Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Reconsidering The Patriot League, Part 2

 To better understand why William & Mary (or for that matter, any college or university) would consider joining the Patriot League, take a look at the landscape of NCAA Division I conferences. When teams move between conferences, there are usually four issues:

1. Money; a factor largely among the top conferences. When Maryland and Rutgers moved to the Big Ten, for example, it wasn't about tradition.

2. Location. Some schools find that, over time, the conference they joined isn't the conference they remain in. When New Mexico State joined the WAC in 2005, they played alongside Boise St., Fresno St., Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, San Jose St., Utah State,  Nevada, and Idaho. Fifteen years later, none of these other schools are there anymore.

3. Competitiveness. As a school changes competitively, a new conference offers more opportunities to grow and to succeed. TCU could have never joined the Big 12 without its growth from the WAC to Conference USA to the Mountain West.

4. Opportunity. A sudden spark on the national scene can draw a lot of interest to make a move, even if it does not prove altogether successful. George Mason's move to the Atlantic-10 is one, Butler to the Big East is another.

As it relates to this discussion, forget the money. There isn't a financial incentive in the Patriot League the way there is in the Big East, plain and simple. But the other categories offer some clues as to why this may be in the consideration set for a school like W&M:

Location, Location, Location. When W&M joined the CAA, it was, for the most part, a compact group of schools in the Mid-Atlantic corridor: American, George Mason, Richmond, Old Dominion, JMU, East Carolina, UNC-Wilmington. Today's CAA stretches from Boston to Charleston and while the PL isn't exactly compact either, three of its all-sports schools are within three hours of Williamsburg and three more are within six hours--not an inconsequential number when the costs of travel for sports other than football and men's basketball start to add up.

There's another factor here. As a state-run institution, W&M maintains about two thirds of its admissions spaces for students from the commonwealth of Virginia. Of the one third from out of state, nearly half (230 of 505) come from just five states: Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts - the PL's corridor. Admissions- wise, having the Tribe compete where the applicants are can't hurt.

Competitiveness. There's also the issue of competitiveness, and things haven't been good for the Tribe over the years. In 2019, a strategic planning document issued by the College declared that by 2025 it seeks to "win at least 35 [CAA] championships, including a combined total of five championships in the three key community building sports,  football and men’s and women’s basketball." Even the most loyal of Tribe fan would see this as a major challenge in the CAA.

The most successful of the three "community building sports" is, football, averaging 8,622 per game or fourth in the CAA behind JMU, Delaware, and New Hampshire. 

It last qualified for the NCAA I-AA/FCS playoffs in 2015. Recent renovations to Zable Stadium, the former Cary Field, make it one of the best in the region and while W&M isn't welcoming the University of Virginia to Williamsburg, it's still strong enough a program to play at Charlottesville in 2021 and 2023.

The story isn't as strong for the W&M men's basketball team. The Tribe has never qualified for the NCAA tournament, nor have the women. (Ever.) The men's team has appeared in nine conference finals dating back to their days in the Southern Conference, and lost all nine. In 2019-20, the Tribe entered the CAA tournament with a 21-10 record and a second seed, and lost in the quarterfinals.

If there is any possibility of the Tribe winning five conference titles in these sports by 2030, much less 2025, it may not be with the current CAA alignment and this is why the Patriot League has a possibility in future strategic thinking: the path to the NCAA tournament is easier in the PL, and the cost to compete proportionately less. That doesn't mean W&M has to leave the CAA, and there are good reasons why it would like to stay where it was a charter member. 

A backstory behind W&M's recent troubles around the planned reduction of seven sports was an effort by then-athletic director Samantha Huge to reallocate more money from so-called "Olympic" sports (namely, volleyball, men's and women's gymnastics, swimming, men's indoor and outdoor track and field) to better support football and basketball. Huge's departure and the resultant outcry from students, faculty and alumni will likely save all or most of these sports, but still does not address a financial path to better compete for conference championships and the resultant NCAA tournament revenue that could be afforded the school, win or lose.

"If all these efforts result in more championships in the ‘Burg (without compromising our ethics and academic standards), we’re all for it," wrote the independent W&M Sports Blog in 2019. A year later, it wrote this about the PL: 

"Through following a similar model and having stated goals for success in both the classroom and on the playing field, W&M leadership has made it publicly known that they intend to become what we’re calling the Stanford of the FCS. But is this actually a doable goal? Especially as it relates to the three sports that the school has chosen to prioritize: football, men's basketball, and women's basketball. Although rare, programs boasting both elite academics and “successful” athletics (defining “successful” here as sustained championship-caliber sports) do exist at the FBS level...To us, the two [FCS] leagues that stand out most in this regard are the Ivy League and the Patriot League."

For football at the very least and likely for all its sports, the Patriot League stands as a viable consideration. And there are others, too, if you scratch the surface. 

The Real HU (And The Other One, Too): For the Patriot League to break out of the guilded cage it has found itself in, it needs to consider schools who meet three criteria: 1) strong academics, 2) a good regional fit, and 3) those to whom their current conference membership is not ideal. Add a fourth, a century-old rivalry, and two schools stand out.

The next battleground of college realignment is not the Big 12 or the SEC, but in the fraternity of schools known as the HBCU's, historically black colleges and universities. Until 2017, all but one Division I HBCU belonged to one of two conferences: the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), stretching from Texas to Alabama, and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), from Maryland to Florida. (The outlier is Tennessee State, of the Ohio Valley). The conferences enjoyed a friendly rivalry in football, with the lucrative Celebration Bowl bringing large crowds to Atlanta for a de facto black college football championship. The MEAC enjoyed four decades of relative stability, but no more.

In 2017, Savannah State University opted to drop to Division II. A year later, Hampton University announced it would join a non-HBCU conference, the Big South, to better support its football program. Within the past year, North Carolina A&T, Florida A&M, and Bethune-Cookman have all announced plans to leave. By 2021, the MEAC will be at the NCAA minimum six schools for football, with no logical candidates with which to expand, and certainly not in today's economic climate. Just this past week, Norfolk State University's board set a December call to discuss the viability of staying in the MEAC, to which it has belonged since upgrading from Division II in 1997.

Here is the gambit for the Patriot League: only two HBCU's can conceivably fit the PL academic model and complete in the same mid-Atlantic footprint: Howard University in Washington, DC and Hampton University in the Tidewater, three hours south. The 95 game series between the two dates to 1908 in football, while its academic profiles each place in the top three among Division I HBCU's nationwide. 

HBCU pride is strong at these schools but the MEAC is coming apart and not every school has a lifeline. Would a unified Patriot League bring them back together? 

Regionally, the opportunity for additional cross-region rivalries in such a scenario is no less apparent: W&M and Hampton are 30 miles apart, Georgetown and Howard just four miles. And while no one expects a commensurate level of interest in Hampton versus Holy Cross or Colgate, the regionalization of a PL schedule with William & Mary, Howard, Hampton, and Georgetown opens the door for future divisional play. 

It also sets the table for something the Patriot League has lacked since its founding: acknowledging rivalry games outside the Lehigh Valley. The PL has protected the Lafayette-Lehigh game at the expense of longtime rivalries like Colgate-Holy Cross and, to a lesser extent, Fordham-Holy Cross and Fordham-Georgetown, as these games no longer carry any particular gravitas in the final week of the season.  A 10 team arrangement sets up at least four rivalry games for the final week of the calendar: Lafayette-Lehigh, Howard-Hampton, Colgate-Holy Cross, and Georgetown-Fordham, leaving the door open for W&M to continue to play Richmond in the oldest football rivalry in the South, dating to 1898.  

Another Football-Only Member? While we're talking about it, there's always been a line of discussion that the Patriot League's affection for William & Mary, Richmond, and Villanova is unrequited. 

Much like William & Mary, Richmond has steered clear of the Patriot League over its scholarship policy, its redshirt policy, and the perception that the Patriot League was a declining league in terms of football. The Patriot League also suffered from a perception of a deemphasis of football, or "where programs go to die". Trading Towson for Georgetown in the early 2000's didn't change this perception. 

When Richmond officials left the CAA for the Atlantic 10 in 2005 and sent up a trial balloon of moving football to the PL during the presidency of William Cooper, it set off an alumni revolt. Cooper backed off the plan and left the UR presidency two years later. In 2008, Richmond won the I-AA national championship, something it would never have done in a non-scholarship Patriot League. Scholarships aren't the issue anymore, but any move by W&M would be watched closely at Richmond. 

The Spiders aren't looking to pull up stakes for now, but it's worth watching down the road if a move from the Tribe brings success.

A ten team Patriot League in football is a tall order, but a tempting one: Colgate, Holy Cross, Fordham, Lafayette and Lehigh on the northern side of the ledger; Bucknell, Georgetown, Hampton, Howard and William & Mary to the other. In basketball, a 13 team setup might seem a bit unwieldy, but tailor made for divisions, with Army, Boston U, Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette and Lehigh to the north,  American, Howard, Hampton, Loyola, Navy,  and William & Mary to the south. 

Whether it's one, two, or three schools, now is an optimum time to discuss expansion. And with this is mind, one more point.

The Georgetown Question: For all the incongruity between Georgetown football and the Patriot League, the PL has been a gracious host. It accepted a school in 2001 whose budget for football wasn't competitive with the other schools, and still isn't. It accepted a loose plan for a new stadium in Washington that arrived 20 years late and at half the size of any other PL facility. It renews the membership of an associate member that doesn't offer football scholarships and has no interest in doing so. And, the obvious-- it has rarely  been a serious factor in the football race, with a combined record of 23-92 in league play.

A larger and stronger Patriot League has a little more leverage to encourage Georgetown to be more competitive. It doesn't mean that the PL has to call the question on football scholarships at Georgetown, because the answer hasn't changed. It may mean, however, that the PL expects Georgetown to increase its commitments in financial aid equivalencies to bring it closer in line with the scholarship thresholds at other PL football schools, where every program but Georgetown has eligibility to schedule games with major college teams. It could expect better in scheduling, such as avoiding games with Division III schools and perhaps assist in identifying opportunities against more established I-AA/FCS opponents. For its part, Georgetown could do more in promoting the Patriot League outside the campus gates and within Washington, and to schedule opponents with a measure of local interest.

Eight, nine, or even ten teams can be good for a stronger Patriot League. That alone should be an opportunity for a football future which might surprise some people.

Monday, November 9, 2020

Reconsidering The Patriot League, Part 1

Good luck was once defined as when preparation meets opportunity. And over the years, the Patriot League hasn't seen much of either.

"We have created a model for others to follow," proclaimed Rev. John Brooks S.J. of Holy Cross, but even he added the rejoinder: "So far, no one has followed." And why would they? The PL has stood as a bastion of a form of academic-athletic conservatism that has kept schools at a distance for most of the last three decades. It aims to be the spiritual cousin to the Ivy League, but it's not the Ivy and never will be. 

But while the Ivies can follow a mantra along the lines of Yale graduate William F. Buckley's definition of conservatism ("it stands athwart history, yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so"), the PL cannot, though it certainly has tried.  Independent efforts to participate in the football playoffs, playing 11 games, or even adding football scholarships have not elevated the PL, but only further illustrated how far it is removed from member schools to excel beyond the playbook written at Princeton.

Or as Buckley also observed, "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive."

"The timing may be just right for the Colonial League, a new football confederation of six colleges that seeks to be a model along philosophical and pragmatic lines," wrote the New York Times on September 14, 1986.  "In the first Colonial League game here yesterday, Holy Cross played Lehigh at Fitton Field for only the second time and for the first time in 62 years. The Crusaders won the game, 17-14, before a crowd of 15,781."

"In 1983, Howard Swearer, president of Brown and then the chairman of the Ivy League presidents' group, sent Anthony Musuca, vice president of public affairs at Princeton, on a mission," it continued. "The Ivy presidents, having little confidence in the N.C.A.A.'s efforts at reforming college football, were looking about in the East for colleges that shared their belief that good football can be played with good football players within a high academic framework.

"The Colonial sextet, all Division I-AA colleges with problems about whom to play, emerged after two years of meetings. The carrot was the Ivy [League] promise to provide at least 16 [non-conference] games a season, many in Colonial League stadiums. ''Yale Here Saturday'' would be more exciting in Lewisburg, Pa., Bucknell's home town, than Towson State."

As the years have progressed, the Patriot League's stature has inexorably fallen. It is increasingly less competitive with the Ivy League. The Northeast Conference, once considered as a collection of schools with the MAAC passed up on in 1993, is also stronger. In 2003, Colgate played for the I-AA national title and no PL team has come close since. Two PL teams have been ranked in the top 10 in the last eight seasons combined, and in the last three seasons the conference champions have been the only teams that finished above .500.  But despite all this institutional inertia, especially in football but not exclusive to it, the Patriot League has an opportunity to reconsider and rechart its course in the 2020's. 

But are they prepared for it?

In 2011, I cited another old quote to reference the Patriot League,  noting "present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages." A decade later, the tectonic plates underneath its offices haven't moved much, but they are always moving--imperceptibly to many, but not to others.

The storm of COVID-19 is felt in schools coast to coast, and athletics is not immune. The business model of Division I athletics is taking a beating, particularly in non-revenue sports which rely on football and basketball to float the boat. When Clemson University announced last week it is dropping track and field as an intercollegiate sport, it's not some sort of SEC gag that it can't afford it--schools are increasingly measuring individual sports on a basis it didn't have to before. 

Despite it all, the PL's model of geographic and academic consistency is garnering some quiet interest. (OK, not so quietly.)

"Talk of Patriot League membership for William & Mary is topical again as the school navigates through issues that caused an evolving plan to discontinue four sports and a re-examination of athletics objectives," wrote the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"I do hear the Patriot League conversation quite a bit,” Jeremy Martin, W&M’s interim athletic director, said Wednesday."

The College of William & Mary checks off nearly every box that Peter Likins and John Brooks envisioned in 1986: academics, history, and athletics...and, of course, it did when W&M was a charter member of the Colonial League in 1986. But W&M soon withdrew over the football scholarship issue and instead became a charter member of that other conference which wrested the Colonial title from the Pennsylvanians, and which later absorbed the former Yankee and Atlantic-10 football conferences under its aegis in 2007. In fact, W&M is one of just two original members of the former ECAC-South alliance which once included Georgetown, Villanova, and West Virginia before it formed a full-fledged basketball conference which once included Baltimore, Catholic, Towson, Old Dominion, Navy, George Mason, James Madison, and Richmond.

The CAA has a changed a lot since then, with an all-sports lineup which now includes Charleston, Delaware, Drexel, Elon, Hofstra, Northeastern, and UNC Wilmington. JMU, once a rural outpost with little significance in the Commonwealth, is now the sixth largest institution in Virginia, twice the size of W&M and with eyes on a possible move up alongside that of Old Dominion.

"As W&M charts an athletics course during a turbulent time, it will be looking for a road to success," the Times-Dispatch continued. "Football competition has become more challenging in the CAA with large state schools such as JMU and Delaware increasing commitments. W&M has never advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. According to W&M, it has the third-lowest spending per student-athlete ratio in the CAA...“roughly half of our team athletic budgets fall below the median compared to the CAA peers."

And don't underestimate that clause on basketball. W&M is one of five Division I schools that have never, ever qualified for the NCAA basketball tournament and that is a point of irritation in Williamsburg. Neither the PL or CAA are multi-bid conferences, but, much like American, a path through the PL  might provide W&M the  opportunity (and the post-season revenues) the CAA would not.

But is the PL prepared for serious interest? Not unless it addresses three key factors:

The Need For Three. If the Patriot League is a legitimate suitor for schools like William & Mary, it must address an anomaly from the 2013 decision to award football scholarships.

Division I-AA/FCS schools are able to offer up to 63 scholarships for football. If you're playing in the Ivy League, the Pioneer, or Georgetown, that number is zero. If you play in the Northeast Conference, it's 40. Everyone else in the subdivision allows up to 63, except for the Patriot League, which allows up to 60, instead of 63.

What's the big deal, you ask? The 61st, 62nd, and 63rd scholarship isn't going to be in the two-deep, and it saves PL schools roughly $250,000. But football coaches don't want to have less than their competition, and it's the equivalent of a basketball team with 12 scholarships instead of 13. If you need that player off the bench, he's not there.

No one among the Patriot League football coaches opposes 63 scholarships, and some would suggest the 60 scholarship total was a presidential compromise of sorts so as to soothe concerns that the PL was not going all-in on football. But if there are candidates like a William & Mary who will give the PL an honest look, they're not dialing back competitiveness to do so. The league must readdress the ability to award 63 scholarships, even if a school wishes to only award 60...or even for that school that awards none.

The Math Doesn't Work. The second biggest obstacle for prospective PL entrants is the arcane Academic Index, a byproduct of the PL's unrequited love with all things Ivy. 

For new readers who haven't heard me complain about it before, the Index (AI) as originally created by the Ivy League segregates prospective student athletes (but not students at large) into "bands" of eligibility based on a ratio of GPA and SAT scores. Schools cannot admit beyond a fixed number of recruits per band based on the school's own GPA and SAT range. A school like Fordham, for example, has bands that Georgetown cannot even touch.

The index is arcane and borderline discriminatory. Soon, it may be irrelevant.

The winds of COVID-19 and declining admissions has laid bare the standardized test industry. A majority of students won't even take the SAT or ACT tests this year, and many schools struggling to adapt to declining numbers of eligible applicants have moved to test-optional, test-flexible, or, in some cases, no testing at all. 

Georgetown isn't one of those schools. The same university that still sends admissions decisions in the mail isn't abandoning the SAT. But in the PL, Holy Cross has during COVID, as has American, Boston U, Bucknell, and Loyola, with Fordham, Lehigh and Lafayette dropping test requirements for 2020-21.

William & Mary still trusts the SAT and it has the ranges (1300-1490) that every school outside of Georgetown would aspire to. But as test scores go the way of required class ranking, the PL must realign test scores out of the Index, short of disbanding it completely. 

If The Shirt Fits, Wear It. Of 255 NCAA Division I football programs, 240 offer the ability for players to redshirt; namely, to take five years to complete four years if eligibility. From Alabama to Marist, everyone offers this except for 15 schools: eight Ivy League schools and seven Patriot League schools.

The Patriot League views redshirts as a means of identity with the Ivies, but also a matter of concern to two of its schools. To redshirt, a student would either need to take five years to graduate or, more likely, to graduate in four and do a year on a graduate program. Two of its schools, Holy Cross and Lafayette, are colleges with no graduate options. These schools would contend that they are at a disadvantage against schools with graduate programs, like Lehigh or Fordham, for example. 

Any serious attempt at PL expansion must address redshirts. The colleges may not like it, but it is a competitive fact of life in college football. Can a Lafayette player take five years? Sure. Could they transfer for that fifth year? Unfortunate, perhaps, but true. But in either case, the PL is not jeopardizing its academic reputation if there is a fifth year wide receiver out there, especially since the PL already allows medical redshirts. 

Add redshirts, and the competitive level of the PL takes a decided step forward. Is this what is holding the presidents back?

In part 2, a closer look at William & Mary and some other schools to which the PL model might be transformative this decade.

Monday, June 22, 2020

2020 Scheduling: Subject To Change

While not unexpected given the turbulence of the last thee months, the announcement of scheduling restrictions by the Patriot League hierarchy is going to scramble a lot of schedules out there, and not jsut on the Hilltop. 

"In recognition of the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, the Patriot League Council of Presidents announces the following principles, which will guide the development of a Patriot League Fall 2020 Athletics Plan that makes the health and safety of our communities its highest priority," it reads. What does it mean for Georgetown...and other teams?

1. The release notes that "student-athletes will return to campus at the same time as other students." This would preclude August training camp for PL schools. While Georgetown has not yet announced a start date for the fall semester, it would put pressure on the staff to get the team ready to play in any suitable manner with its first scheduled game on September 5, just two weeks after the arrival of freshmen to campus (the usual arrival of freshmen is the third week on August.) 

In the past, Georgetown teams have completed four weeks of training before the first game; were it to follow a similar cadence, the Hoyas may not be ready to open the season until as late as September 26 versus Columbia, negating games scheduled at Marist (September 5), home versus Dayton (September 12) and at Harvard (September 19). If the Ivy league adopted a similar "no early arrival" calendar, the non-conference season would be wiped out altogether and would not begin until October 3, at Colgate.

2. The release announced that "non-league competition will not begin prior to Friday, Sept. 4." Not a problem at GU, but two PL schools have major early season openings; namely, Stony Brook at Fordham on August 29, and Lehigh at Villanova on September 3. Both could theoretically move to September 5 but unless Lehigh and Fordham open early in August, neither team will be in optimum physical shape to meet a CAA school.

3. "No Patriot League teams will fly to competitions and, with rare exceptions, regular-season competition will exclude overnight travel.". Let's examine each of these.

The PL is nominally a bus league but a handful of games this year demand air travel, two of which are so-called "guarantee games" where PL schools are (or were) expected to pick up a six figure check to play a Division I-A opponent: A September 4 trip from Colgate to meet Western Michigan, and a first -ever game that Fordham would travel to Hawaii a week later. Fordham has already cancelled alumni travel packages to the game, and a cancellation of that game will hit the Rams in the wallet. 

Overnight travel isn't an issue from Lehigh to Lafayette, but Georgetown's Oct. 3 game at Colgate is a seven hour bud trip. Do you leave at 2:00 am to arrive in time for a 12 noon game? Will Holy Cross do the same to travel to Washington for a 12 noon start on Nov. 14? perhaps there's a waiver for these kind of games, but it adds uncertainty, something that coaches (and their universities) don't need any more of these days.

Speaking of airplanes and overnight travel, Georgetown was scheduled to fly to San Diego on the Nov. 21 season finale, only the second time Georgetown has flown to an opponent in over a decade. If the PL rules are to be followed, it is likely to be dropped as a result. Does Georgetown find a replacement opponent, and whom, and where?

The scheduling temblors have a domino effect. One team starts to cancel games, other teams scramble. FA number of  neutral site "classics" in the SWAC have been scuttled, leading Southern University to start its season three weeks late, picking up Division II Florida Memorial University to get up to a nine game schedule. Its crowning game, the annual meeting with Grambling State at the Superdome, is at risk. A press release announced, well, that it's not guaranteed.

"While statements have been made about the future of [the] Bayou Classic and its location of play in 2020 and 2021, those statements were unofficial," it read. "Decisions about the Bayou Classic will not be made until after The Southwestern Athletics Conference Council of Presidents and Chancellors have a late June meeting where matters related to Fall sports will be discussed."

Last season's game between the two schools drew 68,341 and was nationally televised on NBC, two factors that is vital to the the two HBCU programs. No Bayou Classic isn't just a lost weekend, it's a financial knockdown to a pair of schools with a combined endowment of just $17 million, or 1% of the Georgetown endowment. 

We're in uncharted waters here, but it's not the first time. The 1918 Georgetown Hoyas played during the "second wave" of the Spanish flu pandemic at the close of World War I. Its season opened Nov. 9 and ended November 28. Just five opponents ended up on the calendar, four of which were military teams. Very little was ever printed in newspapers about the pandemic so as not to encite panic, even the Georgetown recap in the College yearbook cited "the unsettled condition of the country" but mentioned "influenza" only three times in the entire book, one in an obituary of a fallen classmate. 

That's all we know...for now. The next five months are subject to change. In fact, you can count on it.