There’s a big shindig in Chicago on the same weekend as the US v. Munster match that includes a meeting of collegiate rugby volunteers from around the country. Chip Auscavitch from the New England Rugby Union has prepared and distributed a comprehensive review of the competitions of each area of the country. It’s a 100 page PowerPoint presentation that is very heavy on data but does make a couple of suggestions that deserve further debate…
Standardization of the Competitive Season
Make college rugby a one-season, fall sport finishing with National playoffs in early December in a warm climate, which is also consistent with the NCAA initiative
While I appreciate the problems that the some areas of the country have with a spring competitive season, standardizing the competition into a fall season would be counterproductive to our sport in many ways.
1. It would be incredibly difficult for lower division clubs to jump right into a competitive season in the fall and expect to play productive rugby. There is no time to recruit and/or train young players before tossing them into their biggest games of the year. That wouldn’t seem to be in the players’ best interest plus it reduces the quality of product that we put on the field as a spectator sport..
2. It seems to me that most players would drift away from the sport in the spring due to limited playing opportunities and an absence of a competitive structure. Rugby is at its best when it’s a cult sport – meaning, its participants are devoted to the game. Let’s not reduce our sport to a seasonal sport that will encourage its participants to drift away into other sports in the spring. That would seem to reduce our game to just one step above intramural sports.
3. And finally, why go head to head with the most popular sport throughout most of the US – football. Football is king in most areas of the country and attempting to line up the most important rugby games during the fall will be very problematic. A full playoff schedule will most assuredly mean that collegiate players will miss most of the football games of their university. In many areas of the country, these are the biggest events of the year. Plus, many clubs have field availability issues in the fall during football season.
Standardization of Club Classification
Set Uniform LAU/TU Policies/Guidelines for Determining Division Affiliation
This one is probably long overdue. However, I’m not a fan of promotion / relegation at the collegiate level. At the club level, teams have the opportunity to build with players for many years plus club players are much more transient. Collegiate rugby is a different animal. A team turns over at what I’d guess to less than 24 months or so. Don’t punish a small club for having good players and good organizational resources (i.e. coaching). A divisional classification that includes student population as one of its principle variables is long overdue. Its time that clubs from schools of 25k students or more get out of the lower divisions. If large school clubs insist on playing at a lower division, make them ineligible for advancement in the playoffs.
Let’s put systems in place that promotes collegiate rugby as a legitimate mainstream sport. To do that, we need to find a less resistant pathway (spring) and create a national (minimum) standard for competition (divisional play). We talk a lot about making our sport appeal to the masses both in participation and with spectators. Let’s just make sure that we walk the walk when we consider adjusting the playing field.
