(06-21-2022 10:14 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: (06-21-2022 09:44 AM)ccd494 Wrote: Hartford will join the Commonwealth Coast Conference: https://commonwealthstats.prestosports.c...ases/UHart
Is it wrong to think this membership is a sign the school wants nothing to do with athletics anymore? This was the conference I thought they were way too big for (budget; by enrollment, they’ll be the second or third largest school I believe) albeit private. Still more prominent than GNAC, but, I thought the NAC more resembled the D3 version of AmEast to which they probably could have fit right in.
Those words the president said about people not coming there for sports. Yikes, with this…tell us how you really feel, you know?
Do you mean the Little East? The CCC is comfortably higher on the athletic and academic totem pole than the NAC.
The NESCAC is the #1 D-3 conference in New England, academically and athletically. Hartford's application would have been laughed at.
The NEWMAC is next academically, and probably athletically. Hartford mentioned it in passing when it first made its decision, but I can't imagine the discussions lasted long. The NEWMAC schools are better than Hartford.
The Little East is probably the next highest athletically. It is all public schools, but Hartford has been there before in the AE. Size wise, Hartford would fit in. But with the Little East being a public school conference there may not have been mutual interest. I think the Little East = America East junior is more accurate.
From there it is probably the CCC or GNAC, athletically (disregarding the all public, all Massachusetts MASCAC). CCC is better academically. Schools leave the NAC for the GNAC when they are looking to upgrade (Colby-Sawyer, Elms, Lasell). Endicott, Suffolk and Western New England have "upgraded" from the GNAC to CCC.
Then you get down to the NAC, which is basically a hodgepodge of schools hoping to be somewhere else soon, but without the opportunity to do so. You have the lower level of Maine publics, which includes a school that would be an eight hour drive from Hartford. You have the two Maine privates that have no other options. You have the two Northern Vermont satellite campuses that never do anything athletically and almost died academically. And then you have a SUNY division that joined recently, none of whom are anything to write home about athletically.
Long story short, if Hartford is staying in a New England based conference, they are probably where they should be.