DrTorch, I totally overlooked Oregon St. Good call. I'd still argue, and I think you would agree, that the deck is stacked against teams in northern states.

RecoveringHillbilly, the dynamics of soccer are completely different. Soccer is low scoring with very few violent collisions. Lacrosse is fast paced, high scoring, and extremely physical. As fans, we've shown interest in both football and hockey which share similar characteristics.

Hockey is a completely different animal. You need an arena with ice to play hockey. Lacrosse utilizes a current football or soccer field.

It's not just growing amongst small private schools. It's growing everywhere. High school teams are sprouting up all over the place. College programs are sprouting up as well. This would be the chance for the MAC to have something nobody else, outside of the East coast, can lay claim to.

I don't think the budgets are way out of whack. I do concede this is the biggest hurdle though.

It cost Michigan 5 mill to go to a varsity sport this year. The MAC members could do it for a fraction of that.

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02...rs-follow/

(03-05-2012 03:29 PM)BarnardHall211 Wrote:  What is scary that multiple small hits over time led to the same problems. How do you avoid that?

To avoid this concern in court, I'd imagine the defense would say that if you're willingly participating in an inherently dangerous activity like football, where there's a reasonable expectation of injury, sustaining an injury is a risk you take.

Unfortunately, all this will be settled in court. One big judgement in favor of a concussed player and all bets are off (pun intended.)

Kent made it to the Super Regionals last season and defeated then #3 Texas and opened this season beating #5 Ga. Tech. KSU had the highest RPI north of the Mason-Dixon line last season, has had a couple of top 20 recruiting classes in the last several years, and has been a pipeline for pro pitchers. CMU, Ball St. and Miami have traditionally been good as well. The excuses being made for MAC teams don't hold water. The real problem is the incompetence of the people running the MAC baseball programs.

But we'll have top lacrosse teams because we get in early? MAC athletic departments have deeper problems and adding lacrosse solves none of them.

I've been hearing about lacrosse getting bigger in the Midwest for a decade, but it hasn't. What is changing now? Very few public high schools have it and the number is not growing appreciably. Virtually every high school in the MAC footprint has baseball. When those numbers get even remotely closer to being equal, then a discussion of adding a sport might make a little sense.

Edit: There are fewer than 100 high schools in Ohio that have lacrosse. Take out the 30 some private schools--it can't be just a rich white kid sport if it is going to get broad based support--and you have fewer than 10% of public schools with lacrosse. And most of those are upper middle class suburban schools.

(03-05-2012 03:29 PM)BarnardHall211 Wrote:  

(03-05-2012 02:52 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(03-05-2012 10:53 AM)BarnardHall211 Wrote:  I would rather have more soccer teams in the MAC. I don't see the concussion issue in football going away and parents will eventually steer their kids towards soccer instead of football. Probably due to raised insurance costs more than anything.

A link to a story about concussions and the football economy.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7559...d-football

Perhaps as the medical link between concussions and brain injury becomes undeniable, the liability of sponsoring football, (especially at the Pop Warner, high school and college level in its current iteration,) becomes potentially untenable.

I've already read that. Before I read that article and others I was in the "soccer has been growing for 30 years blah blah blah" crowd.

What is scary that multiple small hits over time led to the same problems. How do you avoid that?

It is turning out that soccer has that issue as well. As it turns out small hits of the head against the soccer ball is causing much of the same damage. It does not take much so should we dump soccer because it is not going to be tenable?

This does not help, but as fans we are all proud of our schools, especially when they excel.

UMass went to the Championship game in 2006 and currently ranked #5.
NCAA Lacrosse ranking

(03-05-2012 05:11 PM)axeme Wrote:  Kent made it to the Super Regionals last season and defeated then #3 Texas and opened this season beating #5 Ga. Tech. KSU had the highest RPI north of the Mason-Dixon line last season, has had a couple of top 20 recruiting classes in the last several years, and has been a pipeline for pro pitchers. CMU, Ball St. and Miami have traditionally been good as well. The excuses being made for MAC teams don't hold water. The real problem is the incompetence of the people running the MAC baseball programs.

But we'll have top lacrosse teams because we get in early? MAC athletic departments have deeper problems and adding lacrosse solves none of them.

I've been hearing about lacrosse getting bigger in the Midwest for a decade, but it hasn't. What is changing now? Very few public high schools have it and the number is not growing appreciably. Virtually every high school in the MAC footprint has baseball. When those numbers get even remotely closer to being equal, then a discussion of adding a sport might make a little sense.

Edit: There are fewer than 100 high schools in Ohio that have lacrosse. Take out the 30 some private schools--it can't be just a rich white kid sport if it is going to get broad based support--and you have fewer than 10% of public schools with lacrosse. And most of those are upper middle class suburban schools.

Great, Kent made a semi run last year. Again, the deck is stacked against northern teams. That doesn't mean a few teams aren't good.

I don't have all the answers in regards to logistics or money. Why does it have to be a baseball discussion? Coexisting should be easy. The high school teams will keep rising. Do you make the same argument about demographics when you talk about soccer? Tennis? Golf? Seems a little silly to put it lightly.

We only need 6 MAC teams to get an auto bid in the NCAA lax tourney. It sounds like Kent is out. Who is coming with me!!!!!!?????? :)

I've tried to get into lacrosse and simply cannot, but the critical points of it are:

1. It's played in spring, a season in which no northern* team has a revenue sport.
2. It can be played in rain and snow.
3. It can get more use out of money invested in a football or soccer facility.
4. It plays a football-like season, and thus involves much less travel than sports such as baseball/softball.

I think it makes more sense on every level for a northern team, other than the fact that I don't particularly care for the sport. I wish the NCAA would move soccer to spring. Nor do I see the promised break out for lacrosse coming soon. Crowds have held steady in the 1500-2000 range at UMass for about a decade, excluding the rare 14k crowd against Syracuse. But of the available options, it's objectively the best choice out there.

If not lacrosse, then we should be investing in indoor baseball stadiums. Playing twice as many road games as home games in baseball every damn year is ridiculous and pointless. If the southern universities are allowed to develop a third big revenue sport, we're all screwed.

(* The pacific northwest doesn't count as "northern" when discussing baseball weather. Their winters are extremely mild compared to the rest of America on their latitudes.)

I see from Steve1981's lacrosse rankings website than Ohio State and Penn State play lacrosse. How long until that sport is pushed to the rest of the Big Ten and lands on the B1G Network?

(03-05-2012 10:15 PM)EA3 Wrote:  

(03-05-2012 05:11 PM)axeme Wrote:  Kent made it to the Super Regionals last season and defeated then #3 Texas and opened this season beating #5 Ga. Tech. KSU had the highest RPI north of the Mason-Dixon line last season, has had a couple of top 20 recruiting classes in the last several years, and has been a pipeline for pro pitchers. CMU, Ball St. and Miami have traditionally been good as well. The excuses being made for MAC teams don't hold water. The real problem is the incompetence of the people running the MAC baseball programs.

But we'll have top lacrosse teams because we get in early? MAC athletic departments have deeper problems and adding lacrosse solves none of them.

I've been hearing about lacrosse getting bigger in the Midwest for a decade, but it hasn't. What is changing now? Very few public high schools have it and the number is not growing appreciably. Virtually every high school in the MAC footprint has baseball. When those numbers get even remotely closer to being equal, then a discussion of adding a sport might make a little sense.

Edit: There are fewer than 100 high schools in Ohio that have lacrosse. Take out the 30 some private schools--it can't be just a rich white kid sport if it is going to get broad based support--and you have fewer than 10% of public schools with lacrosse. And most of those are upper middle class suburban schools.

Great, Kent made a semi run last year. Again, the deck is stacked against northern teams. That doesn't mean a few teams aren't good.

I don't have all the answers in regards to logistics or money. Why does it have to be a baseball discussion? Coexisting should be easy. The high school teams will keep rising. Do you make the same argument about demographics when you talk about soccer? Tennis? Golf? Seems a little silly to put it lightly.

We only need 6 MAC teams to get an auto bid in the NCAA lax tourney. It sounds like Kent is out. Who is coming with me!!!!!!?????? :)

Like axeme stated, CMU is one of the programs that has had decent success. One of the starting pitchers for the D-Backs is a CMU grad, Josh Colmenter. But baseball is no different than any of the major sports, how far have we gotten teams in FB and BB?

We currently have field hockey at CMU. Not one player on the roster from Michigan, there is no pipeline in the state. All the ladies are primarily from PA and NY. We have more players from Trinidad and Tobago, Canada and South Africa than we do from MI! I think LAX would be the same.

(03-05-2012 05:01 PM)EA3 Wrote:  RecoveringHillbilly, the dynamics of soccer are completely different....

I know lax. I went to HS in Upstate NY and played 3 years of varsity lax in HS, so no need to explain it.

(03-05-2012 05:01 PM)EA3 Wrote:  It's not just growing amongst small private schools. It's growing everywhere. High school teams are sprouting up all over the place. College programs are sprouting up as well.

I did you read my prior post? I meant it's growing AMONG PRIVATE COLLEGES. Go research just how many private vs publics there are, and when privates vs publics have added the sport. It's ok to be idealistic, but study precedent and be realistic as well.

(03-05-2012 05:01 PM)EA3 Wrote:  I don't think the budgets are way out of whack. I do concede this is the biggest hurdle though.

It cost Michigan 5 mill to go to a varsity sport this year. The MAC members could do it for a fraction of that.

UB has a great MCLA team who rolled through a club league with Miami and BSU for years, then moved to a more Eastern league and went to Nationals, losing to 'Zona St last year. Our area isnt' Syracuse or LI, where lax is king, but we do produce 10-15 from area HS's per year. Last year alone just 1 smaller Catholic HS here sent 3 guys to D-1.

So why don't we have it? UB had planned to add women's lax in the late 90's but it fell through. We then did a study of atheltics 6 years ago where adding lax was studied but the costs of adding the max of 12.6 rides for men, plus 12 for a women's team, was too much. See how UM had to rely on private giving to get there? UB would have needed that much too. So, no, not a fraction. Any MAC schools would need about as many millions.

(03-05-2012 11:09 PM)LastMinuteman Wrote:  If not lacrosse, then we should be investing in indoor baseball stadiums. Playing twice as many road games as home games in baseball every damn year is ridiculous and pointless. If the southern universities are allowed to develop a third big revenue sport, we're all screwed.

College baseball isn't going to get anymore popular. It has peaked. Schools are dropping the program.

Meanwhile, wrestling still maintains its popularity. 15K crowds regularly show up in Iowa and PSU. ZSU and Minn have good turnouts to meets. Even VPI(#23) v UNC had 2500 a couple of weeks back.

Compare those numbers to baseball and it's not a problem. There already exists 3rd (hockey) and 4th revenue sports for the north.