Did the Patriot League opt in?
I wouldn’t think the NCAA ruling would impact any of these schools.
It impacts them in the sense that P4 recruits and cut athletes look for a new home in the next tier displacing others. Ivy, for example, did not opt in but is decidedly getting more competitive in the sport I am most familiar with.
Also, now I am curious - how does the ruling impact service academies should the conference opt in? Are they also expected to pay their athletes?
I didn’t make any attempt to account for graduation losses or incoming recruits. It is very tough for even highly rated first years to make much of an impact at Men’s XC Heps (which is what I have been watching most carefully). Last year, only 1 fr runner cracked the top 5 of any of the top 6 teams at Heps. First year students are more of an impact on the women’s side, and likely could be more significant in the Patriot and NESCAC leagues.
I am not an insider, but its not clear to me how the trickle down effect will play out. There might be a few extra tippy top running recruits who go Ivy instead of Stanford or Notre Dame, for examples, as a result of roster limits. I think that Ivy and NESCAC get close to their top picks of athletes who are good enough students and want to go to Ivy or NESCAC, though, so it might not be that big of an impact. Patriot League, particularly BU, Lehigh and Bucknell (IMO) might see the most benefits of upstream roster limits.
I generally agree but it will be interesting to see how the Andover kid who won Footlocker/Nationals will do. There’s a perfect example of a kid who’s awesome in XC, but not as great in the 15 and 5 (relatively).
I really do think the cascading effect will change NESCAC track a lot. The Stanford/Duke/Rice types will opt for Ivies and all of a sudden there will be a flood of sub-1:50 half milers looking for pre-reads at Middlebury.
must be very very difficult for the top Nescac coaches this recruiting cycle, for the exact reasons you guys are pointing out. Typically the top Nescacs would look to lock kids up by august for sports like cross country - but they may be taking more of a “wait and see” approach to see what falls down into their collective lap. Thank god the international recruits haven’t become an issue yet - but doubt the sub 4:05 18-year old Kenyan would thrive in the cold Massachusetts Vermont or Maine winters lol
Generally true, but sport and school dependent.
The top NESCAC boats in women’s crew are more than competitive with all but one school (Boston U) in the Patriot League. Colgate and Navy are examples of schools I’ve seen row against NESCAC competition and they were not competitive. And top NESCAC women’s soccer teams are a little closer than one might think. I’ve seen good Williams women’s soccer teams scrimmage Dartmouth’s varsity and those matches were anything but blowouts.
So, it can vary quite a bit by sport and school matchup. Outside of the Patriot League, but instructive, were the many matchups I saw in the fall head races between Wesleyan and U Conn, all of which Wesleyan won quite handily (and yes, against UConn’s A boats). I readily acknowledge that U Conn is not a rowing powerhouse, but that’s really my point.
Those are the sports I know best in these leagues. But with the perspective of having spent my life involved in sports in varying capacities (as an athlete and coach, including a lot of recruiting activity), I also genuinely wonder about other sports, like tennis and lacrosse. It’s hard for me to imagine, for example, the Middlebury women’s lacrosse program being significantly gapped across the board compared to the Patriot League. Wesleyan women’s tennis has had some teams in the last few years who I kind of think would also more than hold their own in the Patriot League. Maybe I’m wrong about that but I at least wonder.
Generalizing here a bit, but the only school in the Patriot League that feels “different” in the D1 vs. D3 comparison across most sports is Boston University. Football is the sport where I think the difference between the conferences would be pretty pronounced across the board. Baseball, rowing, lacrosse, tennis, soccer? Much less obvious to me.
We could also go look up the conference championship winning times and distances to evaluate track, but I’ve exhausted my efforts on this post so someone else will have to do it.
ETA: apologies. I see the general point I’m making here was discussed upthread. I’ll leave the post up to provide some more examples of sports where the gap may not be as clear.
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