Lehigh Football Nation

No, that wasn't the actual headline from the New York Times on their series on Title IX. The spashy article from Katie Thomas the Times , with the real title " College Teams, Relying on Deception, Undermine Gender Equity ", has this as a teaser: "To produce an appearance of gender equity, colleges have given roster spots to unqualified players, counted male practice players as women and trimmed men’s rosters." And as a corrolary article, the Times also included a piece by Marjorie Connelly , with another splashy headline: " Few Americans Familiar With Title IX, Though Most Approve of It ". As seems to happen way too often, their one-sided series of articles on the gender-equity law seems to - yes - rely on deception, and key omissions, to make its "case". (more)

No, seriously, could anyone really blame the Dayton Flyer for looking this smug? After all, as was reported by me on College Sporting News, Dayton's Pioneer Football League (or PFL for short) is now the one-stop shop for non-scholarship football. Their commissioner, Ms. Patty Viverito, has gladly taken the leadership for Division I non-scholarship football coast-to-coast, and has shown more than half a dozen other Division I schools (that don't currently have football) the benefits of playing at that level. Here in the East, the message is clear for those schools in the MAAC who in 2008 have found themselves without a conference (Marist, Iona, and LaSalle): Step up to our vision of non-scholarship football, be willing to travel, and compete to win, and we'd be happy to have you. From my perspective, it looks to me like none of the three programs are planning to drop football altogether. LaSalle has just finished $2.5 million in football stadium improvements, and Marist h...

The one thing you can say for certain about the demise of St. Peter's football is that it came at the absolute worse possible time. It came at a time when FCS powers were meeting in Chicago, IL to discuss the future on non-scholarship football in Division I. I'm guessing that the demise of a non-scholarship conference wasn't on the original list of talking points. Forget for a moment that clever MAAC puns (like the not-so-funny one titling this post) are history. Forget that you won't be seeing any matchups like Iona/St. Peter's in 2007. Forget that St Peter's scheduled out-of-conference foes for 2007 in the form of Monmouth, Wagner, and St. Francis (and a bunch of non Division I teams) are now left in the wilderness with extremely slim chances to reschedule games in the next couple of months. (Although this blogger feels confident about Monmouth's chances of rescheduling.) Forget the St. Peter's football alumni. Forget the returning players of th...