There was a time when NESCAC teams played schedules with few mid-week games, even fewer of those on the road, when game/class conflicts arose only once or twice a season and when every effort was made to move games to dates and times when they would interfere the least with coursework.
There was a time when NESCAC teams dominated Division III nationally, sending at least one team-sometimes two-to NCAA Final Fours in almost every sport. There was even a time when two NESCAC teams met in NCAA title games twice in six days, a feat not accomplished by another Division III conference ever before or since.
That amazing six-day stretch came in May of 1999, capping a year in which three NESCAC schools finished amongst the top four athletic programs in the country-and it has all gone straight downhill from there.
Now, the new NESCAC Tournaments add two to three games to the schedules of seven teams in the league. They condense the regular season by a week. They force the league's elite teams to battle through a tournament in one of the strongest conferences in the nation while other national powers cruise through their own conference championships. The NESCAC is destroying its national prominence, and, even worse, everything that made it unparalleled in collegiate athletics.
This year, the men's and women's soccer and field hockey teams played two more regular season mid-week games than in previous years. Combine that with the early-afternoon Tuesday games the teams played in the NESCAC Tournament and you get four more days of missed classes than in previous years.
Second, whereas teams like the Williams men's soccer team-undefeated during the regular season-used to enjoy a high seeding based solely on their first 14 games, now they have the extra burden of surviving a conference tournament. In Williams' case, they didn't, dropping a 1-0 decision to Middlebury College in Sunday's title game.
Williams still received a bid to NCAAs, but they enter the tournament on the road instead of at home, and tired and weary after two games last weekend. Not that we should not take pleasure from the pitfalls of a Williams team, but it signifies a very dangerous trend for our own dominant teams.
After all, the same situation happened to the top NESCAC field hockey and soccer teams. Dominant during the regular season, each suffered in the NCAA Tournament, after at least two extra games in the conference tournament. For the first time since the NESCAC lifted its ban on NCAA participation in 1993, it's possible that no NESCAC fall teams could be in Final Fours.
More important than national recognition, however, is that the NESCAC Tournaments have signified a definitive step towards the rest of the nation-and away from the uniqueness that, for so long, made it the amazing body that it was. Now, teams like Amherst's women's soccer team play schedules with 18 games in them-a school record-without even going to NCAAs. Our men's and women's soccer and field hockey teams will play more games combined this year than those three teams ever played before, and all in the same amount of time as in past campaigns. I've never been a huge proponent of attempts to minimize time out of class spent playing sports, but this is getting ridiculous.
Here we see a fundamental dichotomy between the intent of the NESCAC Tournaments and the practice. When the policy changes creating the 12 new championships were voted into effect in April of 1998, the idea was to begin a slow de-emphasis of the 11 schools' athletic programs. I was against it then and I continue to be today.
The problem is that the exact opposite has happened, which I am opposed to. The NESCAC has weakened itself by coming down to the level of other conferences. By adding conference tournaments, we lose our individual autonomy and weaken the chances of our teams advancing into NCAA Tournaments. We also increase the amount of time teams are staying in season, missing class, making up work, and otherwise disenchanting a faculty already predisposed against athletic programs.
The solution is painlessly simple-either the NESCAC needs to do away with the failed experiment of conference tournaments before this effect spreads, or perhaps it is time for Amherst to seriously consider something that I have been loathe to suggest in the past-doing away with a conference that is no longer acting in our best interests.