(01-28-2019 06:36 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(01-28-2019 12:27 PM)AppinVA Wrote:  I find it amusing that folks feel the need to tell the second oldest college in the country what it ought to do.

I'm not looking to tell William and Mary what to do; simply suggesting that it might be advantageous to move to the Patriot where the schools have a pedigree and academic ranking similar to their own. Almost all of their old instate friends are gone so I don't see the appeal of staying in the CAA.

CAA is still a competitively better conference and W&M values athletics. The Tribe bring in north of $5million in athletic contributions a year. Which is better than many if not most G5 schools. If thier fans/boosters wanted them in the Patriot that’s where they’d be.

(01-27-2019 09:34 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  Never bought BU and LMD as fits. Always felt William&Mary and VMI fit better.

Holy Cross
Colgate
Bucknell
Lehigh
Lafayette
American
Army
Navy
Virginia Military Institute
William&Mary

Hard to believe it wasn’t long ago William&Mary was knocking VCU out of conference tournaments.

Boston University and William & Mary seek similar students. W&M is an academic school.

With Northwestern's trip to the NCAA basketball tournament, the Tribe is the last university to have not won a bid to the dance (There may be other schools).

(01-28-2019 06:36 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(01-28-2019 12:27 PM)AppinVA Wrote:  I find it amusing that folks feel the need to tell the second oldest college in the country what it ought to do.

I'm not looking to tell William and Mary what to do; simply suggesting that it might be advantageous to move to the Patriot where the schools have a pedigree and academic ranking similar to their own. Almost all of their old instate friends are gone so I don't see the appeal of staying in the CAA.

So, yeah. What I said, but with a semicolon.

(01-28-2019 10:50 PM)chess Wrote:  

(01-27-2019 09:34 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  Never bought BU and LMD as fits. Always felt William&Mary and VMI fit better.

Holy Cross
Colgate
Bucknell
Lehigh
Lafayette
American
Army
Navy
Virginia Military Institute
William&Mary

Hard to believe it wasn’t long ago William&Mary was knocking VCU out of conference tournaments.

Boston University and William & Mary seek similar students. W&M is an academic school.

With Northwestern's trip to the NCAA basketball tournament, the Tribe is the last university to have not won a bid to the dance (There may be other schools).

Us, St. Francis (Brooklyn), Army, and the Citadel are the only 4 original members of the NCAA to have never made the tournament. We're 0-9 all time in conference championship games

(01-27-2019 04:35 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I always thought that the Tribe would be more suited as members of the Patriot League with other academically elite schools. I also think the Patriot has a standing invitation to them as a full member (and a FB offer for Richmond) should they ever decide to reciprocate. (11 member conferences are suddenly in vogue now)

The CAA and Patriot have similar footprints so it's not like their travel budget would be growing. Richmond, VCU, George Mason, and ODU have all left the conference. It's not a VA-centric league anymore. The CAA also isn't a 2 bid league like it was in the past and can't be getting all that much in tv revenue.

Trips to American, Loyola, and Navy are comprable to going to JMU, Towson, and Delaware.

Bucknell, Lafayette, and Lehigh aren't much farther than Drexel.

Holy Cross and BU are virtually the same trip as Northeastern and the same could be said of Army vs Hofstra. Colgate is just a little out of the way.

The only real travel difference is they wouldn't be going to the Carolinas for conference play but they can always use OOC games to maintain a presence in the region.

I think William & Mary and Richmond would also get more football wins by jumping ship.

Thoughts?

You started bascially this same thread about 1 1/2 years ago.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-823545.html

(01-29-2019 10:47 AM)tribe_pride Wrote:  

(01-27-2019 04:35 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I always thought that the Tribe would be more suited as members of the Patriot League with other academically elite schools. I also think the Patriot has a standing invitation to them as a full member (and a FB offer for Richmond) should they ever decide to reciprocate. (11 member conferences are suddenly in vogue now)

The CAA and Patriot have similar footprints so it's not like their travel budget would be growing. Richmond, VCU, George Mason, and ODU have all left the conference. It's not a VA-centric league anymore. The CAA also isn't a 2 bid league like it was in the past and can't be getting all that much in tv revenue.

Trips to American, Loyola, and Navy are comprable to going to JMU, Towson, and Delaware.

Bucknell, Lafayette, and Lehigh aren't much farther than Drexel.

Holy Cross and BU are virtually the same trip as Northeastern and the same could be said of Army vs Hofstra. Colgate is just a little out of the way.

The only real travel difference is they wouldn't be going to the Carolinas for conference play but they can always use OOC games to maintain a presence in the region.

I think William & Mary and Richmond would also get more football wins by jumping ship.

Thoughts?

You started bascially this same thread about 1 1/2 years ago.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-823545.html

If Tribe football and basketball weren’t down so much for 2018 - 2019, I’d have suspected some other school’s fan(s) was/were trolling ours with this thread. That said, I continue to wonder whether there is some level of defection from the CAA that would cause College leadership to question its utility.

Some portion of today’s FCS/mid-major conference makeup is a result of inertia and bandaids over exit wounds resulting from previous members having left for real or perceived greener pastures. Commissioners and ADs from media revenue “have not” leagues appear content with the status quo.

Understanding that change is controversial, l believe a data gathering exercise would be beneficial. Rather than colleges simply belonging to conferences because they’ve belonged to them, it would be interesting to know what overlap there is based on academics, enrollment/athletic budget size, proximity/travel costs, football/non-football, number of sports funded, and “self-image” as a southern, mid-Atlantic, northeastern, midwestern institution.

If colleges even contemplated sorting along these lines, the conference landscape might be more rational. At a minimum this data could provide the basis for logical discussion about backfill when the next conference member bolts. And it would give yahoos like me a better point of departure for the “wouldn’t this be a better conference” threads on these boards.

The Tribe had their chance to join the Patriot. They decided it was not a good fit and stuck with the CAA. I know someone said the CAA was a JMU defection away from infighting but I honestly believe W&M is the glue that is holding the CAA together with their unique ability to relate to both public and private schools and being the closest to a geographic center the CAA has

(01-28-2019 03:09 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(01-27-2019 08:51 PM)canewton Wrote:  What is AI

Allen Iverson. William & Mary is 30 minutes from his hometown so you'd think it would benefit them greatly.

For the less sarcastic answer, AI is Academic Index, but AI are Allen Iverson's initials too.

(01-29-2019 10:47 AM)tribe_pride Wrote:  

(01-27-2019 04:35 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I always thought that the Tribe would be more suited as members of the Patriot League with other academically elite schools. I also think the Patriot has a standing invitation to them as a full member (and a FB offer for Richmond) should they ever decide to reciprocate. (11 member conferences are suddenly in vogue now)

The CAA and Patriot have similar footprints so it's not like their travel budget would be growing. Richmond, VCU, George Mason, and ODU have all left the conference. It's not a VA-centric league anymore. The CAA also isn't a 2 bid league like it was in the past and can't be getting all that much in tv revenue.

Trips to American, Loyola, and Navy are comprable to going to JMU, Towson, and Delaware.

Bucknell, Lafayette, and Lehigh aren't much farther than Drexel.

Holy Cross and BU are virtually the same trip as Northeastern and the same could be said of Army vs Hofstra. Colgate is just a little out of the way.

The only real travel difference is they wouldn't be going to the Carolinas for conference play but they can always use OOC games to maintain a presence in the region.

I think William & Mary and Richmond would also get more football wins by jumping ship.

Thoughts?

You started bascially this same thread about 1 1/2 years ago.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-823545.html

It's the off season so I'm bored. And just so we are all clear this wasn't meant to be a troll job. My wife and I spend Christmas each year in Williamsburg and we always visit William & Mary. It was my wife's dream school but she ultimately picked Ohio St instead.

(01-30-2019 08:45 PM)solohawks Wrote:  The Tribe had their chance to join the Patriot. They decided it was not a good fit and stuck with the CAA. I know someone said the CAA was a JMU defection away from infighting but I honestly believe W&M is the glue that is holding the CAA together with their unique ability to relate to both public and private schools and being the closest to a geographic center the CAA has

I think JMU and the Tribe are the two schools who keep things together as they are the only ones from the original geographic core. The league is much more spread out now.

Pull the two VA schools out and you're left with a block of 3 in the South and a block of 5 in the Northeast that stretches from Boston to Baltimore.

(01-28-2019 12:58 PM)seaking4steel Wrote:  I don't understand why both Nova and Richmond, who have both obtained national championships in football in the recent past, would want to drop their teams to the Patiriot to play with schools like Georgetown that put up the bare minimum to have a team. I understand that the League has begun to make efforts to better compete such as allowing scholarships, but they are still a ways off from being on par with most of FCS.

The PL offers 60 full scholarships. Six of the schools offer 60, Georgetown offers none, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the amount spent on basketball.

The Hoyas finished in second place this year. Such is the peculiar mix of having the #11 defense in FCS and the #121 offense.

(01-28-2019 12:58 PM)seaking4steel Wrote:  I don't understand why both Nova and Richmond, who have both obtained national championships in football in the recent past, would want to drop their teams to the Patiriot to play with schools like Georgetown that put up the bare minimum to have a team. I understand that the League has begun to make efforts to better compete such as allowing scholarships, but they are still a ways off from being on par with most of FCS.

Nova’s rise in football was almost all its former coach and his remarkable eye for coaching and recruiting talent. And he may have been the biggest pusher for FBS. It’s not a program the university wants to heartily promote. And there are some perceived benefits joining PFL. I think it will still happen, and isn’t done already because of the optics with the former coach and his legacies still near the campus.

Richmond? I don’t know. They seem to be arm in arm with Nova in these projections, but, they seem more unlikely because of that history. Sure, the school fits the profile, but they aren’t like Villanova.

I think it would be a demotion no matter how or why it happened, but, for two “prominent” private schools in their respective locations to be in a weird spot after a scenario where Madison (and eventually Stony Brook) left? Would a different CAAF, maybe with a Monmouth or some other drifters prompt such moves? I think some of what pushes this speculation IS the context of the dynamics between CAAF, SoCon, PFL, etc..

Is it possible SoCon bounces back and becomes the stronger of the two conferences, and THAT be where W&M goes if it came to it?

(01-31-2019 08:25 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(01-30-2019 08:45 PM)solohawks Wrote:  The Tribe had their chance to join the Patriot. They decided it was not a good fit and stuck with the CAA. I know someone said the CAA was a JMU defection away from infighting but I honestly believe W&M is the glue that is holding the CAA together with their unique ability to relate to both public and private schools and being the closest to a geographic center the CAA has

I think JMU and the Tribe are the two schools who keep things together as they are the only ones from the original geographic core. The league is much more spread out now.

Pull the two VA schools out and you're left with a block of 3 in the South and a block of 5 in the Northeast that stretches from Boston to Baltimore.

Agree

I have been a big proponent of the CAA over the SoCon in the past but honestly at this point I am willing to admit I was wrong.

The CAAs desire to have an FCS football league has left it a jumbled mess. At this point it would be best for all parties involved if UNCW and CoC went to the SoCon. This way the CAA could look north and become the all sports FCS league it wants to be without Boston to Charleston footprint making it an incredibly unattractive proposition.

Switch out UNCW and CoC with Albany and Stony Brook and the CAA is much more cohesive and geographically sustainable

The SoCon would go back to being a 9/12 league with an Eastern block of VMI, UNCG, UNCW, CoC, Citadel
and a Western block of UTC, ETSU, Furman, Wofford, Western Carolina, Mercer, Samford.

You wont need to officially make divisions but scheduling can be done methodically to reduce travel.

(02-01-2019 02:13 PM)solohawks Wrote:  

(01-31-2019 08:25 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(01-30-2019 08:45 PM)solohawks Wrote:  The Tribe had their chance to join the Patriot. They decided it was not a good fit and stuck with the CAA. I know someone said the CAA was a JMU defection away from infighting but I honestly believe W&M is the glue that is holding the CAA together with their unique ability to relate to both public and private schools and being the closest to a geographic center the CAA has

I think JMU and the Tribe are the two schools who keep things together as they are the only ones from the original geographic core. The league is much more spread out now.

Pull the two VA schools out and you're left with a block of 3 in the South and a block of 5 in the Northeast that stretches from Boston to Baltimore.

Agree

I have been a big proponent of the CAA over the SoCon in the past but honestly at this point I am willing to admit I was wrong.

The CAAs desire to have an FCS football league has left it a jumbled mess. At this point it would be best for all parties involved if UNCW and CoC went to the SoCon. This way the CAA could look north and become the all sports FCS league it wants to be without Boston to Charleston footprint making it an incredibly unattractive proposition.

Switch out UNCW and CoC with Albany and Stony Brook and the CAA is much more cohesive and geographically sustainable

The SoCon would go back to being a 9/12 league with an Eastern block of VMI, UNCG, UNCW, CoC, Citadel
and a Western block of UTC, ETSU, Furman, Wofford, Western Carolina, Mercer, Samford.

You wont need to officially make divisions but scheduling can be done methodically to reduce travel.

Sounds like a sustainable plan. What about Elon? Where do they end up if things go nuclear? If the Southern wing of the CAA gets orphaned as a result of the northern wing out muscling them then the SoCon could take on a pair but someone is going to be stuck in the A-Sun or Big South.

Elon would be fine in the CAA without CoC and UNCW.

Another pitfall why a couple of these teams haven’t left the CAA is the strict regulations that the league has where if you change leagues, you don’t get to play in any conference tourneys for an entire year before you switch leagues and I believe you lose a good chunk of your revenue.

CofC/UNCW would be a good fit together in any league. The problem is how small the Wilmington market is. Not that it would mean anything in the SoCon, given Cullowhee and Macon, GA are in the league, but UNCW has also been in the CAA since it began in 1985.

A big reason why CofC went to the CAA was the growing market and the Charleston airport (which has way more flight options now than it had 6-7 years ago). Plus CofC wanted to market their school better in the northeast.

Elon is basically a northern school located in NC. Of their last freshman class, only 17% of the students are from NC. A large percentage of the OOS students are from New England.

Also, when VCU, ODU and Mason left. The conference took total control of all the NCAA tournament money. Those three teams earned all of it. We left without a penny.

Not sure why this was bumped, but especially under our new leadership, which is investing more in athletics, we are still not going to the Patriot.

So Nova and UConn to the patriot football league

(02-02-2019 01:19 AM)sctvman Wrote:  Another pitfall why a couple of these teams haven’t left the CAA is the strict regulations that the league has where if you change leagues, you don’t get to play in any conference tourneys for an entire year before you switch leagues and I believe you lose a good chunk of your revenue.

CofC/UNCW would be a good fit together in any league. The problem is how small the Wilmington market is. Not that it would mean anything in the SoCon, given Cullowhee and Macon, GA are in the league, but UNCW has also been in the CAA since it began in 1985.

A big reason why CofC went to the CAA was the growing market and the Charleston airport (which has way more flight options now than it had 6-7 years ago). Plus CofC wanted to market their school better in the northeast.

Elon is basically a northern school located in NC. Of their last freshman class, only 17% of the students are from NC. A large percentage of the OOS students are from New England.

The other reason CofC left SoCon was that it was a basketball first school in a football conference. Moving to the CAA put them with schools that were more like them (and if they had been offered an A-10 ticket, they would have accepted in a heartbeat.)