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Post by trimster on Feb 6, 2022 18:16:18 GMT -5
Time to evaluate the future and our partners Momentum is alive and well Do you really think HC would leave the PL or leave for all sports but football. I don’t.
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Post by efg72 on Feb 6, 2022 18:23:30 GMT -5
If your partners aren’t working to improve they are no longer legitimate partners
Based on nothing but speculation
The new leadership - the President, the AD etc might want something that allows HC to redefine its future. Think PL plus/minus to capture national recognition that generates significantly more revenue, and improve your academic image and reputation and includes all sports
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Post by sader1970 on Feb 6, 2022 18:24:07 GMT -5
I see no reasonable chance HC will leave the PL.
I just don’t see any distinct advantage for the College.
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Post by efg72 on Feb 6, 2022 18:32:13 GMT -5
There is no intellectual, emotional or spiritual advantage. Create a new league that improves each and might include some current members.
The PL gives us/the winner a bid. A new conference with the required membership does the same
No advantage staying where we are today as the world is in transition, and because of football, we have a chance/opportunity to make our school and it’s future better.
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Post by trimster on Feb 6, 2022 18:32:47 GMT -5
I see no reasonable chance HC will leave the PL. I just don’t see any distinct advantage for the College. A better conference affiliation would perhaps bring more visibility which ain’t a bad thing given the declining pool of potential college students. From a purely athletic standpoint, there would be long list of advantages to being in a more prominent conference. I just don’t see it happening especially for football.
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Post by efg72 on Feb 6, 2022 18:34:49 GMT -5
I think football is the driver and alumni interest to generate more dollars will play a role in any change
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Post by trimster on Feb 6, 2022 19:00:59 GMT -5
I think football is the driver and alumni interest to generate more dollars will play a role in any change It almost always is.
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Post by longsuffering on Feb 6, 2022 19:32:02 GMT -5
Close your eyes and imagine Holy Cross...as Fordham, UMass, LaSalle or Duchuesne in the A-10. More expense, more travel, not enough interest to warrant playing at the DCU, losing the continuity and high academic image of the PL, and gaining the confusing image of a migrant in four different leagues for it's revenue sports (A-10 BB, PL FB, H.E. WHockey and AHA men's hockey)
Let's win the PL a few times in several sports. It's hard to fail your way up the ladder. We could "fake it until we make it" but in Sports they keep score and have standings. If you think the opinion of a school rises when it jumps leagues, I don't see it.
HC has enough of an identity issue already as a four year undergraduate only small liberal arts D-1 college in a world where former junior colleges are now universities. Let's not storm out of one of the few leagues that support our status and protects us by prohibiting graduate student athletes in league play and where we are a founding member.
Let's win the PL a few times in all the sports before we "blow this pop stand."
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Post by efg72 on Feb 6, 2022 19:56:49 GMT -5
Or invest in the future If we keep waiting we might win or lose, but we are waiting and not moving forward
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Post by dharry13 on Feb 6, 2022 20:19:43 GMT -5
I agree with a lot of the above. HC isn’t moving.
But this idea that football is tied to the PL for an academic image to me is downright foolish. We play in a hockey league with Sacred Heart, Mercyherst, Canisius, Niagara - really?
William and Mary, Richmond, Nova play in the same conference as Maine, Towson, and now Monmouth. Does it really hurt their academic image - nope. And it doesn’t for HC to be associated that way in hockey.
All comes back to money IMO. If there was a real dollars and cents reason to move in FB or hoops I think HC would consider it. But to me it’s not tied to their academic image of the PL. Just my opinion.
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Post by mm67 on Feb 6, 2022 20:30:32 GMT -5
I don't see any FCS football program which garners national attention. Most receive barely a mention in the various national media, print & electronic. Maybe,, the CAA has a following in some areas but TBT most college football fans could not name a majority of schools in the CAA. The PL is as anonymous as most other FCS leagues. But, the PL has the academic component, defined by high academic standards and rigorous rules to maintain its academics - first profile. As to FCS league prominence, who cares?
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Post by gks on Feb 6, 2022 20:32:01 GMT -5
The Patriot League is not anonymous.
Everyone knows it as a bad athletics league.
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Post by Crucis#1 on Feb 6, 2022 21:17:27 GMT -5
Funny, a recent observation, the current Patriot League spot that runs during the breaks for the basketball games for each school has eliminated the part of the video that shows Dom Cozier running as well as the HC softball pitcher delivering a strike to the plate. Previous HC athletes have been removed and not replaced by current HC students in action on the video.
Meanwhile....the Hart Center Arena was repainted over the last couple of months with the installation of the new video boards. The six jerseys of Bob, Tommy, Togo, Jack, George and Ronnie have been re-hung on the wall. Missing from view on the recent broadcast are the ten Patriot League banners.
Are new updated Patriot League banners on the way for display.... or are there other banners that will be on display next year?
Are there tea leaves to be read? Is there a conspiracy now brewing in the second floor offices.... Time will tell or a call to Richard Syrett to find the answer.. A mystery is lurking between Center Valley and Worcester.🙄😳😂🤣🤣🤣
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Post by hc87 on Feb 6, 2022 21:29:13 GMT -5
The "problem" as I see it, is that HC has become interwoven in its PL identity....i.e. one of our selling points the last 30-40 years has been "Come to HC and play D1 athletics and get a great education....don't worry so much about the wins and losses."
While this has helped keep the enrollment fairly solid and kept the leaders of the school content etc, it pretty much gutted our 2 marquee sports (men's hoop and football) in terms of national competitveness overall. Football's recent success and the Willard years in hoop being the exceptions to this ovah the last 30 years.
What Vince, Kit et.al. have to figure out imo is can HC succeed/thrive athletically nationally in the PL or should we start exploring a different path?
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Post by Crucis#1 on Feb 6, 2022 21:41:53 GMT -5
More important to the Powers on Mahogany Row than trying to succeed in the Patriot League should be the strategy to overturn current inertia, by increasing student applications, increasing application yield and to reach a global market that has evolve from the traditional base of the 1960’s. Living in the past is no way to plan for the future and run a world class educational institution.
Regarding the Patriot League and their vision......Anyone remember the Three Stooges line... and this may be a paraphrase... “If at first you don’t succeed, keep on suck, suck, sucking until you do succeed”. 🙄😳
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Post by thecrossisback on Feb 6, 2022 21:46:13 GMT -5
If your partners aren’t working to improve they are no longer legitimate partners Based on nothing but speculation The new leadership - the President, the AD etc might want something that allows HC to redefine its future. Think PL plus/minus to capture national recognition that generates significantly more revenue, and improve your academic image and reputation and includes all sports I agree 100 percent the PL football teams at this current moment are a joke and could care less about football. Maybe that was said about us for a few decades. Look at the schedules these PL football teams are playing way to far over their head! Most people that I talk to don’t care about Holy Cross anymore because of the league they are in
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Post by hc87 on Feb 6, 2022 22:06:31 GMT -5
Historically/institutionally etc....we should be playing CAA-level football and A-10 or Big East hoop....how that is rectified is beyond my pay-grade...maybe it can't in today's day and age.
We "dropped the ball" athletically in the late '70s/early'80s imo...I think most here will admit this...can we recover from these missteps decades later? I dunno.
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Post by sader1970 on Feb 6, 2022 22:42:29 GMT -5
(Sisyphus)🤷
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Post by longsuffering on Feb 6, 2022 23:31:54 GMT -5
Historically/institutionally etc....we should be playing CAA-level football and A-10 or Big East hoop....how that is rectified is beyond my pay-grade...maybe it can't in today's day and age. We "dropped the ball" athletically in the late '70s/early'80s imo...I think most here will admit this...can we recover from these missteps decades later? I dunno. I admit it. The Big East invitation was so simple to accept even a caveman could have done it. But today I can't see a particular league that wants us that would be a net gain. Football could compete in the CAA but how would our minor sports compete against state universities with 30,000 total students and 30,000 tuition and fees contributing to their athletic budgets with each school only offering two thirds the number of sports Holy Cross has to fund. Our futile competition for the Turnpike Trophy is a glimpse of what competing against universities with more students and fewer sports would be like full-time in another league. Do others see the benefit of being in a league where the member schools are facing similar issues as Holy Cross? It seems like it's mainly the warts on the PL that posters focus on. What's good about the Patriot League?
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Post by hcpride on Feb 7, 2022 4:28:47 GMT -5
CAA for football, PL for the rest.
Departing PL football is not an outlandish construct. The PL already has two PL members that play football elsewhere, several others who don’t play football at all, and one that plays only football.
Not saying CAA wants us for football and not saying PL wants our football to leave. Just saying what I think would be the best move for us.
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Post by HC92 on Feb 7, 2022 5:39:43 GMT -5
CAA for football, PL for the rest. Departing PL football is not an outlandish construct. The PL already has two PL members that play football elsewhere, several others who don’t play football at all, and one that plays only football. Not saying CAA wants us for football and not saying PL wants our football to leave. Just saying what I think would be the best move for us. I am generally in favor of us using athletics to build our brand and don’t think the PL really helps us very much in that regard. However, our current niche of dominating PL football, playing a strong OOC schedule and making the playoffs every year seems to be a pretty good one for us. I’m not sure moving to the CAA and competing in a conference with a bunch of massive schools is necessarily the way to go. Maybe it is but I’m not certain of that. It is a multi-bid league and we’d have a stronger overall schedule, which is nice. I do think we’d have to be more flexible with admissions and redshirting than we have been. Maybe Rougeau is more prepared to make that trade-off than his predecessors have been. I also don’t think the PL would necessarily let us leave for football and stay for everything else as us leaving for football would present some real problems for them.
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Post by mm67 on Feb 7, 2022 7:18:36 GMT -5
Joining the CAA would be a huge mistake. The CAA does not have a national following. Most football fans never heard of the league. CAA membership would dilute our brand. There is no upside.
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Post by bigfan on Feb 7, 2022 7:38:55 GMT -5
we need to be in a better league. The PL is holding us back.
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Post by gks on Feb 7, 2022 7:46:43 GMT -5
Joining the CAA would be a huge mistake. The CAA does not have a national following. Most football fans never heard of the league.CAA membership would dilute our brand. There is no upside. This statement could not be any further from reality. The CAA is one of the premiere leagues in FCS. Membership in that league would do nothing but bolster HC's image. See Richmond.
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Post by rgs318 on Feb 7, 2022 7:49:06 GMT -5
Most football fans could not tell you more than one or two the teams in the CAA.
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