The Powers That Be

Over the past few years, D3football.com has ranked the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference as the best football conference in DIII. They mentioned the fact that the WIAC never shies away from scheduling powerful football programs to fill out its schedule. In fact, this season, I think the WIAC is the only conference in recent history to play the top four teams in the country as part of its non-conference schedule. These are the top four teams according to D3football.com.

1. Whitewater - La Crosse hosted the Warhawks in a non-conference game and lost 7-26.
2. Mount Union - Oshkosh hit the road in a losing effort against the Purple Raiders, in Alliance, 17-41.
3. St. Thomas - River Falls hosted the Tommies but lost 22-45.
4. Mary Harden-Baylor - La Crosse made the long road trip down to Texas and lost 20-27.

In addition to playing these purple monsters, the WIAC scheduled five teams from the NAIA, which offers up football scholarship to its athletes. Of course there's more to being the best DIII conference than just scheduling prominent teams. With being said, I wanted to analyze the foundation of the WIAC to see why its football programs are so competitive, even more so other programs around Division III. What does the WIAC have (or doesn't have) to offer that other conferences don't, and where does its success stem from? So, I started researching this topic by sending out emails to different personnel associated with WIAC football, asking why they thought the WIAC is so strong year after year.

In my opinion, it starts with having Whitewater at the top of your conference. The Warhawks have been to six consecutive Stagg Bowls, winning it three of the last four years. Also, Whitewater has the longest current winning streak in all of college football with 35 wins (regardless of division). Their last lost was dated back on December 20, 2008 (Stagg Bowl against Mount Union). It's safe to say Whitewater can match up against any other conference's number one team, and mostly likely be the favorite to win. However, what I think is the defining factor in what separates the WIAC from the rest of DIII is, in fact, the bottom of the conference. I'm willing to bet the bottom third of the WIAC will find a lot of success against other conference's lower-tiered programs. These games are rarely scheduled, because other football programs are apprehensive to the play any WIAC team, hence the conference playing a lot of top-ranked DIII and NAIA teams.

The Snowball Effect
The reputation of the WIAC as a powerful conference has been well established over the years. But I wanted to look at why that is, and how that came to be. I believe the number one reason is the lack of scholarship-offering football programs in the state of Wisconsin, which gives WIAC coaches more breathing room to recruit. Wisconsin (Madison) is the only football program which offers up scholarships to its football athletes in the state. So if you're looking to play college football in the state of Wisconsin and don't make the Badgers roster (walk-on or scholarship), there's only one place to look: Division III. Many Wisconsin resident high school athletes choose to stay in state for number of reasons. One being, they (and their families) want to take advantage of in-state tuition. Just about every year the cost for higher education has been steadily increasing. My dad once jokingly told me, "I can't imagine what the cost of college will be once your daughter hits 18." Frankly, I don't want even want to think about that right now, that's a-whole-nother blog post for another day. Secondly, most students enjoy the proximity of WIAC schools in relation to their home town. It's nice to go away for college and enjoy the freedom of living on your own, but at the same time it's nice to have a manageable trip back to see old friends and family once in a while for the holidays. Finally, if you come up short on getting offered a scholarship at Madison, the idea of being a big fish in a little pond gravitates athletes to the WIAC. This sounds much more enticing compared to taking your chances trying to walk-on at a DI school. Even if you do make the squad, odds are you won't play a snap in your four years. Or, you can do your student debt a favor, enroll in a WIAC program where you can possibly make much more of a name for yourself on the football field and still receive a degree from the University of Wisconsin system.

Of course there are other DIII football programs in Wisconsin that aren't associated with the WIAC....Ten schools in fact. These ten programs are spread out over three other conferences: Midwest Conference, Northern Athletics Conference, and the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin. The big difference between the WIAC and these three conference is that the WIAC is the only one where ALL of its schools are within the Wisconsin state boarder. The other conferences have schools that reside in Illinois and Iowa. So, why haven't these conferences enjoyed the fruits of Wisconsin having only one scholarship football team, like the WIAC has?  That's a question that has been wracking my brain for some time now. The only thing I can come up with is these schools haven't fully committed to improving its program like the WIAC has. One example of this is, check out the facilities around the WIAC. This conference has some very impressive stadiums, weight rooms and other athletic complexes (i.e. film rooms, training centers, etc.). This by itself is a huge recruiting tool when coaches can offer up state-of-the-art facilities to woo high schoolers. One other reason why the WIAC may have an advantage over other local DIII conference is that success breads success. Quality recruits come to the WIAC for one reason: to win. The more a team wins, the more that school gains name recognition, which leads to a higher quality of recruits. Then things just snowball from there. A perfect example is Whitewater. As soon as they started making annual trips to the Stagg Bowl in 2005, and playing games on ESPN, the more undecided high school (and some college transfer minded) recruits wanted to be a part of that experience....who could blame them?

The coaches in the WIAC, in my opinion, are under-appreciated. They should be getting majority of the credit, more so than the athletes, for a school's success. Even though it's easy for recruits to admire a program's trophy case, and as well as facilities, it still boils down to the coaching staff's ability to recruit and develop these players. As well as teaching them the X's and O's and keeping them focused each week. The success of a school's program relies squarely on the coach's shoulders, and it's up to them to get that "snowball" rolling to build off its success. A prime example of legendary WIAC coaching was La Crosse's own Roger Harring. From 1969 -1999 coach Harring acheivements include:

• 15 conference championships
• Seven-time WIAC Coach of the Year (the award came into existence in 1980)
• Three national championships ('85, '92 and '95) 
• All-time WIAC leader in wins (261-75-7) 
• 1995 AFCA National Coach of the Year
• Member of the College Football Hall of Fame

Other great coaches that made WIAC (formerly the WSUC) so special include Whitewater's Forrest Perkins ('56-84), Bob Berezowitz ('85-'06), Lance Leipold (07-present); Steven Point's John Miech ('88-present); River Falls' Mike Falrey ('70-'88), John O'Grady ('89-'10). On a side note, O'Grady is now an assistant at Oshkosh. I'm sure there are other coaches worth mentioning, but in an effort to keep this column short enough to keep everyone's attention span, I kept the list relatively small. Sorry for any omissions, but this list can probably go on and on.

Common Misconception: Size Doesn't Matter  

It's VERY easy to take a look at the WIAC's enrollment and say No sh*t they're good....look at the size of these schools!!! I've heard comments like this one many of times. Those people have to be reminded that this isn't high school. Coaches don't recruit within the student body, they recruit before they enroll (while they're still in high school). There's a big difference. Athletes come to the WIAC because of the great coaches and the winning traditions....not because the quantity of coeds. The fact is the size of the school doesn't equate to successful football (and athletic) programs. You may get a slight edge in the attrition process but there's way too many other significant variables that makes a football program successful. A perfect example, take Duke University in college basketball and Notre Dame in college football. Duke has under 8000 undergrads, while Notre Dame enrolls a little over 8000. To put that into perspective, both of those DI schools are comparable in enrollment to most WIAC schools. Each season those two programs have to play against other schools that have an enrollment two to three times the size of theirs. Given that "hurdle", both Duke and Notre Dame are two of the most storied programs in college basketball and college football. If size of the school mattered Duke and Notre Dame would be irrelevant in collegiate athletics. Besides, it's not like the WIAC is the only DIII conference to have enrollments over 5000. In fact, the schools belonging to the New Jersey Athletic Conference have almost identical enrollments as the WIAC. Yet a team from the NJAC hasn't been involved in Stagg Bowl discussions since the 90's, when Rowan made it there five times in seven years. They actually lost the Stagg Bowls regularly to a little private school from Alliance, Ohio that's a quarter its size. So why can't the NJAC share the success of the WIAC? Besides the reasons I stated in the first three to four paragraphs above, take a look at the sheer number of DIII schools out east. It must be a recruiting nightmare for DIII coaches out there. The football programs seem to be a stones-throw away form each other (not to mention all the DI and DII football programs to compete with). There are more DIII schools out east than Wisconsin cities named after an Indian tribe....and that's saying something. All anyone has to look at is the history books. The two most successful football programs in the history of DIII are St. Johns and Mount Union. Those two enrollments combined is only half of any most NJAC and WIAC schools. Whitewater had relatively the same size student population as far back as I can remember, but nobody was bringing up these arguments when the Warhawks couldn't finish above .500 during the late 90s through the early 2000s. As for the rest of the conference goes, from 1983 till 2004, only four times has a WIAC school made it out of the second round of the playoffs, with similar enrollments as they do now.

Another reason haters think the WIAC has a significant advantage is the whole public verses private school debate. Majority of DIII football programs stem from private schools, so when a public school starts to gain any notoriety many private-school fans just roll their and say something stupid like: Private schools' tuition is more expensive, and it's harder to get in, academically, than public schools. So this limits our recruiting because we can only recruit athletes who are good in football, have an outstanding academic standing and have to money to spend on a quality education. Where public schools can let just anyone in. I say, as long as Mount Union is, well, Mount Union, this is a moot point. In fact, Stevens Points head coach John Miech disagrees with this theory of public schools getting recruiting advantages based on academic standards and tuition. "Most private school kids get excellent AID packages. An out-of-state athlete pays $18,000 to go to Stevens Point, [compared to] $4,000 to go to St. Thomas," says Miech. "At UWSP, if a [high school] athlete has an 18 ACT, we cannot touch him. [However] private schools can get 14-15 ACT kids in, if they are good in athletics."

So if you want to look at why the WIAC is on top of the DIII football world, don't kid yourself and think it has anything to do with enrollment size or tuition costs. That assumption is just disrespectful to the time and effort the coaching staff and athletes put into the program each year. In fact, look no further than the coaches themselves and his stuff. They are the real driving force behind WIAC football, and they're why the WIAC is what it is today.