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Re: Humboldt State Football Entering Final Season
Great info, thanks, Brandon. Some schools could make a jump -- Carroll, for example -- others would struggle. I'm not against NAIA and actually enjoyed NAIA athletics when I was in college. The old Columbia Football Association in the Northwest had all these privates and publics mixed together for football and it worked well with WOU making a 25-mile road trip to Linfield, a 15-mile road trip to Willamette, an hour trip to Lewis & Clark, etc.; and the Washington schools weren't that far.
CWU and WOU started getting better in the mid-80's or so, bigger players, and so forth, especially CWU. The drubbings against Whitworth, Lewis & Clark, Puget Sound, were getting big and lopsided and the privates wanted out. Traditional power Linfield held their own against everyone, but they align themselves with their private school neighbors. The term "like-minded institution" became popular, as if WOU, SOU, and EOU, didn't belong on the same field as the private schools, and in turn there's this underlying thought that the students at the state colleges weren't as smart or elite as the private school kids. The private schools took their ball and went home, obliterating the Columbia Football Association. Today, I'm not sure that was a good thing, substituting Linfield for Carson-Newman or in Linfield's case, Mary Hardin-Baylor on the schedule.
WOU went NAIA for awhile and looked at the options. They wanted to follow what CWU and WWU were doing and at the time, Chico and Hayward had football programs, and UC Davis was still D2. The league looked stable, then Chico and Hayward dropped, enormous UC Davis rightfully joined D-1, and D2 schools were left scrambling. WWU's move to drop football just made things worse, and now Humboldt's crushing decision is equally foolish, IMO. Things would be easier if EOU and SOU went D2 and California State University schools had football, but this is the world we live in.
Originally posted by Brandon
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CWU and WOU started getting better in the mid-80's or so, bigger players, and so forth, especially CWU. The drubbings against Whitworth, Lewis & Clark, Puget Sound, were getting big and lopsided and the privates wanted out. Traditional power Linfield held their own against everyone, but they align themselves with their private school neighbors. The term "like-minded institution" became popular, as if WOU, SOU, and EOU, didn't belong on the same field as the private schools, and in turn there's this underlying thought that the students at the state colleges weren't as smart or elite as the private school kids. The private schools took their ball and went home, obliterating the Columbia Football Association. Today, I'm not sure that was a good thing, substituting Linfield for Carson-Newman or in Linfield's case, Mary Hardin-Baylor on the schedule.
WOU went NAIA for awhile and looked at the options. They wanted to follow what CWU and WWU were doing and at the time, Chico and Hayward had football programs, and UC Davis was still D2. The league looked stable, then Chico and Hayward dropped, enormous UC Davis rightfully joined D-1, and D2 schools were left scrambling. WWU's move to drop football just made things worse, and now Humboldt's crushing decision is equally foolish, IMO. Things would be easier if EOU and SOU went D2 and California State University schools had football, but this is the world we live in.
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