Santa Clara has a good number of schools right next door they can play against in a conference. Utah Valley doesn't when their nearest DI-AA trip for a conference would likely be Idaho (and it's up in the upper peninsula of Idaho ). You're completely ignoring geography here and the costs of travel for what are club sports teams that receive no financial support from their universities, which is the case for 99.9% of them.
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Doesnt seem to hamper BYU nor Utah. They clearly do not belong in d2 and I think it ends up screwing true d2 teas out of title shots. Whats to be done?

Duke can't and already dropped down to Division II. Wake had a good season.

The reason ECU is not in the ACRL is because they're not in the ACC. The reason they're not in the ACC is because it already has 4 North Carolina schools and the arrogance of the administrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University at Raleigh and powerful people connected to the two because they don't want the public to perceive East Carolina University to be their equal. (Or why the University of Virginia in their own snobbery never wanted to be in the same athletics conference as Virginia Tech. The reason Virginia Tech is now in the ACC is the governor of Virginia forced the chancellor of the University of Virginia at the time to only vote for an expansion if VT was brought in.)

Why should any of this have anything to deal with a bunch of college kids playing club-level rugby when said colleges have never paid for anything? I have no clue. No one's ever been able to explain that to me.

If you're going to complain about a school being in DII when they shouldn't, complain about Lindenwood. They actually have a varsity program.

I dont get why people want Salisbury to move up. They clearly are a d2 school size wise. Yes the are perennial national contenders but why force them up because they have their bussiness in order? I do have problems with UVU, ECU, Long Beach State, Boston University etc playing d2. The travel thing is a non-starter for me as their are plenty of teams that have it just as hard travel wise but have learned to adapt.

Why would being Varsity not make them a good fit for d2? They are at 8k student population perfect size for d2, North Florida State played for the NSCRO final with 16k student population. I think every team should aspire to be varsity. What is your suggestion in regard to sussing out the d1 d2 thing?

Is this a serious question?

Absolutly. Why would having the support of ones university not make them a fit in d2? Cal Maritime has 800 students and is varsity, are you suggesting they play d1 to? All colleges should aspire to varsity and once you make it doesnt mean you should have to go up against Cal and the like just because you are.


Also you didnt answer the previous question...how would you suss out d1, d2,d3?

That's the entire basis of the NCAA.

I'm really just beside myself at this point.

Answer this question for me, consider the following two teams:

School A: 15 walk-ons picked from a school with an enrollment of 20000, just luck of a draw, no help with admissions or anything given to potentially good rugby players that wanted to come; they practice twice a week although some are more committed than others

School B: 14 varsity players and 1 walk-on that came into the school with an enrollment of 2500 because they were given partial scholarships and they were good enough coming in compared to their peers in high school that they merit a partial scholarship, they practice every day

Who is going to win?

(School A is what Huesos once called Austin Fratboys RFC.)


Duke is an incredibly successful basketball program. According to your logic here though, since they are an incredibly small school compared to most public schools, they should not be anywhere near as good as they are. A school like Utah Valley because they are about five times as large as Duke University should destroy Duke in basketball, that is your logic.

chicharino, why do you think Life won the College 7s championship in November or the CRC qualifer in Las Vegas in February? They beat out much bigger schools than them like Utah for example. Utah under your logic should absolutely dismantle Life. (And Life are probably one of the 4 best college teams in the country!)

Agree with Ryan here re: varsity teams although it should be pointed out that not all varsity programs offer schollies. Cal doesn't.

You make a good argument with some good points. USAR is trying to break it down along NCAA lines but so far doing a pretty poor job looking at d2 and throwing JC's in the mix now to. What is our way forward to get better parity in these divisions?

There in lies the rub. Cal Maritime is varsity to but with a 99% walk on rate at a 800 student university. Im sure there are other examples of small college varsity teams but I just point this out in that Flying Ryans logic doesnt work in all cases either.

When did Cal Maritime go varsity?

2001 or so.

They're so small I had never heard of them before I got into rugby and I grew up an hour from their campus.

They have a great thing going now. Varsity and a brand new all weather pitch along with a former Eagle 7's (1 cap) as a coach. Yearly contenders in d2 but now with USAR changing the playoff format/ schedule for d2 they decided to play NSCRO.

That's good to hear. Who are the other varsity programs around the country?

Cal
Davenport
Lindenwood
Wheeling Jesuit (WV)
Southern Vermont

Any I'm missing?

Isn't there a case that rugby can grow best in the smaller colleges? With fewer scholarships handed out to other sports there is a player pool and its easier to get noticed rather than getting drowned out in a huge campus

There is, but if the goal is mainstream recognition, a Final Four of Life, Davenport, Lindenwood and Wheeling Jesuit is going to have people say "WTF", not "cool"? Even just getting the college finals on TV, a BYU/Cal championship game is much more attractive to ESPN than a Life/St Mary's championship game. Plus, many decent high school players want to go to bigger schools because those schools offer a better quality of life when not playing rugby.

Who will be in Philly ?
Who will be in Utah ?

Goe, you must be going to Utah since you are just a State away ?
Ryan, you going to Philly ?

I'll be in Sacramento the weekend of the college finals. I'll be at the stadium in Glendale for the D1 and D2 finals though.

D1 and D2 club right ?

All college in Sandy ?

Correct.

Welcome to college ice hockey, where you have a handful of name programs sprinked amongst a bunch of smaller lesser-name universities in the northeast and upper Midwest. And then most of the big name schools have hockey as a club sport where they don't register on the radar and are far below the varsity schools' skill level.

Here's the 16 schools in the men's hockey NCAA playoffs this year: Union, Miami of Ohio, Massachusetts-Lowell, Michigan State, Boston College, Minnesota-Duluth, Maine, Air Force, Michigan, Ferris State, Denver, Cornell, North Dakota, Minnesota, Boston University, Western Michigan

4 BCS schools, 3 other Division I-A schools, I think 3 Division I-AA schools, and the remaining 6 if I counted right are Division II or Division III. Union are a Division III school in other sports with 2200 students and made the Frozen Four this past year.



Taking the assumption the CPD disappears next year:

-if you have a varsity program, you're in the top division unless you can make a damn good argument. Going back to college ice hockey, never should an ACHA (club hockey) team beat a NCAA Division I team (varsity hockey). The best an ACHA team can do is occasionally one will beat a NCAA Division III team (the worst varsity programs). Varsity by definition is hugely superior in talent and organization to a club team. That's one reason why Cal, a big school with varsity rugby, has won 26 of the 32 national championships. Our top division of rugby in this country should consist of our best teams playing as much as possible against one another in order to improve rugby talent development. A Cal player learns a lot more playing a tight game vs. Utah than blowing out Stanford.

-I'd allow anyone that wants to be in Division I to be in Division I

-there are certain schools that should not be below a certain level, if fairness of competition should rear its head over a couple years like a school routinely winning every game in the playoffs by 50 points, then at least work out a good solution for everyone involved if the school shows they're clearly above that level; I wouldn't base it on school size, but instead level of competition

-do the best to not leave any "orphans" out there without conferences in said structure, since you can't force these schools to do anything at least help out the teams on scheduling and provide them playoff opportunity pathways, maybe by having regional qualifiers although that's looking far down the road



No, probably going to the Indy 500 and a few other races the weekend before.

I don't really see the comparisons with hockey, it has geographic limitations and at several of those schools (Maine, ND, Duluth), the students have grown up with hockey and the school's hockey program as a big part of their life.

it's popular at some places (as goey points out, rugby is big in NorCal and Utah and sucks most other places) and a lot of places it's not and it very heavily doesn't fit into the current college sports paradigm well at all; that's rugby in a nutshell

would you prefer if I said instead of rugby being a poor man's hockey it was a poor man's lacrosse? although rugby fits hockey more than it does lacrosse IMO

I don't follow lacrosse but I was under the impression some of the historically strong small schools have faded as the schools with better resources take it more seriously. I watched a few minutes of the OSU-Michigan game last month, decent crowd at the Big House and it's a new varsity sport there. And UM won iirc.

well then it's not like rugby then because the likes of Lindenwood beat the University of Missouri by 40 and Life can put up 98 on Notre Dame

although looking at Michigan's schedule they went 1-12, losing to luminaries like Saint Joseph's, Towson, Detroit, Loyola of Maryland, Bellarmine, Mount St. Mary's, and Delaware http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-lacros/ ... sched.html none of these are big football schools, which again goes back to rugby, you can put big schools in a sport up on a pedestal, it doesn't necessarily mean they're worth a shit in them, you need more than a name to succeed in anything, you need a culture to succeed along with infrastructure and coaching and scouting and that can't be simply created with a snap of the fingers, the "culture" is why Ohio State is huge in football and Indiana in contrast is a bottom feeder in the Big 10 every year

you've criticized University of Texas Rugby in the past for this very reason of they don't deserve what they get based on their results

Emailed you the scouting report I pulled together when we played them at Northeast championships.

Michigan and Ohio State are not elite lacrosse programs. Not bad teams though. Johns Hopkins is a small school whose other teams play D3 but for lax they are D1 elite. Any season not winning it all is a unsuccessful season. Hopkins has massive money behind its lax program.

Got it. Thanks! Of all the brackets we have the best one to be in....if there is such a thing. Playing Mystic river first and then the winner of PAC/Metropolis on the Sunday - win both and we'll be in Glendale.

She seems level headed and down to earth

Have fun playing with a guy named Amir against Bermuda saffer. He can run around an entire team by himself.

and if only you knew the referee of that particular match....

To add to the list, it turns out that Cal Maritime's counterpart in New York, SUNY Maritime College has men's rugby as a varsity sport. It is surprising then that they have not lifted their level of play up from Division III. It would be nice to see some sort of annual "Maritime Cup" match against Cal Maritime.

I came across an interesting bit of info on this topic. Turns out both US Army and Air Force maintain a special "World Class Athlete Program" which allows military athletes who are members of the Olympic Team to train pretty much full time. Most of the participants so far seem to be from individual sports, like wrestling, biathlon or track, but athletes in team sports are also eligible. If we could get a couple of rugby sevens players into this program they could potentially train in Chula Vista without taking up USA Rugby contracts.
http://www.thearmywcap.com/

Southern Vermont - I think this program got cancelled. I cannot see it on their Athletics website.


Principia College - NCAA Division 3
Lost to Lindenwood 105-15(H) and 97-3(A). Guess varsity is not everything.
Franciscan University of Steubenville - NCAA Division 3
3rd in 2012 NSCRO National Division III
Palmer College of Chiropractic - Not 100% sure if they are varsity but they are in the mens D1 Club last 16.

Informative snapshot on varsity rugby as of last year: http://scholarshipstats.com/rugby.html

Why does Cal have 66 players again?

Although BYU should win, I'd find it amusing if Life wins the CPD and Davenport wins Division I-AA that the two highest levels of college rugby in this country would be won by NAIA schools.

By Merlins beard.. Caitlin is a very attractive lady.