There but for the grace of Jim...

This used to be the Gaels' playground...

The news flew under the radar last week, but Iona disbanded its football program, effective immediately. It was a predictable demise precipitated by age-old—or at least decade-old—factors.

Iona doesn’t award football scholarships, which made it as relevant on the Division I-AA landscape as the newspaper in the dotcom world. Even more damaging to the Gaels was the collapse of MAAC football, which had 10 teams at its peak but which saw most of its member schools drop football earlier this decade. The MAAC was down to four teams last year, but Duquense left for the Northeast Conference, Marist bolted for the Pioneer Football League, which is the only non-scholarship I-AA conference in the land, and LaSalle disbanded its program.

Iona declined an invite to the PFL and found it nearly impossible to fill out a schedule or compete as an independent. The Gaels went 3-8, but recorded all three victories against Division II or Division III foes by a grand total of 13 points and were 0-7 against Division I-AA opponents.

A loss to Division III Wesley began a season-ending six-game losing streak in which the Gaels lost by more than 30 points three times lost by more than 40 points twice—including a 68-9 thrashing at the hands of Stony Brook. (So, if Stony Brook was 59 points better than Iona, then Hofstra would have beaten the Gaels 99-0) Iona’s closest game against an I-AA opponent was its last, a 23-7 loss to I-AA rookie Bryant.

Decisions like this make me glad I’m not a college president or athletic director. From a bottom line perspective, it’s tough to argue with the decision to dump the program. Even at the non-scholarship level, it was surely hemorrhaging money, and to make football relevant again, even in the Pioneer, Iona would have had to follow in the footsteps of Georgetown and infuse cash into upgrading the program and facilities. Iona’s Mazzella Field, which had the lowest seating capacity of any Division I or I-AA stadium, looked like a high school field.

And all that expense for…what, exactly? As we’ve all learned over the past 15 years, even an I-AA program that consistently wins is little more than a curiosity to the general public. If you’re not competing for a BCS berth, nobody cares except a tiny fraction of the alums. And the last game at Iona drew 483 fans. That’s not a misprint.

But that tiny fraction is passionate about the sport. This was the 31st season of football at Iona, which began as a Division III program in 1978 and made an NCAA-mandated move to I-AA in 1991. That’s thousands of alums who donned the shoulder pads and are now quite sore at the alma mater. And there are surely hundreds, if not thousands, of fans who took pride in rooting for a football team at a basketball school and continued to follow the team well beyond graduation. They’re surely not happy today.

The demise of Iona football got me thinking about Flying Dutchmen football and what could have been had Hofstra not upgraded the program at the behest of a passionate and rather powerful alum—school president and former football player James Shuart.

Like Iona, Hofstra jumped from D-III to I-AA in 1991. But unlike Iona, which had a natural home for all its sports in the MAAC, Hofstra had to make the move to I-AA during a turbulent time for the athletic department. The East Coast Conference was in its final season and down to just seven teams in 1991-92, and all four football-playing schools (Buffalo, Central Connecticut and Towson State were the others) were independents making the same transition as Hofstra.

Fortunately for Hofstra, being an independent in the early ‘90s wasn’t the scarlet letter it is today. According to the 1994 football media guide, 17 of the 116 I-AA teams were independents. (Thanks to Jim Sheehan for including the list, no doubt realizing how handy it would be for me 14 years later) This year, it was six out of 125.

The scheduling challenges remained, though, and played a huge role in Hofstra missing the playoffs following a breakout 8-1-1 season in 1994. “Maybe it would be easier if we were in the Yankee [Conference],” Joe Gardi told Newsday in a story published Nov. 29, 1994.

Shuart traveled to the NCAA Convention in January 1995 to personally pitch Hofstra’s candidacy to the Yankee Conference. But despite Shuart’s enthusiasm, the seemingly natural fit, Hofstra’s continued success—the Dutchmen proved to be no fluke by going 10-2 and earning a playoff berth in 1995, the first of four postseason appearances it would make in a six-year span—and the addition of scholarships, getting into the Yankee took so long that it was called the Atlantic 10 when it finally accepted Hofstra for the 2001 season.

And by that time, being in a conference was a necessity, not a luxury. The 17 independents from 1994 had either upgraded to Division I, landed in a I-AA conference or disbanded the program by the start of the 2001 season. (Thanks to this site was an invaluable resource in figuring out where everyone went between 1994 and now)

So what would have happened if Shuart wasn’t the program’s biggest booster? Would Hofstra football have beaten Iona to the where-are-they-now file?

Probably not. Even back at the beginning of the I-AA days, Hofstra football appeared too big to fail (you know, like America’s banks). Hofstra Stadium was one of the better facilities in I-AA and the multi-million dollar Margiotta Hall opened in 1992. And football at Hofstra began in 1937, which makes it almost as old as the school itself.

Even without Shuart’s encouragement, Hofstra probably would have ended up moving into the Atlantic 10 for football, since the A-10 housed all the football-playing CAA schools.

There’s no doubt, though, that Hofstra made the move into the upper echelon of I-AA programs at the right time, because it’d never happen today. Shuart, who retired in 2001, is merely a big fan of the program and the school is now run by a president and athletic director whose passion for the sport is directly tied to the bottom line…which is ugly and getting worse.

Even if the program is a giant money loser, there’s too much invested in and around Shuart Stadium to pull the plug. It doesn’t make much sense for the stadium to merely host graduations, Hofstra lacrosse games and the Long Island high school football championships.

It will be interesting, though, to see what happens when the fledgling programs at Old Dominion and Georgia State complete their transition periods and join the CAA in 2011 and 2012, respectively. A 14-team conference is just about unmanageable. Will Hofstra take one for the CAA by volunteering to downgrade the program to the partial or non-scholarship level? Getting rid of scholarships and competing in the Pioneer would surely save the school huge chunks of change, even accounting for the travel expenses in the coast-to-coast league.

Such a decision would be a disappointing one, but it would sure beat the alternative. Just ask fans of Iona football.

(PS: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

We knew UConn way back when

So let’s say you’re talking to a Hofstra fan (it’s true, Loyal Non-Alumni Readers, there’s more than one) and you’re unsure of his (or her) authenticity. He/she might just be jumping on the bandwagon (you have to work with me here, assuming Hofstra has front-running fans) and you want to test his/her acumen.

Bring up the football team’s 2008 season opener against UConn. “Yup,” you say. “That’s the same school Hofstra beat 56-17 nine years ago.”

If the fan stares at you like you just said you had your wedding catered by Lackmann Food Services…he/she might be a front-runner. Or, more likely, a freshman who was nine years old in 1999.

It’s true: Hofstra went 2-2 against UConn from 1996-1999. And while I’d like to tell you UConn moved to I-A to avoid any more thrashings by the Flying Dutchmen, the truth is UConn was well into a decade-long plan to move to I-A by the time the series concluded.

UConn began making the transition in 2000 and has already won two bowl games and shared one Big East title. This isn’t the first time the Huskies have left their one-time peer in the dust: In the ‘70s, Hofstra and UConn were generally on the same level in hoops—Hofstra in the East Coast Conference, UConn in the Yankee Conference, where the Huskies’ rivals included future North Atlantic Conference/America East members such as Vermont and New Hampshire.

The paths of the Huskies and Flying Dutchmen intersected for the first—and so far only—time at the 1976 NCAA Tournament, where UConn edged Hofstra, 80-78, in overtime at the Providence Civic Center.

But UConn became a charter member of the Big East in 1979. The Huskies won the NIT in 1988, reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament in 1990 and finally won the whole damn thing in 1999. Hofstra, meanwhile, remained in the ECC even as long-time rivals defected and was the last one to shut out the lights in 1994. And some of us still get a charge out of an invite to the NIT.

The amazing thing is nobody ever watched UConn hoops and football and figured they were destined for bigger and better things, a la Marshall in football. Like Hofstra, UConn played at endearingly outdated facilities. Memorial Stadium looked like a glorified high school filed while the Field House was so rickety it made the PFC look like MSG.

And for most of the ‘80s, UConn was synonymous with the near-miss—or worse. I swear the Huskies had a chance to make the I-AA playoffs with a win in their final game of the season every year…and fell short every time. They shared the Yankee Conference title four times between 1982 and 1989 yet didn’t reach the tournament until they made their lone appearance in 1998.

In basketball, the Huskies disappointed the masses with three straight NIT bids from 1979-1981—I remember listening to the 1981 OT loss to Dayton with my dad—and had five straight losing seasons, the last of which occurred during Jim Calhoun’s first season.

This shouldn’t be construed as dissatisfaction with where Hofstra is and will almost surely remain. It’s impossible to expect Hofstra to occupy the same level as UConn. Hofstra competes for attention with nine professional sports teams and is forever trying to win over a transient and often apathetic student body. This makes it challenging—but ultimately more rewarding—to be a fan. You know you’re surrounded by people who have made the same investment as you.

Connecticut has no major professional sports team (thanks to this piece of garbage), so UConn’s on center stage year-round. And the front-runner I described in jest up above exists on every street corner in Connecticut. (Except this guy…he’s as hardcore a fan as there is)

Plus, it’s not easy to commute to Storrs, out in the middle of nowhere, and once you’re there, you may as well get wrapped up in the athletic program because there’s nothing else to do except drink beer and tip cows. (I can say that, because I’m from Connecticut. But if the Icepick tried it, there’d be hell to pay)

I occasionally wonder what might have been if Hofstra outlasted UConn in that 1976 and made the second round (which, back then, was the Sweet Sixteen). And what happens if the Flying Dutchmen win the next game—or, gulp, the one after that to advance to the Final Four? Would Hofstra have become a Big East power, too, in multiple sports?

Probably not. We’d get to say our alma mater made the Sweet Sixteen (or Elite Eight or Final Four) once. But nothing else would be different—as we learned Thursday night. And that’s fine by me.

***

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by during this first week of Defiantly Dutch. It’s still a work in progress here as I try to figure out this blogging thing, but I hope you’re having as much fun as I am thus far. Enjoy the Labor Day weekend and come by again starting Tuesday for more chattering about Hofstra sports and whatever else pops to my mind.