Monday, April 8, 2019

Kicking St. Thomas out of the MIAC? A better option exists


Last week the Star Tribune ran an article http://www.startribune.com/miac-rivals-plot-ouster-of-st-thomas/508145182/ saying that the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Presidents will consider whether to expel St. Thomas from the conference on April 18.  A final vote is schdeuld for May.  

The article generated much interest.  Over 600 comments were shared.  I read every one. 

As a proud Carleton football alumni (captain and all-conference on the 1985 team) I watch this with great interest.  I go to one or two Carleton games a year and attend every football alumni gathering.  I've often stood up for Carleton athletics no matter what ridicule I've received.  

Losing to St. Thomas has unfortunately been part of Carleton’s recent history.  This last year Carleton lost 68-0.  

I was part of the Carleton football teams when Carleton moved from the Midwest Conference to the MIAC. During my freshmen year Carleton almost won the Midwest Conference in football.  We had a better team during my sophomore year.  Our revered coach, Bob Sullivan prepared our team for the rigors of moving into the MIAC. In fact he helped engineer the move. 

The first conference game Carleton had was under the lights at St. Thomas.  I was convinced that Carleton was going to win—how could I not?  And—we were smacked—35-0.  Two starting players were injured for the year; one of those never played again.  Even worse the players on St. Thomas enjoyed rubbing their success in our faces. 

I have great respect for the excellence of the St. Thomas football program.  They consistently win the MIAC.  And though they’ve never won the Division III football championship they competed in the championship in 2012.   

Excellence should be rewarded and not punished.

That’s why I think the better route for Carleton would be to leave the MIAC in football instead of kicking St. Thomas out of the conference.  Macalester took the route of leaving the MIAC a few years ago.  Bob Sullivan shared with me a plan once that would have Carleton compete in a football conference with Augsburg, Hamline, Macalester, St. Olaf, Northwestern, St. Scholastica and some others.    

Personally, I wish Carleton had the type of football program where it could compete with St. Thomas.  Is it possible?  Yes.  Bethel has had success in football over the past 25 years and beat St. Thomas this past year.  Is this probable?  No. 

Is it Carleton’s fault that we can’t compete with St. Thomas in football?  Yes.  I’ve written in this blog before that I wish the administration would invest more in football at Carleton.  Right now Carleton has an outstanding coach, Tom Journell, who is rebuilding the program in the right way.  KeepStackin!

St. Thomas could decide themselves that they want to leave the MIAC for a different conference and different division.  Some think that this should happen.
But it doesn't appear that St. Thomas wants to leave the MIAC.   

The key question for me is how any move affects the players.  Any young man who plays football for a Division III school deserves to have the highest quality experience.  Players who compete in the rigors of football deserve the possibility of winning.  Rarely should a player walk on the field knowing that most likely they are going to lose by fifty points.  In talking to Bob Sullivan about this issue he shared that a school has to have the possibility of winning a championship every so number of years. 

Can Carleton win a MIAC championship in football once every ten years?  Maybe. Carleton played for a championship in the fall of 2008 and would have been a champion if not for “Gagliardi magic” at the end of the game.

But it’s not fair to the players that 99 percent of the public knows that Carleton is not going to beat St. Thomas or even St. Johns.  (It is interesting to me that the antipathy towards St. Johns is not as great as it is towards St. Thomas.  St. Johns has had just as much success in football as St. Thomas.)  Losing consistently by over sixty points to a school is not fair to the players.

Leaving the MIAC in football seems to be a better option for Carleton than kicking St. Thomas out of the conference.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Paul - I really respect that you read all 600 comments. I find it too painful. Especially when I think someone is misinformed.
I need to be more open so I can learn something. St. Thomas and other top dogs in football (and this is only a football thing. Carleton was listed as 2nd in the league in the all-sports standings!) don't want to leave the MIAC (and don't blame them) but they don't want to let Carleton out, either. That is a problem. Not sure if this vote will provide the allowance for "well, we ain't leaving, but if you want to leave for football, then go".

Perhaps overly simplistic, but I believe for Carleton football in the MIAC are two hard-to-overcome disadvantages to compete in a reasonable way year in and year out (compete defined as a low bar as winning some MIAC games every year and not getting blown out by ridiculous scores): 1) Carleton only gives need-based aid. Most of the other schools also give "academic" aid. Some of it is labeled academic but is to athletes who are not exactly high scholars. Read what you will into that. 2) about 250 males enroll every fall at Carleton. To compete in today's MIAC, 10% of that class needs to be football players; some really good. That is a stretch for the college. The culture and the commitment of the school does not extend that far and I don't see that changing. Football is a numbers game to a degree. No way around it. SJU and UST have much larger pools to draw from.
To boot, schools like Gustavus actually rely upon the football coaches to help them fill the class! Just the opposite of Carleton begging the Admissions office for admits.

At this point in the 21st century, football at Carleton is the one MIAC sport that doesn't fit. We match up better in terms of academics/size/ with other D3s in MN, WI, IA, IL. or the bottom half of the MIAC.

Go Knights and God Bless the recent players for fighting through such adversity. They totally have my respect, Jamie '87 Capt.