Swarthmore & Vassar

Corbett
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:49:55 +0000

I’ll throw out another general comment on Centennial Conference vs. NESCAC athletics. While NESCAC is generally regarded as having a greater focus on athletics, this certainly isn’t evident when it comes to the highest-profile college sport, football.

NESCAC has the shortest season in college football: eight games. The Centennial Conference regular season is ten games.

Furthermore, NESCAC flatly bans postseason play in football (even though NESCAC teams would likely be competitive at the national level). They play eight games, and that’s all. This means that NESCAC schools automatically forfeit any chance for football points in the NACDA Director’s Cup, which are the most widely recognized rankings for college athletic programs.

The Centennial Conference, on the other hand, always sends its top teams to the NCAA Division III playoffs – where they are committed to playing at least one, and potentially as many as five, postseason games. And CC teams that don’t make the NCAA playoffs often play in postseason ECAC bowl games.

So it’s not unusual for CC football teams to play more than 10 games. Last year, for example, Muhlenberg made the NCAA playoffs and wound up playing a total of 12 games – 50% more than a NESCAC season. If they had kept winning in the NCAA playoffs, they could have played as many as 15 games – nearly twice the NESCAC limit.

I’m just not convinced that it makes sense for small colleges to have such long football seasons. Last year Ohio State played only 13 games, including the BCS championship game for the national title.

This general comment does not apply to Swarthmore or Haverford, since they’ve dropped their football programs. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to keep them, if CC had tougher football policies.