That is awesome – the Wesleyan Bishops. How about a small tweak – maybe “Secular Bishops”? hehe
Kenyon used to be the Lords & Ladies – and Amherst famously were the Lord Jeffs. That one was changed pretty recently. I think they may have had Tufts in mind. I thought maybe they could have just changed the spelling to “Lord Geoffs”.
The recent events in Lewiston, of course, send a collective shiver down the spine of NESCAC as three of its members are located in Maine. I’m sure we have all been following them closely. And, people are naturally asking whether the lockdowns will extend to this weekend’s various Parents Weekend and Homecoming events:
They lifted the shelter in place (expires Saturday), but not sure if Bowdoin events were canceled. I know a lot of the NESCAC games in Maine were rescheduled. Both Bates and Bowdoin had lockdowns, but students have been managing well, and communication to the students has been very good. Terribly tragedy to happen – since Wednesday, students have been doing what they can to support each other and find local causes/groups to support as well in the days and weeks to come. These are very tight communities in southern Maine and the outpouring of support has been truly amazing.
This post cites a really interesting online magazine (Slate) article from six years ago which features Wesleyan University, but also has major mentions of Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Bates and, oddly - Chicago:
How many SLAC ED admits are recruited athletes? - #21 by goldbug?
I found that article to be interesting; also a bit disappointing. I had not understood that the NESCAC special athletics admits (the 60-70 coach priorities) were so far off the regular admission standard (the article, which is now some 6-7 years old, so pre-test optional, suggests that at Wesleyan the athlete admits were averaging about 300 points lower on the SAT than regular admits - 1400s to 1100s). I would be the first person to dismiss the absolute predictive power of the SAT, but I suspect other less easily quantified admission factors show a similar spread?
No wonder some athletes at SLACs feel stigmatized.
I also was disappointed at the article’s discussion of how DIII SLACs have embraced a model of intercollegiate athletics in which students lift/practice (informally) year round for their sport. It mirrors the arms race we see in youth sports - specialization and year round soccer (or baseball, or basketball, or 7x7 football, or lacrosse), as opposed to kids who play three seasonal sports (as was more common when I grew up in the 80s). Once Williams’ football is practicing/lifting year round, then Wesleyan has to do the same if it wants to be competitive …
Some of us could sense a definite shift in attitude during the tenure of legendary Williams football coach, Dick Farley, the first NESCAC coach with an NFL pedigree. He was responsible for such motivational comments as, “If you were any good you wouldn’t be here”, and " “If you can’t play here you can’t play anywhere. There is no Division IV.” To his credit, he enjoyed the full support of his teams for 17 years as head coach (1987-2003) and earned a place in the College Football Hall of Fame:
Dick Farley: ‘If you can’t play here you can’t play anywhere. There is no Division IV’ - Williams College
Very interesting - I had not heard of him. Good read!
I guess I wish that there was a D4. Something more than Reed offers, but less than the current D3 arms-race. Where athletic recruiting was eliminated, and athletics treated like any other extracurricular activity - schools would want to have a QB, just like they want to have a tuba player and a thespian. But no-one’s going out scouring camps and showcases for a tuba player …
That’s not quite what the author said in the article, which frankly comes off like a hit piece with some ridiculous hyperbole. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
Wesleyan, like its conference rivals, gets between 60 and 70 of these “tips” annually, or just less than 10 percent of each incoming class. The former Wesleyan administrator I spoke with, who held various posts at the school (including in admissions) between 2001 and 2015, told me these “tipped” students often come from the men’s “helmet sports” of lacrosse, hockey, and football (emphasis added). The former administrator says the SAT scores for this group of students (emphasis added - not clear who “this group” is, but presumably the same sports) tended to be in the 1,100 range on the 1,600 scale compared to around 1,400 for other students.
My sense of it, consistent with the scuttlebutt which I came by in my time around NESCAC sports, is that football and men’s LX are typically responsible for the lowest scores. So I wouldn’t generalize across all athletic admits. In women’s crew and soccer, the two sports I know well in NESCAC and other SLAC settings, the kids with whom my Ds played were all intellectual and highly accomplished students. All of them. Also, the unnamed former administrator … not an official source, but anecdata from someone who used to work at the school. Who knows how reliable that is as a source?
There is also no reason to assume that “other less quantifiable scores” show a similar spread. A lot of smart kids with great transcripts don’t do well on the college board’s tests. I would assume the opposite: low test scores, but great grades with a transcript that shows rigor.
Yes, you have to be pretty good at your sport to play it in the NESCAC. That means dedication and focus. Multiple sports at younger ages, yes, I totally agree. College? NESCAC and other SLAC sports is not the place for people who are generally interested in intramurals for a fun workout. It’s competitive. Not disappointing to me at all.
Again, the article comes off like a wannabe hit piece IMHO. Consider this ridiculous passage:
While the money is bigger and the fans are crazier at the Division I level, the focus on sports at a school like Wesleyan arguably does more to distort its student population. Consider that at a big-time sports factory like Ohio State, just 2 percent of the undergrads are varsity jocks.
I mean, it’s like the guy has no idea or sense of the world of P5 sports, especially at the level of the example he chose to use - Ohio State. Does the fact that the denominator at a LAC is a small fraction of what it is at 70,000 Ohio State mean anything … at all? No, not to anyone even remotely familiar with big time college sports and how that contrasts with what’s going on in the NESCAC. His attempt at comparing those things in any way tells you the author is just out to make noise.
I may be missing some context here, but he sounds like an *** hole to me. Someone should have said, “Yeah? And if you can’t coach here, you can’t coach anywhere either!”
I’d have told him to go frost himself the first day he spoke to me that way, quit, and spent the next four years focused on my classes and, at the chance encounter, tell him “thanks for the tip coach!” Looks like he’s still at Williams coaching track as an assistant in his 70s.
A lot of NESCAC athletes could have played at a higher division but chose where they wanted to go to school first and leveraged sports to help them achieve it. You get hurt, and you’re left with your choice, which hopefully you don’t hate. One of mine had several opportunities and scholarships to play in the Big Sky, Mountain West and Big West conferences, and for us, it was a big “who cares?”. None of the schools in those conferences were of any interest at all. The other one had opportunities in the West Coast Conference and middling to lower-end P5 programs, including a lower end program in the P12. Again, we weren’t moved.
Anybody who is recruited to play a sport at Williams is by definition a fine athlete. What kind of adult speaks to kids of that caliber that way? Williams had our state Gatorade POTY in women’s soccer. She could have gone to many other places, including D1 and 2.
I think he sounds hilarious. And apparently his style worked.
In football, there’s a big difference between D3 and even mid-major non-P5 D1 conferences. If we go by Massey rankings, 10th-ranked D3 is maybe equivalent to bottom 10% of D1. Top-ranked D3 in the bottom 1/3. Williams, at around 50th in D3 this season, is below the bottom D1 team.
That’s not to say they aren’t good athletes. It’s a different level though.
In women’s soccer, Hartford was around #200 in D1 last year. This year, transitioning to D3, they’re up at #1, according to Massey. Once you get down to a team like Williams, around #25 in D1, that’s the bottom 5-10% of D1, down in the 300s.
“kids of that caliber”? As a professor at a struggling regional university, I teach kids of very “low caliber” by the world’s superficial standards. They need kindness and support even more than more privileged kids, because of how the world has treated many of them so far.
Slate Magazine has an almost permanent whiff of schadenfreude in every article it publishes and woe to whomever or whatever happens to catch its glance. What sets the Wesleyan article apart, IMO, is the additional soupcon of betrayal lying just beneath almost as if the authors had looked around and realized that the most iconoclastic of the elite colleges had moved on, having discovered the benefits of exercise, the outdoors, and meeting other people.
Was there something confusing about my use of that phrase? I’m not quite sure I understand your response, but I’m happy to congratulate you on your good work. I, too, also advocate kindness and support, but I do so across the socio-economic spectrum; except I don’t extend that courtesy to people who demean the efforts of others based on their relative abilities.
Agree to disagree about how funny this guy seems.
I understand the various levels of play, and that is generally how I peg it too: high end D3 can compete mostly with the low end of D1. The contrast varies by sport, of course, but the contrast remains. Football tends to be is where it is most pronounced, and a basketball matchup of a P5 school with a NESCAC school would get out of hand in a hurry. It gets less ridiculous from there, IMHO.
None of this is a reason is go on blast about D3 being the bottom of the barrel when you’re actually coaching D3 kids. So the guy played football at Boston University and had a cup of coffee for one season in the NFL back when the general level of athleticism in the league was a fraction of what it is today. I’m a first degree relative of people who’ve played sport at a much higher level, and we don’t carry ourselves that way.
I think your use of the phase was steeped in a “how dare he!” attitude towards the former Williams coach. And you reinforced that by stating that you would have quit the team on the spot had you been talked to that way.
The coach himself was quoted in the article saying “All of these kids were here because they excelled before they got to Williams, and I didn’t want them to settle for their prior success,” so he clearly recognized their “caliber”. He just had more of a tough-love approach. It sounds like it worked.
Sorry, I like your posts, but that’s a stretch. That’s just somebody looking for something about which to complain. What? My coach starts my day by reminding me that I’m playing at the lowest level possible, and if I have a problem with that I’m a spoiled brat or entitled? Is that the gist? If so, again, agree to disagree. I’d be bitterly disappointed to hear a coach speak to one of my children that way, and we are not entitled people just to clear the air on that point.
I’ll say it again: a kid who has the academic and athletic chops to find themselves on a Williams varsity team is a kid who has achieved at a high level in two rather competitive areas of life and is deserving of better than having a loud mouth like that speak to them that way. And can we please stop assuming that anyone who fits that description is “privileged”? Note, there is nothing in that (my) statement that suggests or implies even directionally that others are not deserving of the same respect. If, e.g., the guy were coaching at a far far less selective school and he told his kids to keep their grades up because “this is the lowest level of academics there is; if you can’t cut the grades here you can’t cut them anywhere,” I’d say the same thing: come up with a better motivational speech dummy. Whalen, who I know, coached under this guy for years, and himself was a very successful head coach at Williams b4 Wesleyan called him back home. I doubt he would ever use that approach.
Anyway, let’s not get too sidetracked here. I’m aware that there is a variety of tolerance out there for “coach speak,” and I’m firmly on the side of treating athletes like they’re normal human beings even when you’re getting on their ***es.
And the general level of athleticism in D3 football was a fraction of what it is today too. What is your point in running down the coach’s experiences and quals? Seems like you are doing the same thing you are complaining about him doing.
I guess you can dismiss him by saying “so the guy played football at BU”. More accurately, you could have said “At Boston University he was an All-America defensive back and was captain of the football and track and field teams.” (Wikipedia). Who’s trying to diminish somebody else’s athletic accomplishments here?
There’s no evidence in the article that the coach mistreated his athletes or that a significant number quit the first time hearing his shocking statements. And it sounds like his motivational techniques were effective. The very first line of the article says “No one has ever said as many negative things about so many great young men and women and been as beloved as Dick Farley.” Where do you think that belovedness came from?
Easy - pointing out that this guy, who is demeaning the level of play in which his players participated, was hardly anything great in his playing days. Otherwise, he’s not at BU. Imagine, “Hey Farley! You’re only here because you weren’t good enough to play at BC or at a real Division 1 program, and you sure as hell aren’t smart enough to play at Harvard!” I mean, what a crappy way to motivate an athlete.
Consider a contrast, if you will, in D. Sanders, one of the most gifted athletes to ever lace up a pair of cleats with a massive career, and yet he didn’t “this isn’t P5 or Florida State” his players with shame. He did the opposite: he built them up and he built up HBC. He supported and built on the platform and the competitive landscape on which he was coaching for the benefit of his players. Imagine he goes in to a place like J State and spends his time belittling the fact that HCBs can’t play on the same field as Florida State. Instead, he told his players they were good enough to shoot for the NFL and he encouraged pride in the school for which they were playing. This guy was a relative nobody compared to a guy like Sanders.
Sure, technically I’m doing the same thing. But the contexts are different. I’m being critical of him and in doing so pointing out that he wasn’t exactly really all that big-time himself.
Yeah, but I didn’t want to for obvious reasons.
Listen, I’m not trying to get the guy fired or have his plaque removed, and I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings here. I read that he said what he said, and to me it’s sounds like an *** hole thing to say. I don’t know the guy or his whole story. Maybe he said it tongue-in-cheek. IDK. Maybe I should have done more research. But it’s not important enough to me. He may be the best person who ever coached in the college ranks, and I’d still say, “come up with a better line coach.” I just think it’s insulting and demeaning. What more can I say?
Deion Sanders did that to build up Deion Sanders. It worked, and he jumped ship as quickly as he could, just like he’ll leave CU for a better offer.
And of course, he also kicked a bunch of scholarship athletes off of the CU team when he arrived, and insulted them in the process.
Deion Sanders described the team he inherited at Colorado as a “mess” that was rife with “junk” and “foolishness,” prompting him to “get rid” of it to the point where he now only has about 10 scholarship players returning from last year’s team out of a roster of 85.
Anyway, if we want to get into full-on abusive coaching and insulting of college athletes, here’s a classic Bobby Knight rant (RIP):
Who cares? He did it right, and that’s my only point. Also, the fact that it worked is arguably evidence that his was the better way.
Yeah, he did. He set expectations and those who couldn’t or, more likely, wouldn’t live up to them, were shown the door. The fact that they’ve won 4 games and have been competitive in several others, during what has been the best season the conference has seen in 20+ years, is evidence it needed to happen. Last year’s CU team is easily winless this season.
But what he didn’t do is come in and say, “this is Colorado. this place and this program suck hard and if you can’t play here you can’t play anywhere.” He didn’t make his players listen to a message that could only be interpreted as hopeless. “Oh well, this is D3, super crappy low level sports. If I can’t play here I must be awful.” Different messages, or at least I’d take them that way.
Also, P5 football? It’s a business. A big business. Much, much more room for a “bottom line” view of the world than coaching in the NESCAC. And still, Sanders didn’t tell anyone “you basically are playing the crappiest competition there is. If you can’t win in this conference, you must really suck bad.”
Yeah, Bobby Knight was a world class *** hole, but he was coaching Big 10 basketball. Like with Sanders, more room for that.