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.
