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Post by nycrusader2010 on May 5, 2021 11:17:45 GMT -5
By 1983, Holy Cross and other similar Eastern football schools had already been relegated to I-AA. We were still playing BC home-and-home through 1986. I guess its possible, had we not announced scholarship reductions and joined the Patriot League in football, and given the dominance of the Duffner years, that we would have been considered for football membership as an established, founding, all-sports Big East member. Holy Cross would've been the smallest I-A school in the country though. Wouldn't have made sense in the long run, just like Villanova football to the Big East didn't make any sense. Remember in the late 2000's they were briefly thinking of moving up and using the Philadelphia Union soccer stadium for home games? Three points: 1. HC made no visible efforts to avoid relegation. By contrast, Louisville came very, very close to being relegated and went all-in on community ticketing to get over the minimum. Where is that program today if it had been left behind?2. Holy Cross is the same size as the undergraduate population at Tulsa (3,174). They average about 18,000 per game in the far flung AAC with a 30,000 stadium not much younger than Fitton (built in 1930). 3. Villlanova was within one week of a trustee vote in 2011 to go to I-A and move home games to PPL Park in Chester. That vote was tabled when Pitt announced that week it was leaving for the ACC. There was no way HC was ever going to go I-A. If you look at our schedules in the 1970's and 1980's, you'll see we ended up on the right side of the fence (for us), along with our Ivy rivals and Colgate. Interesting point about Louisville. I didn't know they were one of the ones on the fence. Wow how times have changed. My dad did tell me a story about how he went to a Louisville-Morehead State game sometime around then and Morehead won. Had Louisville got knocked down, chances are they would've joined the MAC, which DID get relegated and re-instated after re-building attendance above 15K. Then maybe they'd have worked their way up the I-A latter from there, just my guess. So maybe they'd be in the AAC today.
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Post by timholycross on May 5, 2021 11:41:36 GMT -5
HC's Carter years support nycrusader2010's points- 1981's schedule had 5 Ivies; 1982- 4, 1983-4, 1984-3, 1985-4. Colgate and BC were annual games then. The remainder were 1AA teams formerly or currently in the CAA; plus 2 games w/Army.
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Post by hc87 on May 5, 2021 12:20:56 GMT -5
As I posted earlier, we were officially Major/1-A/FBS etc until 1981 but we were really playing a schedule mostly filled with Ivies, then D2 Yankees, other lower D1 programs like Colgate, Villanova, BU, Buffalo etc for much of the 1960s and 1970s. Different world and time, but I'd argue we weren't really a legit 1-A/FBS program after Dr Anderson retired in 1964.
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Post by timholycross on May 5, 2021 12:42:44 GMT -5
Penn State (justifiably) and Syracuse (when the series ended they were not very good, but ramped up after Coach MacP came) put us in the situation that HC 87 describes.
And in terms of home games that drew well because of the opponent, there was BC and Umass and pretty much no one else; maybe Dartmouth when they were good brought some people, can't remember. Harvard didn't come to the Woo until 1982; the Yale series hadn't resumed yet.
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Post by longsuffering on May 5, 2021 20:25:59 GMT -5
Penn State (justifiably) and Syracuse (when the series ended they were not very good, but ramped up after Coach MacP came) put us in the situation that HC 87 describes. And in terms of home games that drew well because of the opponent, there was BC and Umass and pretty much no one else; maybe Dartmouth when they were good brought some people, can't remember. Harvard didn't come to the Woo until 1982; the Yale series hadn't resumed yet. Back in the day I believe Dartmouth came to Cambridge every year to play the Johnnies. It was looked at as logical due to the difference in stadium sizes and it gave the Big Green fans a chance to leave their Northern outpost for a weekend. Dartmouth was good in the sixties and it was probably the second biggest game of the season for the Crimson after the Yale game.
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Post by A Clock Tower Purple on May 5, 2021 20:42:59 GMT -5
What?
Hanover isn't Ice Station Zebra, it's one of the best towns in NE. No one who lives there ever looked at a weekend in Cambridge as an "escape". It's the other way around.
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Post by hchoops on May 5, 2021 21:21:06 GMT -5
Penn State (justifiably) and Syracuse (when the series ended they were not very good the HC- Syracuse ended in ‘68 Cuse was 6-4 in 66 they were good with Floyd and Larry Csonka—8-3 in 67 they were also good in Csonka’s senior season.8-2
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Post by hc87 on May 5, 2021 21:56:07 GMT -5
The last Cuse game before we played them in '19 was the infamous 5-3 loss to the Orangemen in 1973 on a brutally cold day at Fitton. I think they were like 2-9 that year, Ben S' last year I believe.
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Post by timholycross on May 5, 2021 21:56:53 GMT -5
Yer fergettin' the forgettable 5-3 loss to the Orange in 1973. They also blew us out in 1971.
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Post by longsuffering on May 5, 2021 23:12:54 GMT -5
HC's Carter years support nycrusader2010's points- 1981's schedule had 5 Ivies; 1982- 4, 1983-4, 1984-3, 1985-4. Colgate and BC were annual games then. The remainder were 1AA teams formerly or currently in the CAA; plus 2 games w/Army. HC joined the Yankee Conference briefly but it resulted in scheduled games with current CAA teams for a few years afterwards.
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Post by football44 on May 6, 2021 5:06:26 GMT -5
Yer fergettin' the forgettable 5-3 loss to the Orange in 1973. They also blew us out in 1971. You’re correct Tim holy cross. I was out there on that cold Saturday when my buddy Tom Rock stepped out of the end zone punting on 4th down. Freezing day at Fitton
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Post by timholycross on May 6, 2021 7:35:58 GMT -5
Yer fergettin' the forgettable 5-3 loss to the Orange in 1973. They also blew us out in 1971. You’re correct Tim holy cross. I was out there on that cold Saturday when my buddy Tom Rock stepped out of the end zone punting on 4th down. Freezing day at Fitton Lot of tough losses that year (3 or 4 out of the 6 losses that season were heartbreakers of some sort); depth (and the resulting running out of gas) was always an issue w/Doherty's teams; at first because he inherited a very thin roster; later because he didn't recruit very well.
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Post by thecrossisback on May 6, 2021 7:46:31 GMT -5
In 1 A in 1981 HC played BU UMASS Harvard Dartmouth Yale UConn Brown Columbia Army Colgate BC
In 1AA in 1982 HC played UNH Umass Dartmouth Yale Colgate UConn Brown BU Harvard Maine BC
Schedules were very similar. What was peoples feeling at the time that they founded 1AA? Where people upset? Do you think 1AA was a good move or should they just have kept everybody on the same level. Most 1AA schools would be playing each other anyway.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on May 6, 2021 8:06:30 GMT -5
In 1 A in 1981 HC played BU UMASS Harvard Dartmouth Yale UConn Brown Columbia Army Colgate BC In 1AA in 1982 HC played UNH Umass Dartmouth Yale Colgate UConn Brown BU Harvard Maine BC Schedules were very similar. What was peoples feeling at the time that they founded 1AA? Where people upset? Do you think 1AA was a good move or should they just have kept everybody on the same level. Most 1AA schools would be playing each other anyway. I think you answered the question right here. All the schools that got moved down to I-AA were all for the most part playing each other anyway. None of us were in the running for bowl games and the big boys wanted to make sure the smaller schools got relegated to a lower division that wouldn't share in their TV revenue. It was really the growth of live televised sports that catalyzed the split. And then you had the top D2 programs at the time (Delaware, Lehigh, Towson, New England Yankee Conference schools + a lot of the current MEAC, Big Sky and Southland schools) join us. As far as what was lost, the split did precipitate the (maybe inevitable) end of a number of rivalry games. Holy Cross-BC annual series ended in 1986 as we know. William & Mary and VMI were also in the same boat as us and used to regularly play home and homes with the likes of Virginia Tech and East Carolina before the split.
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Post by A Clock Tower Purple on May 6, 2021 8:24:42 GMT -5
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Post by timholycross on May 6, 2021 10:06:57 GMT -5
Don't remember anyone being particularly upset. It was the chance for a program like HC's to be competitive with similar schools (maybe not academically, in a lot of cases, but certainly in terms of athletics and all that entails). It was what happened in 1984/5 that pissed people off.
You had half the bowls that you do now, our best year in the 70s was the 7-4 season in 1978 and as far as bowls go, it wasn't nearly good enough to get a nibble.
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Post by hcpride on May 6, 2021 10:37:10 GMT -5
Agree. As hc87 has pointed out, it was much more a distinction without any difference as far as player quality and opponents went when we went 1-AA. In fact, our player quality actually went up (in absolute terms) under Rick Carter.
The big decline in player quality and opponents happened later with the last graduating schollie players and the PL schedule. Once both were in place, down we went.
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Post by thecrossisback on May 6, 2021 10:46:43 GMT -5
Do we think we would have won any national championships if we were allowed to play in the FCS playoffs?
What was the reason to not play in the postseason?
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Post by A Clock Tower Purple on May 6, 2021 10:59:52 GMT -5
Certainly could have won it in '87, and could have went deep in '91.
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Post by nycrusader2010 on May 6, 2021 12:56:41 GMT -5
Do we think we would have won any national championships if we were allowed to play in the FCS playoffs? What was the reason to not play in the postseason? Infatuation with being Ivy League's little brother. Had we not had the postseason ban, William & Mary also would've been in the league.
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Post by beaven302 on May 6, 2021 13:03:08 GMT -5
Don't remember anyone being particularly upset. It was the chance for a program like HC's to be competitive with similar schools (maybe not academically, in a lot of cases, but certainly in terms of athletics and all that entails). It was what happened in 1984/5 that pissed people off. You had half the bowls that you do now, our best year in the 70s was the 7-4 season in 1978 and as far as bowls go, it wasn't nearly good enough to get a nibble. I recall seeing an article in the NY Times in which some people involved with Yale football were expressing displeasure over the change, worried what it would men for the team's status and attendance. One person what quoted as saying: "We have to get back into 1-A." (Recall that Yale had upset Navy only a few years before.)
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Post by timholycross on May 6, 2021 16:21:55 GMT -5
Don't remember anyone being particularly upset. It was the chance for a program like HC's to be competitive with similar schools (maybe not academically, in a lot of cases, but certainly in terms of athletics and all that entails). It was what happened in 1984/5 that pissed people off. You had half the bowls that you do now, our best year in the 70s was the 7-4 season in 1978 and as far as bowls go, it wasn't nearly good enough to get a nibble. I recall seeing an article in the NY Times in which some people involved with Yale football were expressing displeasure over the change, worried what it would men for the team's status and attendance. One person what quoted as saying: "We have to get back into 1-A." (Recall that Yale had upset Navy only a few years before.) There was a big dropoff in the quality of Ivy play starting around that time. Given that the Ivies were not going to play in any bowl game or playoff, it's hard to pinpoint that as the cause. Certainly the Yale team HC came close to beating in 1981 wasn't equaled in that league for quite some time.
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Post by timholycross on May 6, 2021 16:26:23 GMT -5
Certainly could have won it in '87, and could have went deep in '91. I really liked our 89 team that went 10-1 and was non-scholarship only for the freshman class. That team got better and better as the season went on. 1988 had a good run after a tough start; the Princeton miracle righted the ship for sure. Each subsequent season would have had depth issues playing late into the fall against good competition.
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Post by hcpride on May 6, 2021 17:08:25 GMT -5
Certainly could have won it in '87, and could have went deep in '91. I seem to have free time waiting for the UConn game. I remember seeing a tape of the '87 I-AA championship (Marshall Thundering Herd v Stan Humphries team...Louisiana something). Two (not just Humphries) superb QBs and a lot of speed and size - we would have had our hands quite full v either one. (Just did a quick search for it and there are 1987 1-AA Championship game highlights for two of Marshall's future NFLers [4th and 6th Round in the draft]: and I thought (off the top of my head) the '91 team played a pretty soft schedule so I am not sure how we would have done in the playoffs. Did we have any schollie kids still playing? I always thought our '83 (pre PL) team was the most loaded of the Carter/Dufner era. That Western Carolina team that beat us by 7 in the playoffs had only two losses going into the game (Clemson and Wake Forest) and were pretty darn good.
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Post by timholycross on May 6, 2021 18:00:38 GMT -5
91- One scholarship class, the seniors. Some good non-scholarship (or maybe they had them) juniors, almost exclusively on defense (the D was very good Vaas' initial year as well).
Going 11-0 with that team, weaker schedule or not; was a tremendous accomplishment. Had to come from 2 scores down at the half the first two games; had some other close calls including the thriller at Lehigh.
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