl. If they are not showing they can do it at the PL, I think that they will have an even harder time doing it somewhere else-- having to juggle the administrative and logistical pressures of moving leagues or being independent while trying to win football games. They have a hard enough time doing that staying in the same place they've been for 20 years. I don't get "excited" about the PL in a bubble. I get excited about my own team. Recruits looking at the brand of the league are doing themselves a disservice to some degree, at least for those players we have any shot at landing. Sticking with my Browns analogy... the Browns are in the NFL. Tedy Bruschi just said yesterday that they'll have a hard time getting players to play there no matter how much cap space they have (and they PAY players) because they've demonstrated poor ability to build a winning and successful program. So don't think that being in a premiere or THE premiere league at the NCAA D1 AA level will solve anything.
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Post by 6sader7 on Dec 8, 2017 14:18:22 GMT -5
I hate this argument. If you think outside the box a little bit you may realize that the Patriot Leauge is the very thing preventing us from having a good football team. I realize you're saying "you're not good enough to win your own league" - The point is "exactly, and with the current structure of our administration as well as the Patriot league it doesn't seem to be very likely that we will be able to" I understand what you're asking for, but it's logically flawed-- at least tough to prove. You're saying that the league is what prevents us from winning, and that point cannot be proven until HC takes the more dramatic course and actually changes leagues. If HC stays in the PL and wins, all you need to do is claim that HC wins in SPITE of the Patriot League. A logical equivalent is me snapping my tigers at my desk in my office. You ask why I am snapping my fingers and I say, "To keep the tigers away." You say, "But there are no tigers in the office," and I say, "Well, I guess it's working!" What I am saying is that the steps HC would need to take to win in the PL are the same as anywhere else. A demonstrated commitment to the program, bringing in the recruits, coaching them so that they get better after four years, have the appropriate D1 facilities, and holding the program to demonstrable standards of success ON the field are all things that HC can do whether they played in the Patriot League, SEC, or Yonkers Turkey Bowl. If they are not showing they can do it at the PL, I think that they will have an even harder time doing it somewhere else-- having to juggle the administrative and logistical pressures of moving leagues or being independent while trying to win football games. They have a hard enough time doing that staying in the same place they've been for 20 years. I don't get "excited" about the PL in a bubble. I get excited about my own team. Recruits looking at the brand of the league are doing themselves a disservice to some degree, at least for those players we have any shot at landing. Sticking with my Browns analogy... the Browns are in the NFL. Tedy Bruschi just said yesterday that they'll have a hard time getting players to play there no matter how much cap space they have (and they PAY players) because they've demonstrated poor ability to build a winning and successful program. So don't think that being in a premiere or THE premiere league at the NCAA D1 AA level will solve anything. I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with you.
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Post by richh on Dec 8, 2017 15:17:08 GMT -5
I hate this argument. If you think outside the box a little bit you may realize that the Patriot Leauge is the very thing preventing us from having a good football team. I realize you're saying "you're not good enough to win your own league" - The point is "exactly, and with the current structure of our administration as well as the Patriot league it doesn't seem to be very likely that we will be able to" So PL is at fault. Silly question but how? You imply that the Fr.Brooks view still prevails and is the basis foe your Admin's lack of support thereby condemning Cross to an endless cycle of mediocrity. A rather parochial view. Reality is every AD has its battles with Admissions Finances construction. Not just Cross. Most important start to a winning program a HC and his staff. See Higgins Biddle Moorhead. Next recruiting good players. Next coaching thise players. Cross missed out on all 3. Yet that in your view results from some mysterious cabal involving PL and your Admin. What malarkey. Football is football. Get good coaches good players and win more games. Does becoming an Indie solve all those issues? Dont see how.Gate a teeny tiny school buried in the middle of nowhere yet they win. They had a bad AD replaced him with a new one and she has done well. Cross has an excellent AD in Pine. Now get a coach. Build a winning program and stop the incessant whining about we lose because PL keeps us from winning.
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Post by 6sader7 on Dec 8, 2017 15:19:44 GMT -5
I don't think it has to be binary, but I also don't think the PL and our Admin are advantageous to our success.
I'm well aware of Gate's gameplan, and if we were able to do the same at Holy Cross I wouldn't be having this conversation and the PL would be just fine.
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Post by richh on Dec 8, 2017 16:03:04 GMT -5
I don't think it has to be binary, but I also don't think the PL and our Admin are advantageous to our success. I'm well aware of Gate's gameplan, and if we were able to do the same at Holy Cross I wouldn't be having this conversation and the PL would be just fine. I imagine Pine's plans arent all that different. He will not settle for a mill of thd run HC. He gets that man and Cross will build.
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Post by Non Alum Dave on Dec 8, 2017 18:14:32 GMT -5
I hate this argument. If you think outside the box a little bit you may realize that the Patriot Leauge is the very thing preventing us from having a good football team. I realize you're saying "you're not good enough to win your own league" - The point is "exactly, and with the current structure of our administration as well as the Patriot league it doesn't seem to be very likely that we will be able to" So PL is at fault. Silly question but how? You imply that the Fr.Brooks view still prevails and is the basis foe your Admin's lack of support thereby condemning Cross to an endless cycle of mediocrity. A rather parochial view. Reality is every AD has its battles with Admissions Finances construction. Not just Cross. Most important start to a winning program a HC and his staff. See Higgins Biddle Moorhead. Next recruiting good players. Next coaching thise players. Cross missed out on all 3. Yet that in your view results from some mysterious cabal involving PL and your Admin. What malarkey. Football is football. Get good coaches good players and win more games. Does becoming an Indie solve all those issues? Dont see how.Gate a teeny tiny school buried in the middle of nowhere yet they win. They had a bad AD replaced him with a new one and she has done well. Cross has an excellent AD in Pine. Now get a coach. Build a winning program and stop the incessant whining about we lose because PL keeps us from winning.Rich, can I copy this over to the basketball board? Thanks
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Post by richh on Dec 8, 2017 19:20:00 GMT -5
So PL is at fault. Silly question but how? You imply that the Fr.Brooks view still prevails and is the basis foe your Admin's lack of support thereby condemning Cross to an endless cycle of mediocrity. A rather parochial view. Reality is every AD has its battles with Admissions Finances construction. Not just Cross. Most important start to a winning program a HC and his staff. See Higgins Biddle Moorhead. Next recruiting good players. Next coaching thise players. Cross missed out on all 3. Yet that in your view results from some mysterious cabal involving PL and your Admin. What malarkey. Football is football. Get good coaches good players and win more games. Does becoming an Indie solve all those issues? Dont see how.Gate a teeny tiny school buried in the middle of nowhere yet they win. They had a bad AD replaced him with a new one and she has done well. Cross has an excellent AD in Pine. Now get a coach. Build a winning program and stop the incessant whining about we lose because PL keeps us from winning.Rich, can I copy this over to the basketball board? Thanks Sure.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 9, 2017 9:59:42 GMT -5
Do we actually want to again debate the notion that HC needlessly rejects certain student-athletes on the basis of academic merit, who may otherwise gain acceptance into other PL schools? Many posters on this board have seen it happen to fellow students, children, friends, on and on. Phreek there is no statistical records for you to quote on this. It's all anecdotal, but the anecdotes have been piling up for 20 years. Who has the time/interest to re-hash this for like the 10,000th time? It's been fairly well established that HC has a little bit of a distorted self-perception of itself as some highly selective elitist academic juggernaut. This is irritating to everyone, including me, as an alum. Lot of great kids out there who we should accept more readily, the salt-of-the-earth types who are vey good (maybe not the cream of the crop) students, good families, need the schollie for financial reasons, and are stud athletes. As for independent, please ask UMass how that is working out and better yet call either of the Academies playing Saturday if being affiliated has helped them, hint answer is a YES! Agree that UMass is absolutely in no-man's land right now just hoping and praying that a spot opens up in the AAC. I'm sure they'd love to be in a league with UConn but chances are they will get into that league only if/when UConn gets invited to a P5. Probably 50-50 that they go the Idaho route and come crawling back to the CAA in 5-10 years. I believe the MAC would take UMass back IF the Minutemen joined for all-sports, which they do not want to do.
With regards to service academies, Army is actually still independent and Navy's run of recent success dates back to 2003, well before they joined the AAC. The Mids struck gold with coaches twice in a row with Paul Johnson and Nimo. Army actually had a nauseating decade when they were members of the old Conference USA - probably an even stronger league than the current AAC.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 9, 2017 10:12:26 GMT -5
I've thrown this out before and I agree....HC football would be far better off as an FBS Indy....sure we'd take our bumps but do you really think we get more "bang for our buck" as a PL football membah than we would as an FBS Indy? 11 game schedule....play New England FBS schools (BC, UConn and UMass), a service academy, a couple lower level FBS programs, a few Ivies, a couple CAA schools...basically the schedules we played in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.... Logistical nightmare perhaps....but it beats the death spiral the program is in now. See reality check below:
APPALACHIAN STATE UMASS WESTERN KENTUCKY TEXAS STATE OLD DOMINION LIBERTY GEORGIA STATE GEORGIA SOUTHERN FLORIDA ATLANTIC FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL TEXAS-SAN ANTONIO CHARLOTTE SOUTH ALABAMA COASTAL CAROLINA
This is a list of all the schools that have made the jump to FBS since the year 2000. Someone convince me that Holy Cross is a fit on this list. Becoming FBS has little to do with having a storied gridiron history. In fact, Florida Gulf Coast University doesn't even have a football team right now but would be 50x more likely to ever have an FBS program than Holy Cross. More reality -- Holy Cross would become the smallest school in FBS were we to somehow move up to that division. I believe Wake Forest and Rice are the two smallest right now.
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Post by hc87 on Dec 9, 2017 12:05:01 GMT -5
Not outright advocating for a move to FBS Indy status....but hypothetically, if we are going to spend millions of dollars every year to have a D1 program, wouldn't we get countless more "bang for our buck" (maybe not in dollars etc but school branding etc) playing at that level than in the near anonymity that we currently have with our football program in the Patriot League?
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Post by KY Crusader 75 on Dec 9, 2017 12:06:56 GMT -5
No
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Post by hc87 on Dec 9, 2017 12:12:50 GMT -5
Basically then, we should admit that our football program is really just a "backdrop for alumni events" and rubbing shoulders with the Ivies. Given the general disinterest from most alums post 1993 or so...I'm not sure how sustainable having an FCS program really is moving forward.
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Post by timholycross on Dec 9, 2017 12:24:46 GMT -5
Let me channel my inner Pakachoag Phreek and list the requirements for FBS football, just so everyone will know what it would take (I'll shoot one hole in the criteria, that would be that the local fans would support games vs the likes of Charlotte and Old Dominion as well as UMass fans have, which is not very much at all; I'll let the posters shoot whatever other holes they choose; or make the case for doing this). Unless of course, they abolish FCS and go back to the way it used to be prior to 1979...then it's a different ballgame entirely.
"To compete in FBS, a school must compete in at least 16 varsity sports, including football. Of those 16, at least six must be men's sports and at least eight must be women's sports. For FCS, schools must compete in at least 14 sports, with at least six men's sports and seven women's sports. If a school sponsors more sports than the minimum, it must follow NCAA guidelines to ensure equity between men's and women's opportunities.
Scheduling
An FBS team must schedule at least 60 percent of its games against other FBS teams; however, one game against an FCS team can count toward this requirement if the FCS school uses 90 percent of its available football scholarships. An FBS team also must have five home games against FBS teams every year. One game at a neutral site can count as a "home" game in this respect.
In FCS, a school must schedule at least 50 percent of its games against Division I teams from either subdivision. This allows FCS schools to schedule more games against teams in the NCAA's lower ranks, Divisions II and III. There is no home-game requirement in FCS. Attendance
To maintain FBS status, a school must average 15,000 in paid or actual attendance a game at least once every two seasons. The NCAA used to require Division I-A schools to have a stadium with a minimum capacity of 30,000, but that rule was scrapped in 2004. FCS has no attendance requirements. Financial Aid
To remain in Division I, a school must grant at least 50 percent of the maximum number of scholarships the NCAA allows in each sport. Alternatively, it can issue an NCAA-prescribed minimum dollar amount of aid to athletes, which as of the 2009-10 school year was about $1.15 million, with at least half going to women's sports. Or it can offer at least 25 men's and 25 women's scholarships in sports besides football and basketball (or 35 of each if the school doesn't play basketball).
FCS schools must meet only these criteria. FBS schools have additional requirements: provide 90 percent of the maximum allowable football scholarships and offer at least 200 scholarships or at least $4 million in total athletic scholarships across all sports."
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Post by sader1970 on Dec 9, 2017 12:26:47 GMT -5
Unless we are going to compete with Alabama, The Ohio State University, etc. even at the next level, Holy Cross is not going to be on the lips of the general population. D-IAA is fine for the audience that Holy Cross wants to attract. And, yes, playing the Ivy League teams and the Patriot League teams who are all known for their academic excellence is most likely to get the attention of the people Holy Cross wants to attract. Do you think playing at the UMass or UConn level of D-IA is going to attract the right audience? Holy Cross will never play at a P5 level in football for a list of reasons too long to even attempt. To go to D-IA at a marginal level just serves no purpose.
Think of this as marketing/advertising 101. Holy Cross wants its "brand" out there but the College is not going to try to get it out there to everyone just like advertisers try to focus on a "target audience" - not everyone. Notre Dame might be able to get away with that. We, however, are too small and that, by choice.
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Post by hc87 on Dec 9, 2017 12:38:03 GMT -5
Believe me, I'm not disagreeing in general.
The fact of the mattah is though, FCS-level football in the Northeast is mostly running on fumes at the moment. Very few games have crowds of 10K or more....most in fact are much closer to 5K or below.
There is next to zero mention of that level in most media outlets in the Boston to Washington corridor.
The generations of college students from Ivies, PL schools etc from the mid-90s on or so are mostly indifferent to attending/following their school's football team.
I just don't see an "end-game" for where we are headed football-wise other than the general malaise/indifference that exists now for football at say Holy Cross, Princeton, Villanova etc etc
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Post by joe on Dec 9, 2017 12:48:34 GMT -5
Holy Cross can do whatever it chooses. I see nowhere on the list of FBS requirements anything about enrollment size. If HC wants to make the enormous financial commitment to play FBS football, independent or otherwise, it most certainly can. But first it has to learn how to serve a decent hot dog. Maybe get that right first and take it from there.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 9, 2017 15:53:25 GMT -5
Holy Cross can do whatever it chooses. I see nowhere on the list of FBS requirements anything about enrollment size. If HC wants to make the enormous financial commitment to play FBS football, independent or otherwise, it most certainly can. But first it has to learn how to serve a decent hot dog. Maybe get that right first and take it from there. There is/was a barrier to entry that requires/required a school to have an invite to an existing FBS conference in order to move up from FCS - you can/could no longer just say, "hey let's go independent!". After close to a decade of trying and failing to get into the MAC, C-USA and the Sun Belch, Liberty University was somehow able to make the transition up, which started this year. Not sure if the rule changed or they got some kind of waiver.
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Post by joe on Dec 9, 2017 16:02:43 GMT -5
There’s always a way. But like I was saying, step one are the hot dogs. Step 1,247 would be joining FBS.
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Post by hc87 on Dec 9, 2017 16:14:49 GMT -5
I think schools can basically do whatevah they want to do vis a vis the NCAA ultimately (given the $$$$)....
There is no way a lot of FBS schools (see MAC, Sun Belt etc) are averaging 15K for home games too btw.
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Post by joe on Dec 9, 2017 16:22:35 GMT -5
I believe I’ve heard that if you don’t get 15k it somehow translates to some kind of payment or penalty to the school. This is crazy talk anyway.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Dec 9, 2017 16:48:12 GMT -5
It's pretty well known that the 15K attendance number is more of an NCAA suggestion than a requirement. MAC would be down to about two teams otherwise.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Dec 9, 2017 17:11:14 GMT -5
I believe Tulsa has the smallest U/G enrollment in FBS. There are no strictly liberal arts colleges in FBS. In the list several posts above, Liberty is the only private institution. It is hard to get a residential undergraduate enrollment number for Liberty, but it is significantly higher than HC.
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