When the NESCAC was founded, it was dedicated to the concept of doing things differently. For decades, it was the conference that wasn't, with no central office, no conference championships and complete autonomy for its member schools.
The NESCAC was something different, and that was what made it special. Even after the self-imposed ban on NCAA participation was lifted in 1993, the NESCAC still upheld the Right Way to do collegiate athletics.
Things aren't so simple anymore.
Now, our teams are penalized for being in the toughest Division III conference in the country, and the new centralized conference has made competition within the league that much more charged, both negatives that do not have corresponding positives.
For the former point, the best support continues to come from women's lacrosse, a sport in which the nine toughest schedules in all of Division III belong to NESCAC teams.
In the old days of the NESCAC, before there was a mandate to play every other team in the league and before there was a conference tournament, as many as four teams in the conference could receive bids to the NCAA Tournament.
Because the NESCAC has worked so feverishly over the last three years to become just like many other conferences, it has become just that. This year, a maximum of two NESCAC women's lacrosse teams can go to the Big Dance, and next year, that number will fall to one. Given that three of the top four teams in the nation in last week's poll are NESCAC members, it seems manifestly unfair.
To this argument, however, the presidents have traditionally responded that it is all part of the plan to deemphasize athletics in a conference dedicated to maintaining the balance between sports and studies, between classrooms and championships.
I used to actually believe that.
Any coach, at any school, in any sport in the NESCAC would tell you that this year has not been less competitive than last year, or the year before. More games, more pressure, more stress, yet all without the benefits, since far fewer teams are going to NCAA Tournaments now.
At a fundamental level, this has happened because the NESCAC has abandoned its founding principles. Now, it makes teams from Amherst play more games in Maine than in Western Massachusetts. Now, it makes every conference game absolutely critical, since a team's chances for an NCAA bid depend wholly on their ability to do well in the NESCAC Tournament, which is set up to heavily favor the top seeds. Now, the strength of the conference is detrimental, since teams that would easily win conference championships anywhere else find themselves, as with women's lacrosse, in the middle of the pack in a conference of nationally-elite teams.
In 1997-1998, well over 50 teams from the conference went to NCAA Tournaments. So far this year, that number has fallen to 12, pending the four spring tournaments. At the same time, the average NESCAC soccer, field hockey and lacrosse team played two or three more games than usual this year, thanks to the new schedule.
This is not a positive step.
Athletics in the NESCAC, which used to be something truly special, have become anything but. With the larger question of the role of athletics at Amherst looming in the background, it is certainly in everyone's interest for us to find the balance between a successful athletic program and our academic program.
The only problem is that, with the NESCAC moving in the direction that it seems to be, that balance is going to be harder to strike, and the debate will become that much more polarized. This is not what athletics in the NESCAC were supposed to be about, and this is certainly not what athletics at a school like Amherst are about.
If the NESCAC does not change the way it does things, then we should just leave, and take Williams (and Middlebury, if they're nice) with us. It just doesn't make sense for us to continue to be part of something that so negatively impacts our athletics, our athletes and our school.
And, to tie up some loose ends, we love Williams because you could switch the student bodies overnight and barely notice. The Yankees suck just because. My favorite game at Amherst was the women's soccer team's 3-2 triple-overtime win in the 1997 NCAA Regional Semifinals and "Three Hits" was the only song by the Indigo Girls that had a title that could conceivably be confused for a sports term.
Go Jeffs.