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Woningstichting Rochdale is een woningcorporatie die veel sociale-huurwoningen en ander vastgoed bezit en beheert in de gemeenten Amsterdam, Diemen, Landsmeer, Heemskerk, Zaanstad en Purmerend. De stichting beheert bijna 40.000 sociale-huurwoningen, en verhuurt ruim 5000 andere ruimtes, zoals vrije-sector huurwoningen, winkels, bedrijfsruimten, garages en parkeerplaatsen en plekken in studentenhuizen en woongroepen. Aanvankelijk was de woningcorporatie een vereniging, maar na een fusie met Woningstichting Patrimonium in januari 2004 werd gekozen voor de stichtingsvorm als rechtspersoon.

Rochdale is sinds een Koninklijk Besluit van 31 mei 1906 een instelling, die door de rijksoverheid is erkend als woningcorporatie. Rochdale dient daarom uitsluitend werkzaamheden te verrichten in het belang van de volkshuisvesting. De regels en richtlijnen waaraan de stichting zich dient te houden, en de prestaties die moeten worden verricht, zijn wettelijk vastgelegd in de Woningwet, die in 2015 totaal werd herzien.

Geschiedenis

Oprichting
De oorsprong van de woningstichting ligt bij de oprichting van de Coöperatieve Bouwvereeniging Rochdale op 12 mei 1903 in Amsterdam. Dit gebeurde op initiatief van Pieter Roeland, koetsier op de paardentram en tramconducteur Hendrik Glimmerveen. De Woningwet van 1901 had de overheid een rol gegeven in de verbetering van de woonomstandigheden van het proletariaat. Deze taak werd onder andere uitgevoerd door het subsidiëren van initiatieven vanuit de burgerij, waaronder de oprichting van woningbouwverenigingen. De twee oprichters zagen hun kans schoon om woningbouw nu door de arbeiders zelf ter hand te laten nemen. Glimmerveen publiceerde op 26 april 1902 onder de titel 'Werk aan den Winkel' een artikel in 'De Gemeentewerkman', het orgaan van de Centrale (Amsterdamse) Gemeentewerkliedenbond. Hierin opperde hij dat de Bond zelf als bouwonderneming kon optreden. Hierop reageerde directeur J.H. Neiszen van de Gemeentetram Amsterdam. Hij zegde zijn hulp toe. Volgens de Woningwet kon de Gemeentewerkliedenbond echter niet zelf bouwprojecten starten: het moest een instelling zijn die zich uitsluitend bezighield met de belangen van de volkshuisvesting. Daarom kwamen in mei 1903 40 arbeiders bijeen in de d'Geelvinck aan het Singel 540 en richtten daar Rochdale op.

Woningbouwvereniging Rochdale werd vernoemd naar de Engelse plaats Rochdale, ten noorden van Manchester. Deze plaats werd beschouwd als de bakermat van de coöperatieve gedachte, waar een in 1844 opgerichte verbruikerscoöperatie al in 1867 een woningbouwvereniging oprichtte.Het hoofdkantoor was van ca. 1953 tot ca. 1995 gevestigd aan de Cornelis Krusemanstraat 73-75.

Eerste woningwetwoningen
Rochdale realiseerde in 1909 de eerste woningwetwoningen van Amsterdam in de Van Beuningenstraat in de Staatsliedenbuurt, ontworpen door Jan Ernst van der Pek. Deze bouwde voor Rochdale ook een blok in de Atjehstraat / Molukkenstraat in de Indische Buurt, dat in 1911 gereed kwam. De projecten kenmerkten zich door eenvoud, degelijkheid en een scheiding van kamer, keuken en slaapkamers. Gestreefd werd naar een gemeenschappelijke tuin en bibliotheek. De bewoners werden zo nodig begeleid door een woningopzichteres, die wekelijks de huur kwam ophalen en zo oog hield op een ordentelijke bewoning.
Rochdale verhuurde verspreid over de stad huurwoningen zoals bijvoorbeeld vrijwel de gehele Van Tijenbuurt in Geuzenveld. In de Bijlmermeer waren de honingraatflats verdeeld over de woningbouwvereniging en verhuurde Rochdale onder andere Grubbehoeve tot de overgang naar Nieuw Amsterdam.

Fusie
Tot eind 2003 was Rochdale een vereniging met een ledenraad. De ledenraad benoemde het bestuur, eventueel uit een bindende voordracht. De laatste bestuurders uit de verenigingsperiode waren achtereenvolgens de heren Bulder, Verlaan en Koziolek. Een verschil daarbij is nog dat na het in werking treden van het Besluit Beheer Sociale Huursector (BBSH) in 1995 de gesalarieerde leiding als 'bestuurder' werd aangeduid en daarvoor als 'directeur'. De ledenraad vergaderde meestal 2 maal per jaar. De laatste ledenraadsvergadering ging geheel over het al of niet instemmen met de fusie met Woningstichting Patrimonium. Met 2 tegenstemmen werd besloten om de fusie met Patrimonium aan te gaan, een woningstichting die met 36.000 woningen vier keer zo groot was als Rochdale.

Patrimonium
Rond 1900 ging het niet goed met het Nederlandsch Werkliedenverbond Patrimonium. Het kreeg als vakbond vanaf 1909 concurrentie van het Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond. Als reactie besloot men de koers te verleggen. In andere gemeenten waren al eerder protestantse woningbouwverenigingen opgericht onder de naam Patrimonium. In Amsterdam besloot men hetzelfde te doen. Op 21 februari 1911 werd Woningstichting Patrimonium Amsterdam opgericht. Met de verlegging van de koers werd het fundament gelegd voor een christelijk-sociale beweging met een brede taakopvatting. De huizenblokken van deze stichting werden al snel centra van protestants leven.

Ook in omliggende gemeenten werden protestantse woningbouwverenigingen opgericht met de naam Patrimonium. In 1918 werd woningstichting Patrimonium Zaandam opgericht. Na de jaren zestig kreeg de secularisatie ook vat op het protestantse volksdeel, maar het christelijk-sociaal denken bleef van invloed op Patrimonium. In 1972 fuseerde de Zaanse Patrimonium met de Amsterdamse zuster. In 1978 sloot woningbouwvereniging Diemen Vooruit (opgericht in 1914) zich hierbij aan. In 1983 gaf woningstichting Patrimonium Purmerend (anno 1983) de zelfstandigheid op. Woningstichting Patrimonium Kennemerland uit Heemskerk voegde zich in 1990 hierbij.

Aan het eind van de jaren negentig nam Patrimonium het beheer op zich van de verpauperde sociale woningbouw in de Bijlmermeer, dat eigendom was van de armlastige woningstichting Nieuw-Amsterdam. In 2004 volgde de fusie met Bouwvereniging Rochdale. In 2006 werd Rochdale ook juridisch eigenaar van alle bezit van woningstichting Nieuw Amsterdam.

Doelgroepen
De belangrijkste doelstelling van de huidige Woningstichting Rochdale is het bieden van goede en betaalbare huisvesting aan mensen die zelf niet of onvoldoende in staat zijn een woning te vinden. Daarnaast richt Rochdale zich ook op andere doelgroepen, bijvoorbeeld door het aanbieden van koopwoningen en duurdere huurwoningen. In samenwerking met studentenhuisvestingsorganisatie DUWO verhuurt Rochdale ook studentenwoningen.

Vestigingen
Het kantoor van Rochdale is gevestigd in het Bruggebouw, dat de A10 overspant in de wijk Bos en Lommer, tegenover het Bos en Lommerplein. Behalve het kantoor in het Bruggebouw waren er tot maart 2013 vestigingen in Zaandam en Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Daarnaast waren er WoonServicePunten in Zaandam, Amsterdam-Noord en Purmerend, die inmiddels zijn opgeheven.

Bedrijfsonderdelen zijn afdeling geworden
Na een ingrijpende reorganisatie in 2013 kent Rochdale nu alleen nog afdelingen, geen bedrijfsonderdelen meer.

Duwo Rochdale combinatie
Rochdale is ook actief op het gebied van studentenhuisvesting. Duwo Rochdale Combinatie is sinds 2004 een samenwerkingsverband van studentenhuisvestings-organisatie DUWO en Woningstichting Rochdale. In 2012 is een groot complex met studentenwoningen op het Science Park (in stadsdeel Oost) en in Geuzenveld (Nieuw-West) gerealiseerd. Ook is het gebouw De Eenhoorn opgeleverd in stadsdeel Oost. In Bos en Lommer werden in 2013 tot 2015 studenteneenheden gerealiseerd in het Elseviergebouw, die vanaf de zomer van 2015 zijn bewoond.

Malversaties
Op 29 december 2008 berichtte de Telegraaf dat Rochdale 46,5 miljoen euro betaalde voor kantoorgebouw De Heerd in Amsterdam Zuidoost, dat enkele maanden daarvoor voor ongeveer de helft van de prijs van eigenaar wisselde. Dit artikel was de start van een langdurige bestuurscrisis. Er volgden diverse onderzoeken door Deloitte en later ook het Openbaar Ministerie. Bestuursvoorzitter Hubert Möllenkamp, bijgenaamd Maseratiman, werd eerst geschorst en daarna ontslagen. De woningstichting deed begin 2009 aangifte tegen de oud-bestuursvoorzitter wegens 'verduistering in dienstverband, het opstellen van een onjuiste jaarrekening en het gebruikmaken van een valselijk opgestelde brief'.

Rochdale kwam in opdracht van de minister voor volkshuisvesting Eberhard van der Laan onder toezicht te staan. Na de schorsing van de voormalig bestuursvoorzitter in november 2008 trad Gerard Erents aan als interim-bestuursvoorzitter met de opdracht orde op zaken te stellen.

Strafbare feiten
Op 26 januari 2012 maakte het Openbaar Ministerie in Amsterdam bekend de directeur, zijn echtgenote en vier medeplichtigen te gaan vervolgen wegens fraude, zoals het aannemen en/of betalen van steekpenningen, valsheid in geschrifte, belastingfraude en witwassen. Vastgoedbedrijf Multi en zijn directeuren Van Veggel en Veldhuis wisten eerder uit te komen onder strafvervolging wegens het betalen van een valse factuur van 180.000 euro aan de vrouw van Möllenkamp  door het betalen van een schikkingsbedrag aan justitie. Multi Vastgoed schikte voor 565.000 euro. Möllenkamp verscheen in oktober 2015 voor de rechter op verdenking van meineed, het aannemen van steekpenningen, belastingfraude en witwassen. Ook zou hij creditcards van de corporatie privé hebben gebruikt. Het Openbaar Ministerie eiste drie jaar gevangenisstraf. Daarnaast vorderde Justitie 2,4 miljoen euro van hem om het wederrechtelijk verkregen voordeel te ontnemen. Zijn vriendin stond ook terecht.

In december 2015 achtte de Rechtbank Amsterdam omkoping, witwassen, oplichting, het doen van valse belastingaangifte, valsheid in geschrifte en meineed bewezen, en veroordeelde  Hubert Möllenkamp tot een onvoorwaardelijke gevangenisstraf van 2,5 jaar. Volgens de rechtbank maakte hij misbruik van de afhankelijke positie van zakenrelaties door steekpenningen te vragen en aan te nemen. Het ging dan over grote geldbedragen, auto's en het gebruik van een Spaanse villa. Bovendien verduisterde hij belminuten van Rochdale en abonnementskosten door die te laten gebruiken door zijn vriendin (de ex-vrouw van wie hij scheidde voordat hij persoonlijk failliet werd verklaard) en zijn kinderen. Ook kwamen privékosten die hij maakte voor rekening van Rochdale via verstrekte creditcards van de woningcorporatie. De rechtbank achtte ook meineed bewezen, doordat hij tijdens zijn openbaar verhoor door de parlementaire enquetecommissie woningcorporaties had verklaard dat hij nooit steekpenningen had aangenomen. In deze zelfde zaak werd Möllenkamps vriendin tot een taakstraf van 240 uur veroordeeld. Ook twee zakenpartners kregen een taakstraf van 240 uur met daarnaast nog 1, resp. 2 maanden gevangenisstraf. Möllenkamp ging in hoger beroep tegen het vonnis. Het OM eiste in januari 2017 opnieuw drie jaar gevangenisstraf. Het Gerechtshof deed op 29 maart 2017 uitspraak in de zaak, waarbij Möllenkamp werd veroordeeld tot een celstraf van drie jaar en drie maanden. Anders dan de rechtbank achtte nu het hof hem ook schuldig aan het maken van een valse factuur voor de onderneming van zijn vrouw.

Nieuwe leiding
Vanaf de periode dat de voormalig bestuursvoorzitter in opspraak kwam (2009), startte ook de uitvoering van meerdere ingrijpende reorganisaties. Op 1 januari 2010 kwam een einde aan het externe toezicht. De door de minister aangestelde toezichthouders, Arthur Docters van Leeuwen en Pim Vermeulen, stapten terug omdat na de bestuurscrisis weer sprake was van een genormaliseerde situatie. Gedurende 2009 – 2010 werd een nieuwe Raad van Commissarissen geïnstalleerd, met René Craemer, een oud-hoofdofficier van justitie, als voorzitter. Deze nieuwe raad stelde in 2010 een nieuwe Raad van Bestuur aan.  Via de uitvoering van een herstelplan wilde Rochdale de crisis achter zich laten.

Kerncijfers

Bron: Jaarverslag Woningstichting Rochdale 2014

Externe links
 Woningstichting Rochdale
 DUWO
 Jaarverslagen Rochdale

Nederlandse woningcorporatie


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College Football 2017, Week #7: the top 15 matchups
Posted on October 13, 2017 by Sandlapper Spike
The weekly explanation of this post:
On his college hoops ratings website, Ken Pomeroy has an algorithm called 'FanMatch', in which "games are rated for competitiveness and level of play with a lean towards higher-scoring games". It is a way to rate the potential watchability of various basketball contests. There is just a touch of whimsy involved, which makes it even better…
Mimicking this idea, I've created a remarkably convoluted and studiously hazy formula to produce game ratings; it is called "Tingle Factor", or TF. The higher the TF, the better.
To access a Google Document that has a complete schedule of televised/streamed D-1 college football games (including all the announcing teams), see this post: Link
I am excluding the game between The Citadel and Wofford this week, because that matchup dominates the rest of the slate to such an extent that it is unfair to compare it to other contests.
Outside of that matchup, here are the top 15 games for Week 7. All fifteen games will take place on Saturday.
Road Team Home Team Gametime (ET) TV/Streaming TF
Navy Memphis 10/14, 3:45 pm ESPNU 78.2
UCLA Arizona 10/14, 9:00 pm Pac-12 Network 77.1
Texas Tech West Virginia 10/14, 12:00 pm ESPNU 76.9
Oklahoma Texas 10/14, 3:30 pm ESPN 76.7
South Carolina Tennessee 10/14, 12:00 pm ESPN 76.1
TCU Kansas State 10/14, 12:00 pm FS1/FS-Go 75.9
Georgia Tech Miami (FL) 10/14, 3:30 pm ABC/ESPN3 75.2
UTSA North Texas 10/14, 7:00 pm ESPN3 73.8
Auburn LSU 10/14, 3:30 pm CBS 72.4
Texas A&M Florida 10/14, 7:00 pm ESPN2 72.1
Utah Southern California 10/14, 8:00 pm ABC/ESPN3 70.7
Toledo Central Michigan 10/14, 3:30 pm ESPN3 68.6
Boise State San Diego State 10/14, 10:30 pm CBS Sports Network 66.9
Villanova James Madison 10/14, 3:30 pm MASN2 65.5
Wyoming Utah State 10/14, 4:30 pm Facebook 65.1
Additional notes and observations:
– The Oklahoma-Texas game will be played in Dallas, at the Texas State Fair, where fans have the opportunity to gorge themselves on such food items as tamale donuts and funnel cake queso bacon burgers.
– CBS/CBS Sports Network games will also be streamed on CBS Sports Digital, as will the Villanova-James Madison game on MASN2.
– The games on the ESPN "Family of Networks" will also be streamed via WatchESPN.
– The UCLA-Arizona game will be streamed on the Pac-12 Digital network.
– The three highest-rated "TF" games on the board this week are also projected by sources to be the highest-scoring games among the top 15. Navy-Memphis has an over/under of 70.5, slightly lower than UCLA-Arizona (over/under of 74.5) and Texas Tech-West Virginia (72.5).
– San Diego State had the largest advantage in field position in any matchup played last week (+18.8, in its game versus UNLV).
– ESPN's College GameDay is in Harrisonburg, Virginia this week for the Villanova-James Madison game, a matchup which also landed in the TF top 15 (the only FCS game to do so). It is the second time JMU has hosted the show; Lee Corso and company were last in town in 2015. The Dukes hope to avoid what happened on the field that afternoon, when Richmond spoiled the party with a 59-49 victory.
– Bridger's Battle, a/k/a the Wyoming-Utah State game, is the first TF top 15 matchup to be exclusively streamed on Facebook. The rivalry trophy is a .50 caliber Rocky Mountain Hawken rifle.
– Streaky: Central Michigan has lost seven straight games to Toledo, a streak dating back to 2010. The Chippewas had won the five games between the two teams prior to that run; however, the Rockets had won 10 straight in the series before that stretch.
– The last time TCU played Kansas State in Manhattan (2015), the Horned Frogs (ranked #2 at the time) escaped with a 52-45 victory after trailing 35-17 at halftime.
– Miami has never lost to Georgia Tech in the facility known as Hard Rock Stadium (which was previously Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Land Shark Stadium, and Sun Life Stadium). The Hurricanes are 4-0 against the Yellow Jackets there, regardless of the name.
– In the last five seasons, the Texas Tech-West Virginia game has averaged a total of 64 points per contest. WVU has won the last three games in the series.
– South Carolina has played five overtime games in its history, going 2-3 in those contests. All three of the losses were to Tennessee (and all by three points).
– The contest between Texas A&M and Florida will be only the fourth meeting in the series, and only the second since 1977. The Gators have won two of the previous three matchups.
– It is a shame the Auburn-LSU game is not being played at night. That probably lessens the chance for a repeat of the 1988 "Earthquake Game".
It should be a fun afternoon of college football. There aren't any standout games (at least on paper), but the day does feature a bunch of pigskin battles that have the potential to be very entertaining. Keep that clicker handy…
Filed under: Football | Tagged: Arizona, Auburn, Boise State, Central Michigan, Facebook, Florida, Georgia Tech, James Madison, LSU, Memphis, Miami (FL), Navy, North Texas, San Diego State, South Carolina, Southern California, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TF, Tingle Factor, Toledo, UCLA, Utah, Utah State, UTSA, Villanova, West Virginia, Wyoming |	Leave a comment »
The 2016 FCS Playoffs — a review of the bracket
The Bracket
– The Citadel's playoff path: a bye, then a familiar foe
– Lehigh football snubbed of home playoff game
– New Hampshire makes field for 13th straight year
– Albany left out of playoffs; coach calls exclusion "a sham"
– Wofford earns playoff bid
– Charleston Southern disappointed not to host playoff game
– After being disappointed in the seeding, Sam Houston State coach: "It is what it is"
– South Dakota State gets seed
– Youngstown State in playoffs after a ten-year absence
– "Samford shouldn't even be in the tournament, let's just get it straight"
– North Carolina A&T makes playoff, but coach says "we're still pretty down around here"
– Chattanooga makes playoff field
– Cal Poly gets bid, will host San Diego
– Preview article on NCAA.com
First, let's correct an error in that last article I linked above, the one posted on the NCAA's own website:
Some other teams that will miss out on postseason action as a whole include Montana, Western Illinois and North Carolina Central, who all lost steam down the stretch and were defeated in Week 12.
North Carolina Central won on Week 12, defeating North Carolina A&T 42-21. The Eagles aren't missing out on postseason action, either — North Carolina Central is going to the Celebration Bowl instead of the FCS playoffs, while the team that lost to the Eagles (North Carolina A&T) got a bid as an at-large team.
I also linked a "handicapping the field" article from the Bison Media Zone. Media members in North Dakota do not think Samford should have made the field.
Of course, being a resident of the Flickertail State isn't the be-all and end-all when it comes to FCS expertise. In this particular preview, the writer referred to Charleston Southern as the "Mocs".
I also think he has his guns pointed in the wrong direction when it comes to the exclusion of Albany. I tend to agree that Albany should have been in the tournament, but he failed to identify the most obvious beneficiary of the Great Danes' absence — New Hampshire.
The two teams played in the same league (the CAA) and finished with the same overall record (7-4). Albany beat FBS Buffalo (admittedly, not the best FBS squad in world history). More to the point, the Great Danes won at New Hampshire.
The Wildcats also managed to lose to Ivy League cellar-dweller Dartmouth, and had no real standout victory. Albany's worst loss was to Delaware, which strikes me as considerably more acceptable than losing to Dartmouth.
Albany head coach Greg Gattuso called the snub of his team "a sham" on Twitter. He had other comments:
I guess, if I had a question for the (selection) committee, it would be, what in (New Hampshire's) body of work would be better than ours?
I just think the resume was better. Oh, by the way, we beat them head-to-head at their field. Remember us beating them at their field two weeks ago?
One criteria they might say is conference record. But to me, it's a skewed point when (New Hampshire) didn't play the second- and third-place teams. They didn't play Richmond, they didn't play Villanova. To me, conference schedule when you don't play everybody should be thrown out (in picking the tournament).
I think Gattuso has a very legitimate argument.
New Hampshire had been in the playoffs in each of the previous 12 seasons; perhaps the committee just felt comfortable sticking them in the field. Maybe there is an unwritten rule that UNH has to be in the tournament.
Once New Hampshire was picked, the committee then got the chance to pair the Wildcats with Lehigh, and gave New Hampshire a home game in the first round. UNH's average home attendance is 11,108, so it could be assumed its host bid (in terms of a cash guarantee) was quite good.
Albany's average home attendance this season was 5,928. Could the committee have been thinking about the potential monetary difference if it came down to Lehigh-Albany or Lehigh-UNH? I'm sure the official answer is "No", but cynics may have some doubts.
In related news, during an interview on a North Dakota radio show, selection committee chairman Brian Hutchinson referenced North Carolina A&T's "bid offer" as a point in its favor.
I think he probably misspoke — after all, North Carolina A&T isn't even hosting a first-round game — but what his comment really illustrates is that money is never far from the mind of the committee when selecting, bracketing, and seeding teams. That is unfortunate.
The committee apparently had no choice but to pair San Diego and Cal Poly against each other in the first round, despite the fact the two schools have already played this season. From the NCAA's "Pre-Championship Manual":
5. Regular season non-conference match-ups in the first round of the championship should be avoided, provided it does not create an additional flight(s).
6. Teams from the same conference will not be paired for first-round games (except for teams from the same conference that did not play against each other during the regular season; such teams may play each other in the first round);
7. Once the first-round pairings have been determined, there will be no adjustments to the bracket (e.g., a seeded team may play a conference opponent that advanced out of the first round).
If Cal Poly and USD had been in the same league, the rematch would have been avoided — but since they're not, they had to be matched up, because not doing so would have created two extra flights.
That is because Poly and USD were less than 400 miles from each other, but more than 400 miles away from every other unseeded team. Here is the rule on busing/flights:
During the championship, institutions that are playing within 400 miles (one way) of their campus will be required to travel to that site via bus. Institutions traveling more than 400 miles (one way) to their game will be approved for air travel to that site.
I think it's absurd that the "allow one more flight" stipulation only applies if teams are in the same conference, but that's the rule, and the committee had no other option. The rule needs to be changed.
Of course, when it comes to bracketing, the committee tends to take the path of least resistance anyway. This is the second year in a row there has been a regular-season rematch in the first round.
Last year, the Patriot League champion (Colgate) played at New Hampshire, with the winner facing James Madison. Colgate and UNH had already met during the 2015 regular season.
Naturally, this year the Patriot League champion (Lehigh) will again play at New Hampshire, with the winner again facing James Madison…
The manual has this to say about awarding host sites:
3. If the minimum financial guarantees are met, the committee will award the playoff sites to the higher seeded teams.
4. When determining host institutions for playoff games when both teams are unseeded, criteria shall apply as follows: (1) quality of facility, (2) revenue potential plus estimated net receipts, (3) attendance history and potential, (4) team's performance (i.e., conference place finish, head-to-head results and number of Division I opponents), and (5) student-athlete well-being (e.g., travel and missed class time).
This is not exactly breaking news, but it does explain one aspect of hosting that apparently bothered Charleston Southern coach Jamey Chadwell:
…Chadwell expressed disappointment about having to go on the road, but said getting a playoff opportunity was the ultimate goal.
"It's disappointing. I don't know all of the details, but you would think a conference champion would get more favor in the bidding process," Chadwell said.
As it happens, conference champions don't get more favor in the bidding process — unless they are matched up against teams in their own league in the first round (which would only occur if the two teams had not met during the regular season).
Charleston Southern hosted last year, but that was because it was a seed and met a minimum financial guarantee. This season, the Buccaneers were unseeded and paired with Wofford.
The decision to hold the game in Spartanburg probably came down to Wofford offering a better financial package, but Charleston Southern fans should be concerned about "quality of facility" being a more significant criterion for hosting than "revenue potential".
Attendance history is also a factor. Below is the average home attendance for the 16 unseeded teams in the field:
North Carolina A&T: 14,472
Youngstown State: 14,353
New Hampshire: 11,108
Illinois State: 10,156
Chattanooga: 9,494
Central Arkansas: 8,767
Weber State: 8,734
Richmond: 8,700
Cal Poly: 8,413
Wofford: 7,625
Lehigh: 6,527
Villanova: 6,153
Samford: 5,897
Charleston Southern: 2,712
San Diego: 2,405
St. Francis (PA): 1,617
Attendance affects both a potential bid by a school, and the committee's evaluation of its revenue potential.
Only two of the eight first-round matchups are hosted by teams that had lower average home attendance than their opponents. Richmond is hosting North Carolina A&T, and Central Arkansas is hosting Illinois State.
The second of those involves two schools with fairly close numbers in terms of attendance, but the other matchup has a much wider differential. Either North Carolina A&T wasn't particularly interested in hosting, or Richmond put in a major league bid.
I'm disappointed that for the FCS playoffs, there is yet again a mini-South Carolina bracket in what is supposed to be a national tournament.
This is the second year in a row The Citadel and Charleston Southern have both been bracketed in this fashion, and it is a lame, lame move by Brian Hutchinson and his committee for the second year in a row.
Bulldogs quarterback Dominique Allen:
It'd be nice to face somebody else, somebody besides teams we play all the time.
Linebacker Tevin Floyd of The Citadel:
We have histories with both [Wofford and Charleston Southern], so I think we just wanted to experience something new.
Head coach Brent Thompson of The Citadel:
When it's the playoffs, you look for some different opponents. You want to get some people to travel in and maybe work outside (the norm) a little bit. But it is what it is, and we have to win the state of South Carolina at this point.
Floyd also said he was happy to be playing at Johnson Hagood Stadium, and Allen referenced a "fun" matchup with either potential opponent, but the point is clear.
I also don't understand why the committee couldn't have swapped the Charleston Southern-Wofford pairing and the North Carolina A&T-Richmond pairing in order to avoid a potential second-round rematch.
In other words, the CSU-Wofford winner could have been matched up against North Dakota, while the survivor of N.C. A&T-Richmond played The Citadel (instead of the other way around, as the committee arranged things).
If the committee seeded all the teams, 1 through 24, it would be possible to have a balanced, fair tournament. Instead, bracketing decisions are made explicitly for geographic reasons, and they lead to inequities.
Weber State and Cal Poly both were 7-4 overall; Weber State was 6-2 in the Big Sky, while the Mustangs were 5-3. Now, due to unbalanced league schedules, Cal Poly played a slightly tougher slate than the Wildcats (and it also had a good non-conference win over South Dakota State). On the other hand, Weber State beat Cal Poly during the season.
You could argue that if every team in the tournament were seeded, Cal Poly might deserve a slightly higher seed than Weber State. If so, both teams would probably be seeded in the 17-20 range.
If that happened, each would play first-round road games against similarly-rated opponents. Instead, we have the current geographical setup and the "400 miles" bus/flight cutoff point.
Thus, Cal Poly plays a home game against San Diego of the non-scholarship Pioneer League, a team the Mustangs already defeated earlier this season 38-16. Meanwhile, Weber State travels almost 1,800 miles to play at Chattanooga, a solid SoCon squad that acquitted itself well last week against Alabama.
The decision to make Lehigh travel to New Hampshire also seems problematic to me; if anything, it should be the other way around. Again, however, cash is king in this tournament — though a few folks in Las Vegas are apparently putting their hard-earned money on Lehigh (which is a 4 1/2 point favorite despite having to go on the road).
Final "toughest schedule" numbers from the NCAA for Jacksonville State, James Madison, Sam Houston State, and The Citadel:
The Citadel: 19th
James Madison: 57th
Jacksonville State: 80th
Sam Houston State: 102nd
All four finished undefeated against non-FBS competition. SHSU, which was 11-0, did not play an FBS opponent, while the other three schools were all 10-1, with each losing to an FBS team from a power conference.
The committee decided to give Jacksonville State the highest seed out of this group. Did it help Jacksonville State that it made the finals last year? Probably. Did it help Jacksonville State that its director of athletics was on the committee? It couldn't have hurt.
What it means is that if The Citadel is fortunate enough to advance to the quarterfinals, and its opponent is Jacksonville State, the Bulldogs will be the road team. It is not evident why that should be the case.
Another seeding oddity, in my opinion, was North Dakota being the #7 seed and South Dakota State being the #8. I'm not sure why the Jackrabbits would have been behind UND.
Because the committee seeded those teams in that way, SDSU has a potential rematch with North Dakota State in the quarterfinals. I don't have a problem with regular-season rematches once teams advance to the quarterfinals, but it seems to me the committee had an easy opportunity to avoid that situation, and in a perfectly justifiable way.
Per at least one source that deals in such matters, here are the lines for the eight first-round games, as of Tuesday afternoon:
Wofford is a 1.5-point favorite over Charleston Southern, over/under of 51.5
Chattanooga is a 15-point favorite over Weber State, over/under of 51.5
Lehigh is a 4.5-point favorite at New Hampshire, over/under of 63.5
Richmond is a 13-point favorite over North Carolina A&T, over/under of 53.5
Illinois State is a 1.5-point favorite at Central Arkansas, over/under of 49.5
Youngstown State is an 8.5-point favorite over Samford, over/under of 50.5
Cal Poly is a 12.5-point favorite over San Diego, over/under of 65.5
Villanova is a 14.5-point favorite over St. Francis (PA), over/under of 37.5
As you can see, there are two road favorites (Lehigh and Illinois State).
Massey Ratings predicted scores for this Saturday:
Wofford 26, Charleston Southern 24
Chattanooga 31, Weber State 19
Lehigh 33, New Hampshire 28
Richmond 36, North Carolina A&T 24
Central Arkansas 23, Illinois State 21
Youngstown State 28, Samford 20
Cal Poly 35, San Diego 29
Villanova 21, St. Francis (PA) 7
I'm not pleased with how the tournament was constructed. However, there is nothing that can be done about it, at least not for this season. All eyes will now be following the action on the gridiron.
If you're in the field, you have a chance. That's the bottom line.
Filed under: Football | Tagged: Albany, Brian Hutchinson, Cal Poly, Central Arkansas, Charleston Southern, Chattanooga, FCS playoffs, Illinois State, Jacksonville State, James Madison, Lehigh, New Hampshire, North Carolina A&T, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Richmond, Sam Houston State, Samford, San Diego, South Dakota State, St. Francis (PA), The Citadel, Villanova, Weber State, Wofford, Youngstown State |	Leave a comment »
Comparing FCS non-conference football schedules
Posted on January 31, 2015 by Sandlapper Spike
Yes, it's early February, and the return of football is still many months away (well, if you don't count recruiting and spring practice). All the more reason to post about it, I suppose.
This is going to be a relatively short post about scheduling tendencies, but first allow me a brief digression on a completely different football topic…
There was a recent article in The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, SC) about the fabled "man in the brown suit". This is a football tale that not every fan of The Citadel knows about, mainly because A) it happened in 1937, and B) it happened in Orangeburg.
It's an amusing story, one with similarities to the much better known situation that occurred in the 1954 Cotton Bowl, when Tommy Lewis was "too full of Alabama". I might argue that the goings-on at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds in 1937 were a bit more comic in nature, however.
At any rate, it's a reminder of long-ago days gone by. I suspect younger alums might be surprised to know that The Citadel has played 34 football games in Orangeburg over the years, from a 1916 victory over Clemson to a 1959 win versus Wofford. The Bulldogs also faced Furman and South Carolina in The Garden City.
I am not completely sure, but I think all of those games took place at the fairgrounds, and the corps of cadets was in attendance for most (if not all) of them.
– Okay, back to scheduling.
I got the idea for this post after reading a story about Delaware and Delaware State agreeing to resume their series in 2016. The paragraph that jumped out to me:
The game helps to lock in Delaware's non-conference scheduling pattern for more than the past decade. Home games against FCS opponents, and road games versus FBS squads. Delaware has not traveled for a regular season, non-conference FCS game since going to The Citadel in September 2002.
I was really surprised when I read that. Could it really be true that in the regular season, Delaware hasn't played an out-of-conference road game against an FCS foe for twelve years?
Actually, it isn't true. The internet strikes again!
However, it's not like the Blue Hens were making a habit of playing such games. Between 2003 and 2014, Delaware played exactly one (1) non-conference FCS regular-season road game. In 2008, UD traveled to Greenville and tangled with Furman. That's it.
I decided to look at the schedules for a select group of institutions over that same twelve-year period to see if UD's non-league schedule was unusual, or if it was actually not out of place. I concentrated on east coast FCS schools that typically had conference schedules of eight games from 2003-14, which would give them roughly the same number of OOC scheduling opportunities as Delaware.
There are some caveats. Some of the schools on the list occasionally played seven-game league slates. For example, the SoCon did so in five of the twelve years. CAA schools played a nine-game conference schedule in 2003.
Also, not all schools played a uniform number of regular-season games. When FCS schools had a chance to play 12-game seasons, they generally did — but not all of them always did. There are also a couple of 10-game seasons in the mix.
With that in mind, here is a table listing 16 FCS schools and their schedules in three categories: number of regular-season games played against out-of-conference opponents on the road; number of FBS opponents; and number of non-D1 opponents.
2003-2014 schedules FCS – road non-con. FBS non-D1
The Citadel 7 16 4
Delaware 1 8 10
Furman 12 12 2
WCU 7 18 9
Wm. & Mary 11 12 2
UNH 8 11 0
JMU 7 10 3
Villanova 13 11 0
Richmond 10 11 0
Chattanooga 12 15 4
Delaware St. 16 5 8
SC State 12 12 10
Hampton 16 2 7
Elon 14 7 6
Wofford 7 12 9
Maine 11 12 3
Okay, now for the "exceptions and oddities" section…
– Determining whether or not a school was an FCS or FBS opponent could sometimes be tricky. For this table, I am listing Old Dominion's 2013 team as an FCS squad. If you think ODU should be classified as FBS for that season (which was the first year of the Monarchs' transition to FBS), then subtract one from The Citadel's "FCS road non-conference" category and add it to the "FBS" column.
On the other hand, Hampton's 2014 meeting with ODU went down as a contest against an FBS team.
Meanwhile, I counted Charlotte as an FCS road opponent for James Madison (that game was also played in 2014). Chattanooga played at Western Kentucky in 2006, while the Hilltoppers were still in FCS, so the game is listed in the FCS group for the Mocs.
– Occasionally a school would be a non-conference opponent in one season, then later become a league foe. For example, The Citadel played at VMI three times while the Keydets were a member of the Big South — but in 2014, the game in Lexington was a SoCon game.
That was the case for several other schools as well, including Maine (which played at Albany twice during this period in OOC matchups) and South Carolina State (which played at Savannah State before the Tigers joined the MEAC).
– While the category says "FCS road non-conference", there are actually a few neutral-site games mixed in as well. All of them are HBCU "classics". Hampton played four such contests during the twelve-year period, while South Carolina State and Delaware State played one each.
– Speaking of Delaware State, in 2003 the Hornets played an OOC game at Florida A&M. Yes, they did.
That's because at the time FAMU was making a quixotic attempt to join Division I-A. In 2003, the MEAC schools played only seven league games (though several of them played the Rattlers as a "non-conference" game).
– Villanova played 13 FCS road non-conference opponents from 2003-2014. Seven of those games were fairly easy trips for the Wildcats, as they were matchups with Penn at Franklin Field.
– Of the sixteen schools that were profiled, Western Carolina played the most FBS teams during the time period (18), but The Citadel played the most power-conference squads (all 16 of the Bulldogs' FBS opponents were from the five major conferences). The Citadel also had the widest variety of FBS opponents, playing 14 different schools from all five power leagues from 2003-2014.
– The ten games Delaware played versus non-D1 schools were all against the same opponent — West Chester.
What does it all mean? Probably not much, to be honest.
However, the question "Is Delaware's non-league schedule that much different from other FCS schools?" can be answered. It certainly is.
For one thing, the Blue Hens had a rather "contained" scheduling policy all the way around. Besides the regular matchups with West Chester, Delaware played only three different FBS opponents, as six of the eight games against the higher division were meetings with Navy.
Every other school on the list played at least seven regular-season non-conference road games from 2003-2014. Also, only Wofford and South Carolina State played as many non-D1 games; two of the sixteen institutions (fellow CAA football travelers Villanova and Richmond) didn't play any.
When I first looked at UD's past schedules, I was a bit puzzled by the one regular-season non-league road game that Delaware did play, that 2008 matchup with Furman. There was no "return" game, as the Paladins did not travel to Newark for a rematch.
As was explained to me by the partisans at the UFFP, however, that's because Furman bought out the return game when it got a chance to play Missouri instead (for a considerable amount of money, obviously).
The result of that move by Furman? Well, it opened up a spot on Delaware's schedule that was eventually filled by…Delaware State.
So, I guess I've come full circle with this post.
Filed under: Football | Tagged: CAA, Chattanooga, Delaware, Delaware State, Elon, FCS, Furman, Hampton, James Madison, Maine, MEAC, New Hampshire, Richmond, SoCon, South Carolina State, The Citadel, Villanova, Western Carolina, William & Mary, Wofford |	Leave a comment »
John Feinstein's misguided column about FBS-FCS matchups
Posted on September 23, 2013 by Sandlapper Spike
Normally, I don't post on this blog about specific articles, but I felt compelled to write something after reading John Feinstein's recent column in The Washington Post.
Let's start at the beginning, with the column heading:
College football: FBS vs. FCS games need to be limited
Feinstein then lists the scores of four one-sided games played last Saturday: Florida A&M-Ohio State, Florida International-Louisville, Idaho State-Washington, and Savannah State-Miami (FL). Immediately it is apparent that there is a conflict between his theme and the column heading — namely that one of these matchups is not an FBS-FCS affair (FIU-Louisville). That doesn't stop Feinstein:
Games like this have to stop. They have to stop because they are unfair — first and foremost — to the overmatched players who are publicly humiliated and beaten up playing against opponents who are much bigger, much stronger and much faster at every position. Florida A&M and Florida International combined for 100 yards of offense on Saturday against teams that totaled 148 points.
This is competition?
Later, he writes:
Some routs occur because reasonably good programs are having down seasons: Maryland-West Virginia is clearly a game worth playing even if it wasn't worth seeing Saturday….Even Baylor's 70-7 embarrassment of Louisiana-Monroe wasn't a game that should not have been played. Monroe was coming off a big win (for it) over Wake Forest and got down quickly, and the game got way out of hand.
So it's okay that ULM lost 70-7 to Baylor, but FIU's 72-0 loss to Louisville led to its players being "publicly humiliated". Got it. Never mind that ULM is in an FBS league (the Sun Belt) that FIU just left in a move "up" the ladder.
An unaware reader wouldn't have known that FIU was actually an FBS squad until three-quarters of the way through the article:
Of course, Florida International is an FBS school. Schools like Old Dominion, Georgia Southern and Charlotte have all made the decision to transition into the FBS. Massachusetts, which won what was then the Division I-AA national title in 1998 and played in the championship game in 2006, is in its second season as an FBS team. The Minutemen are 1-15 so far and, to meet FBS stadium requirements, moved their home games 91 miles from campus to Gillette Stadium. On Saturday, an announced crowd of a little more than 16,000 watched U-Mass. lose 24-7 to Vanderbilt in the 68,000-seat stadium.
Clearly, there need to be stricter limits on who is allowed to move into the FBS….
…How's it working out at U-Mass. so far? Old Dominion, also a very good FCS program, opened its season by giving up 99 points to East Carolina and Maryland.
Feinstein makes a decent point about a school possibly overreaching (UMass playing in Gillette), but ruins it with comparisons to ODU and Charlotte. The comment about Charlotte, in particular, is off the mark. The 49ers are only transitioning to FBS in the sense that the school needed a couple of years to get its brand-new program up to the necessary scholarship levels.
Old Dominion was a "very good FCS program", to be sure, but one that only re-started its program four years ago. It has little history as an FCS school.
Also, I'm not sure giving up 99 points to ECU and Maryland says much about ODU's future prospects in FBS. For one thing, the Monarchs only lost to ECU by 14 points.
ODU did lose to Maryland by 37 points. Two weeks later, that same Maryland squad beat West Virginia by…37 points. For some reason, though, Feinstein thought that Maryland-WVU was "clearly a game worth playing".
Feinstein also proposed this idea:
The question then becomes how do you tell North Dakota State or other quality FCS programs they can schedule FBS teams but tell Savannah State, Florida A&M and Eastern Kentucky they cannot schedule them…
…Pass a rule that allows any FCS school that qualifies for the 20-team NCAA tournament to schedule one future game against an FBS school. Each time you make the tournament, you get the right to schedule another game…
If you aren't good enough to make the FCS tournament, you aren't good enough to schedule an FBS school…
What's more, any FBS school that schedules an FCS team is automatically ineligible for that season's four-team national championship playoff…
There will still be plenty of FBS schools that will play FCS schools…
This is so bad, I hardly know where to start…
I guess I'll begin by correcting an error in the column. This year, the FCS tournament will include 24 teams, not 20.
Feinstein's idea that only FCS playoff participants should be allowed to schedule FBS schools falls apart for numerous reasons. Just to mention some of them:
– The 24-team playoff field includes automatic qualifiers from leagues with schools that don't offer the full 63-scholarship allotment. One of those conferences, the Pioneer League, consists of institutions that don't offer any scholarships at all.
So in that scenario, Northern Iowa (which did not make the FCS playoffs last year) can't schedule an FBS opponent unless it returns to the postseason; UNI is a member of the very competitive Missouri Valley Football Conference. However, a school like Drake could schedule the likes of Iowa or Iowa State if it won the Pioneer League.
I am using the Iowa schools as examples because this season, Northern Iowa played an FBS school, Iowa State — and defeated the Cyclones in Ames, 28-20. As it happens, UNI played Drake the following week, and won that game 45-14.
– Another problem with this suggestion is it eliminates the SWAC schools from being able to schedule FBS teams, because that conference doesn't participate in the FCS playoffs. (Neither does the Ivy League.)
– Feinstein believes there "will still be plenty of FBS schools" that would schedule FCS squads even if doing so made those FBS schools ineligible for the postseason playoff. I suspect otherwise.
He names a number of FBS schools, mostly well-regarded academic institutions like Vanderbilt and Duke. I don't think there is a chance that any of the BCS member schools would schedule an FCS team in that situation; I seriously doubt their conferences would permit it.
Imagine if Vanderbilt won the SEC but couldn't compete in the national playoffs because it had played Tennessee State during the season. Do you think Mike Slive would allow even that slim possibility to happen?
Feinstein mentioned certain schools that aren't considered by most people to be serious contenders for their respective league titles, now or in the future. Notice a couple of similar schools that he doesn't mention, though — Stanford and Northwestern. Ten years ago, Stanford would have been in that same sentence with Vandy and Duke.
I don't think most of the non-BCS schools would schedule FCS schools under those circumstances, either. Maybe a few would, but not many.
– He does add that exceptions can be made for traditional matchups, mentioning Villanova-Temple. This would obviously lead to issues with fairness, and also what constitutes a "traditional" game. Besides, what is really different from that and (for example) Clemson or South Carolina annually playing an FCS school from the Palmetto State? Not much.
There may be a legitimate case to be made that the number of FBS-FCS matchups in college football should be reduced. I don't really believe that, to be honest, but I'm willing to acknowledge a decent argument.
John Feinstein's column is not such an argument.
Filed under: Football | Tagged: Drake, Duke, FBS, FCS, Florida International, Iowa State, Ivy League, John Feinstein, Northern Iowa, Old Dominion, Stanford, SWAC, Temple, Vanderbilt, Villanova |	1 Comment »
Variety Pack: The NCAA's Seven Sinners, Gonzo's friend Duke Rice, and the Plant of the Week
Posted on December 19, 2010 by Sandlapper Spike
It's the long-awaited latest edition of the Variety Pack, the celebrated TSA series that debuted earlier this year. The idea is to write briefly (I hope) on two or three different topics without being limited to 140 characters, like my Twitter tweets.
This is one of two holiday Variety Packs; in a week or two I'll post the other one, which will (probably) feature The Citadel's role in the modern-day proliferation of college football on television.
Both Variety Packs are inspired by Google Books. What I did, basically, is type in some search terms, and see what came up.
In 1948, the NCAA crafted a statute colloquially known as the "Sanity Code". The Sanity Code was an attempt to end the practice of awarding athletic scholarships, something many southern institutions had been doing since the early 1930s.
The Sanity Code allowed schools to award scholarships to prospective athletes, but only on a basis of need – and even then the scholarships were limited to tuition and incidental expenses. Most scholarship athletes would either have to qualify for academic scholarships, or pay their own way, usually by holding down jobs while in school.
This was seen by a lot of the southern schools as an attempt by the "establishment" to keep itself on top of the college athletics pyramid. The establishment consisted mainly of the Big 10 schools, largely aligned with the Ivy League and Pac-8. To add fuel to the fire, in those days the Big 10 commissioner also oversaw the NCAA's daily activities; Walter Byers, later executive director of the NCAA, split time between his NCAA duties and his primary job as the Big 10's publicity director.
There were myriad problems with the Sanity Code. It was basically unenforceable. It was also seen as unfair. The southern schools had no interest in dropping athletic scholarships, especially when at the same time wealthy Big 10 alums would be giving bogus jobs to football and basketball players with no penalty.
The school most often ridiculed by Sanity Code opponents was Ohio State. Prior to the 1950 Rose Bowl, it was revealed that at least 16 Buckeye football players had cushy jobs with the state, including a running back on the payroll of the state's transportation department as a tire inspector.
The Sanity Code was going to allow OSU to do that, but not let SEC or Southern Conference schools offer athletic scholarships. It's easy to see why people got upset.
Enter the "Seven Sinners". No, I'm not talking about the John Wayne-Marlene Dietrich movie.
In this case, the "Seven Sinners" were seven schools that refused to live a lie, and admitted that they were not adhering to the new statute enacted by the NCAA. The seven happened to be a very difficult group for the establishment to criticize. Only one, Maryland, was a major college football power offering a large number of athletic scholarships. The others were Virginia, Virginia Tech, VMI, The Citadel, Boston College, and Villanova.
For The Citadel, the notion of having athletes work jobs while at the same time go to class, play a sport, and participate in military activities was a non-starter (the same was true for VMI, and to a certain extent Virginia Tech). The school also questioned the amateur-but-not-really idea of the Sanity Code, with The Citadel's faculty representative stating that "The Code defines the word amateur and then promptly authorizes students to participate…who do not meet the requirements of the definition."
At the 1950 NCAA Convention, the association moved to expel the seven schools. That's right, the NCAA wasn't going to put them on probation, a concept not yet considered. It was going to expel them.
UVA president Colgate Darden made a principled argument against the statute, and stated that his school had no intention of following the Code. Maryland president (and former football coach) Curley Byrd worked the floor at the convention, making sure there weren't enough votes to expel the seven schools, and using Ohio State's situation (as an example of the NCAA's hypocrisy) in order to convince some fence-sitters to support the Sinners' position.
The Citadel, however, had already announced it was going to resign from the NCAA, stating it refused "to lie to stay in the association". For The Citadel, either the Sanity Code had to go, or The Citadel would go. After all, it's not like the school had a history of shying away from secession-related activities.
Since all seven of the "Seven Sinners" are still members of the NCAA, you can guess that they weren't expelled. Expulsion required a two-thirds majority, and that didn't happen (although more than half of the NCAA members did vote against the Sinners). This prevented a complete fracture of the NCAA, as it is likely the southern schools would have left the association otherwise.
While most of the votes supporting the seven schools came from the south, there were schools in the other parts of the country which also voted against expelling the seven, a fact not unnoticed by the NCAA leadership. The Sanity Code was repealed the following year.
In retrospect, it's kind of funny that The Citadel was in the position of being an NCAA malefactor. However, it should be pointed out that 111 schools did vote to expel the military college from the NCAA on that fateful day in 1950. In fact, when the vote was taken, NCAA president Karl Lieb announced that the motion to expel had carried, before being corrected by assorted shouts from the convention floor. He then said, "You're right, the motion is not carried." Lieb had forgotten about that two-thirds majority rule for passage; the vote to expel The Citadel and the other six schools had fallen 25 votes short.
The echoes from the Sanity Code controversy still reverberate today. There are still notable divisions between the Big 10 and Pac-10 schools and the other "major" conference schools like the SEC. The Ivy League has basically withdrawn from the scene. Even today, there is some distrust of the Big 10 and its closeness (real or perceived) with the NCAA.
Below are some links that touch on this topic. They are mostly links from Google Books, so it may take a little bit of work to get to the referenced sections.
College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy (starting on page 213)
The 50-Year Seduction (starting on page 18)
Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes (starting on page 53)
College Athletes For Hire (starting on page 43)
Sport: What Price Football? (column in Time magazine)
Egg In Your Beer (editorial from the January 21, 1950 edition of The Harvard Crimson)
While perusing Google Books, I read a passage from a book entitled Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson: An Oral Biography:
[Thompson's] best friend from his early days was probably Duke Rice. He was a skinny kid and not all that tall, and suddenly he shot up to six-six or six-seven and got a basketball scholarship to The Citadel, where he was the only player of the time who was able to shut down Jerry West.
Now, this little blurb interested me, for a couple of reasons:
— Thompson's friend was named Duke Rice. With a name like that, he shouldn't have gone to The Citadel; he should have gone to Vanderbilt or Northwestern.
— The "Blitz Kids" were a group of players recruited by Norm Sloan to The Citadel in the late 1950s and early 1960s (which is also the time period when Jerry West played for West Virginia). That era was the pinnacle for basketball at The Citadel. The stars of those teams were Art Musselman, Dick Wherry, Ray Graves, and Dick Jones (and later Gary Daniels)…but not anyone named Duke Rice.
The Blitz Kids never won the Southern Conference, mostly because West Virginia was in the league at that time, and Jerry West played for the Mountaineers. He was, of course, a fantastic player. Very few teams shut him down, and The Citadel certainly didn't. West played three games in his career against The Citadel. WVU won all three games, by scores of 89-61, 85-66, and 98-76.
That 85-66 score came in the 1959 Southern Conference tournament championship game, the only time The Citadel has ever made the league final. West scored 27 points in that contest. I don't know how many points he scored against the Bulldogs in the other two games, but since the Mountaineers put up 89 and 98 points in those matchups, I'm guessing he wasn't exactly "shut down".
Incidentally, that 98-76 game was played during the 1959-60 season at McAlister Field House, and was arguably the most anticipated contest ever played at the ancient armory (at least for those contests not involving Ric Flair). West Virginia had lost in the NCAA championship game the year before (to California, 71-70), and West was the most celebrated college basketball player of his time. People came out in droves to see West play.
West was so good, both in college and in the NBA, that he had no fewer than three great nicknames — "Zeke from Cabin Creek", "The Logo", and "Mr. Clutch". There are a lot of great athletes who would love to have just one cool nickname, and West had (at least) three of them.
Going back to the book, the person who stated that Duke Rice had played for The Citadel was another friend of Thompson's named Gerald Tyrrell. Now, I was sure Tyrrell didn't make up that story. After all, there wasn't any reason for him to do so, and I suspected that part of it was true. It's just that it was rather obvious that The Citadel part of it wasn't true.
No one with the last name "Rice" is listed as having lettered for The Citadel in the school's media guide. I briefly considered the possibility that the last name was incorrect (and that Duke was a childhood nickname), but Hunter S. Thompson grew up in Louisville, and none of the players for The Citadel during that era were from Louisville, at least from what I was able to determine.
As it happened, it didn't take much effort (just some additional Googling) to come up with the answer. Duke Rice had in fact played college basketball, and had played in the Southern Conference for a school with a military component…but the school in question was Virginia Tech.
Rice is mentioned in this interview of Chris Smith, who starred for the Hokies from 1957-61. Smith described the 1960 Southern Conference championship game:
We had great athletes. Bobby Ayersman, Louie Mills, and Bucky Keller were each outstanding high school football quarterbacks. Dean Blake and Duke Rice did a great job during the game as they took turns guarding Jerry West. They held him to 14 points. When Jerry fouled out in the third quarter, we were tied 49 to 49. Unfortunately, the rest of the WV team responded well and they scored on several long shots during the final 10 minutes of the game.
What's more, it appears that Tyrrell's comment that Rice was "the only player of his time to shut down Jerry West" has some validity to it. Maybe it's an overstatement, but at least it's rooted in fact.
In the end, the Duke Rice story doesn't really have anything to do with The Citadel. It's more about a slightly blurry memory (which I suspect Thompson himself would have appreciated) and a lack of fact-checking by the book's editors. This particular book happens to be co-authored by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner.
It also illustrates the inherent danger of taking oral histories at face value. Anyone who follows baseball knows this all too well. The success of Lawrence Ritter's classic The Glory Of Their Times has led to a number of similar books, a lot of which are a little short in the truth-telling department.
It's time for the Plant of the Week. For this edition, the honoree is a canna lily, the Cleopatra canna, which when it comes to coloration basically has a mind of its own.
Warm weather can't get here fast enough…
Filed under: Basketball, Football, The Citadel | Tagged: Art Musselman, Big 10, Boston College, Chris Smith, Cleopatra canna, Colgate Darden, Curley Byrd, Dick Jones, Dick Wherry, Duke Rice, Gary Daniels, Google Books, Hunter S. Thompson, Ivy League, Jann Wenner, Jerry West, Karl Lieb, Maryland, McAlister Field House, NCAA, Norm Sloan, Ohio State, Pac-10, Ray Graves, Sanity Code, SEC, Seven Sinners, Southern Conference, The Citadel, The Glory of Their Times, Villanova, Virginia, Virginia Tech, VMI, Walter Byers, West Virginia |	Leave a comment »
Hoops season has arrived, and just in time
At first, I was going to wait for a couple of games to be played before I started posting about The Citadel's basketball team. I like to do that because I want to see how things are going to shake out in terms of personnel (who is getting the minutes), style of play, etc.
While everyone knows who the key players will be (Cam and Zach!), and who some of the regulars will be (like Austin Dahn and Bryan Streeter), there is still uncertainty about who will be manning other positions and featuring in the rotation. Can Cosmo Morabbi find his shot? Is it true that Matt Clark is going to thrive in the new offensive system? Just how quick is freshman DeVontae Wright? Are the two European-born grad student big guys named Mike any good?
Plus, Chuck Driesell is now the coach, and apparently he wants to play at a quicker tempo than his predecessor, Ed Conroy. In the exhibition victory over North Greenville, the Bulldogs had 71 possessions. In 2010, The Citadel averaged 61.1 possessions per game; in 2009, 64.8 ppg. Of course, it's only one game, and one that doesn't count.
However, I decided to make this ramble of a post, because I'm ready for the season to start. If I hadn't been excited for college hoops season already, Wednesday night's thriller between Maryland and the College of Charleston would have done the trick anyway. That was a fun game to watch, and also an instructive one for the Bulldogs.
In last season's two meetings with the CofC, The Citadel did a good job keeping Andrew Goudelock from exploding from beyond the arc. He was a combined 2-14 from 3-land in the two games. The Bulldogs are going to have to do that again this season when they match up against the Cougars. It won't be easy.
The Citadel opens its season on the road at Richmond. The Spiders, which run the "Princeton" offense, were very good last season, and are expected to be very good again this year. In 2010 Richmond narrowly missed out on winning the Atlantic 10 regular season title, and then advanced to the league tourney final. The Spiders received an at-large bid to the NCAAs, finishing 26-9 after a first-round loss to St. Mary's.
Richmond features 2010 A-10 player of the year Kevin Anderson, a 6'0″ guard who averaged nearly 18 points per game last season, and 6'10" NBA prospect Justin Harper, both seniors. They are two of eleven returning scholarship players. Richmond has a bevy of frontcourt players to complement Harper, but must find an outside shooter to replace Daniel Gonzalves, who has graduated. There appear to be several worthy candidates, however.
The Spiders' only real weakness is on the boards, and it cost them against St. Mary's, as Gaels big man Omar Samhan had a field day against them. (Of course, 2-seed Villanova couldn't handle Samhan either.)
There is a lot of anticipation for the upcoming season for Richmond fans, who expect a banner campaign — and it's hard to blame them for being excited.
As for the game itself, besides Richmond's talent, I'm a little concerned about the pace of play. If Driesell's Dogs really are going to be significantly more uptempo this season, then this will be a case of the Spiders wanting to play "slower" than the Bulldogs.
It has been unusual in recent years, of course, for a team to play at a slower pace than The Citadel, but when it has happened it has occasionally thrown the Bulldogs off their game. I remember a bad Iowa team beating The Citadel easily at McAlister Field House two years ago, partly because of its size, and partly because The Citadel seemed flummoxed by the Hawkeyes' style. The same has sometimes been true when playing Samford, another school that employs the Princeton offense (the 2009 SoCon tourney game still gives me nightmares).
If The Citadel is going to try to occasionally force the action this season, there will be times when the other team wants to slow the game down, and the Bulldogs are going to have to learn how to adjust. Friday night's game may provide a good test in that respect.
Earlier in the summer, it was generally believed that The Citadel would be participating in the Charleston Classic. I was very happy about that, as it would be a chance for the Bulldogs to play good competition early in the season, and possibly on television.
However, at the last minute Wofford was substituted as the SoCon's representative in the tournament. I was less than thrilled about that, and am even less thrilled now, because it's my understanding that The Citadel elected not to play in the tournament after originally agreeing to do so. Ed Conroy was game, but Chuck Driesell was apparently not interested.
I'm sure he had a good reason, but I would like to know what that reason was. The Charleston Classic is an ESPN tournament, and will get its fair share of promotion from the four-letter. In addition, at least two (if not all three) of the games The Citadel would have played in the tourney would have been on television.
There is nothing more frustrating than having a billion college basketball games on television, and almost none of them featuring your team. This season, The Citadel will apparently only appear on television three times — on SportSouth (at the College of Charleston), on FSN-Rocky Mountain against Colorado, and on KASY-TV, which will carry the game against New Mexico (but which probably won't be on Full Court, and thus will be unavailable outside the Albuquerque area).
ESPN will televise over 1200 college basketball games this season. None of them involve The Citadel.
The Citadel should have (at the very least) a competitive team this year, one that merits as much promotion and coverage as it can handle. As it is, the Bulldogs are so anonymous that the mammoth College Basketball Prospectus forgot to include The Citadel in its publication, the only one of 345 Division I programs to be left out.
The Bulldogs aren't playing in next season's Charleston Classic either (oddly, no SoCon school is). Maybe The Citadel is holding out for another chance to play in a ballroom in Cancun…
I'll close this post by throwing in a few links:
— Richmond game notes (.pdf): Notice that Chuck Driesell's name is misspelled. Also, it would have been nice if UR had referred to "The Citadel" on its cover page, but considering we can't get the name right on our uniforms, I can't complain about another school failing to do so.
— Richmond student newspaper, The Collegian, with a writeup: Link
— Here is an article on Tulane's exhibition victory over Loyola of New Orleans. I'm only linking it because I'm a little puzzled about Ben Cherry being eligible. More power to him.
— The "holy grail" for The Citadel's basketball program, of course, is the NCAA Tournament. For those unaware of how difficult this task has been for the Bulldogs, my manifesto from two seasons ago (slightly outdated but still mostly relevant): Link
— Do you remember how a feature story on Ed Conroy and the Bulldogs almost always wound up being about Pat Conroy? Of course you do. Well, prepare for more of the same, as scribes writing about Chuck Driesell and The Citadel will often revert to telling stories about Lefty.
I'm ready for some hoops…
Filed under: Basketball, The Citadel | Tagged: Andrew Goudelock, Atlantic 10, Austin Dahn, Ben Cherry, Bryan Streeter, Cameron Wells, Charleston Classic, Chuck Driesell, college basketball, College of Charleston, Colorado, Cosmo Morabbi, Daniel Gonzalves, DeVontae Wright, Ed Conroy, ESPN, Justin Harper, Kevin Anderson, Lefty Driesell, Maryland, Matt Clark, McAlister Field House, NCAA, New Mexico, North Greenville, Omar Samhan, Pat Conroy, Princeton, Richmond, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Samford, Southern Conference, St. Mary's, The Citadel, Tulane, Villanova, Zach Urbanus |	Leave a comment »
Football, Game 7: The Citadel vs. Appalachian State
Time and Place: 6:00 pm ET, Kidd Brewer Stadium, Boone, NC
Television: a tape-delayed broadcast on a local cable channel called MTN-18 that really needs to improve its website
This will be only the second Saturday night game played in Boone since 2001. I gather that many of the Mountaineer fans wanted a night game; why you would want one in the mountains in mid-October, I have no idea, but their wish has been granted. Appalachian State also played a Saturday night game against Presbyterian two years ago.
Note that I specified "Saturday night". In the last three seasons, the Mountaineers have played two Friday night games in Boone, one a I-AA semifinal against Richmond, the other a regular season game against Wofford televised (unfortunately for Wofford) on ESPN2. So a night game in Boone isn't a novelty; it's just a little unusual.
This preview is a fairly short one, because I am in the middle of a busy stretch that includes some travel. Among other things, that means I won't be able to even listen to the dulcet tones of Darren Goldwater on the radio. I won't find out how the game went until late Saturday night. I can probably make a decent guess as to how it will go, though.
Just a few brief observations, while I have a few minutes:
— Appalachian State is ranked #1 in both the FCS Coaches Poll and The Sports Network poll. The last time The Citadel defeated the top-ranked I-AA team, it was 1988, and the opponent was Marshall. That is still the most "electric" atmosphere for any game at Johnson Hagood Stadium that I have attended.
The upset on that sunny afternoon was keyed by an outstanding performance by the Bulldog defense. To stay competitive on Saturday night, The Citadel will need a similar effort from its defensive unit.
— Sam Martin was hurt during the Chattanooga game. This excerpt from Jeff Hartsell's Tuesday report in The Post and Courier concerned me:
…early in the second quarter, Martin got hit by Mocs tackle Nick Davison and another player. He got to his feet and called a timeout, to Higgins' consternation.
"I said, 'Sam, why did you call a timeout?' " Higgins said at his Monday news conference. "He said, 'Coach, I couldn't see anything.' So we got him off the field, and I determined it was a concussion. I'm not sure if that is what our medical staff is calling it, but we didn't put him back in the game. He was doing fine after the game.
"We'll keep giving him tests, but (Sunday) he was fine, (Monday) he was fine. I think he will be OK and we'll get him practicing this week."
Okay, a couple of things:
1) Kevin Higgins has considerable coaching expertise, but I'll go with the medical staff's determination on whether or not a player has a concussion.
2) If he really suffered a concussion, he wouldn't be practicing.
As to what really happened to Martin during the UTC game, I have no idea. I'm no doctor. It sounded a little bit like what happened to Notre Dame quarterback Dayne Crist during the Irish's game against Michigan State, though. Crist was reportedly diagnosed with an "ocular migraine". He left that game, but later returned (and played very well).
I might add that we are less likely to find out these days exactly what a player's medical condition is/was due to privacy laws, and I think that's a good thing. I also have full confidence in our medical/training staff.
— Alex Sellars tore his ACL and is done for the year. It's been a tough season for the fifth-year senior, who had previously suffered from back problems. He had some outstanding moments for the Bulldogs during his career; it's a shame there apparently won't be any more on the field.
— Armanti Edwards is now a Carolina Panther, meaning that in terms of success, he's gone from the penthouse to the outhouse. He gets paid better to stay in the outhouse, though.
— His successor, DeAndre Presley, has already been named SoCon offensive player of the week three times this season, including last week against Elon, when he amassed 374 yards of total offense and scored three touchdowns. Presley has yet to throw an interception this season in 118 attempts.
Presley was injured late in that game, but is expected to play on Saturday.
— The Mountaineers' offensive line has remained intact through all five games so far this season. Four of those five linemen also started every game last year, and the fifth (Daniel Kilgore) started on the line for every game in 2008.
— Speaking of experience, Appalachian State has three receivers (Matt Cline, CoCo Hillary, and big-play threat Brian Quick) who seem to have been playing for the Mountaineers since the late 1990s.
— As you can see, Appalachian State had lots of starters on offense coming back, save the quarterback position, and Presley obviously has made the transition from Edwards fairly seamless. However, the Mountaineers have some new faces on defense, and that's been a bit of a problem (at least, as big a problem as an undefeated team could have).
Appalachian State is allowing 254 passing yards per game and 381 total yards per contest, both below-average numbers. However, its average points allowed per game (23.8) isn't as bad as those peripheral statistics. App State games are like track meets, and opponents find it difficult to keep up. No lead is safe, either, as Chattanooga found out (ASU prevailing 42-41 after scoring 28 points in the fourth quarter).
— In last year's game against the Mountaineers, the Bulldogs just missed pulling off a big upset (30-27, OT). What The Citadel did well in that game was run the football, compiling 214 yards rushing while in a spread attack, including one of the more spectacular runs in the history of Johnson Hagood Stadium (Van Dyke Jones' 69-yard TD).
The Bulldogs will need more than 214 yards rushing to compete with App State on Saturday, at least as long as the offense continues to average less than 60 yards passing per game. Incidentally, The Citadel's 247.7 ypg rushing is actually less than ASU's (264.6 ypg).
— Appalachian State has already had ten different players score offensive touchdowns this season. Five of those players have scored three TDs or more (Presley has eight).
— If the Mountaineers punt, don't be confused when you hear Sam Martin's name mentioned. That's the name of the ASU punter, no relation (I'm guessing) to the Bulldog quarterback.
— You may have read that Appalachian State is going to conduct a feasibility study on the possibility of moving up to FBS (I-A). Of course, just last year fellow Southern Conference member Georgia Southern commissioned its own study on the topic, which I wrote about (probably too extensively) here.
In general, I am skeptical about schools moving up to FBS land; while fans and administrators dream of being the next Boise State, the truth is most schools are much more likely to become the next Louisiana-Monroe. However, I can understand why App State is exploring the terrain.
It's a strange time right now in the world of FCS. The CAA is a good example. Villanova is the reigning FCS champ, but has an offer to move to I-A and the Big East. Two league schools (Hofstra and Northeastern) dropped the sport last year. Georgia State and Old Dominion are now fielding teams and will join the league. Rhode Island is considering a move to the Northeast Conference (motto: we're cheaper).
That's just one league. Back in the not-so-gentle world of the Southern Conference, it wasn't that long ago the league included East Tennessee State, VMI, and Marshall. Things change, and it's important to evaluate things once in a while. After all, as recently as 1995, The Citadel studied I-A as a possible option.
I think Appalachian State is marginally better positioned to move to FBS than Georgia Southern. However, I greatly suspect that the feasibility study will show that ASU should stay right where it is, which I think would satisfy most of its fan base. However, if "right where it is" were to no longer exist, the school should have a better idea of what its options are.
There won't be a specific review post of the Appalachian State game on the blog next week. Writing the preview of the Georgia Southern game is going to be enough of a struggle as it is; I'll undoubtably take a look back at the ASU game as part of that preview. The TV schedule post will still happen, possibly a day later than normal.
Filed under: Football, The Citadel | Tagged: Alex Sellars, Appalachian State, Armanti Edwards, Boise State, Brian Quick, CAA, Carolina Panthers, Chattanooga, CoCo Hillary, Darren Goldwater, Dayne Crist, DeAndre Presley, East Tennessee State, Elon, FBS, FCS, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Hofstra, Jeff Hartsell, Johnson Hagood Stadium, Kidd Brewer Stadium, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Matt Cline, NEC, Northeastern Rhode Island, Notre Dame, Old Dominion, Presbyterian, Richmond, Sam Martin, Southern Conference, The Citadel, The Post and Courier, Van Dyke Jones, Villanova, VMI, Wofford |	Leave a comment »

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1917 and the Futile Pilgrimage
By Mark Meynell • April 23, 2020
We all know about the classic Quest. It's a literary staple from Homeric epic to contemporary fantasy. The hero must undertake a long and hazardous journey to rescue damsel/destroy artefact/carry message/save soul. From Odysseus to Aeneas, Mallory to Tolkien, Spielberg to Shrek, they're all at it. These plots may or may not get advanced by a MacGuffin, a term popularised by Hitchcock for plot-driving objects such as rings, maps or antidotes. But whatever the ingredients, the reader/listener/viewer is gripped by the need to complete said quest in the face of great jeopardy. And if there's no jeopardy, there's no grip.
For three centuries of English readers, the definitive quest narrative has been John Bunyan's. Second only to the Bible in importance for a person's formation, everybody used to read The Pilgrim's Progress. Dr. Johnson, no less, declared that "the great merit of the book [is] that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing." What sets it apart, however, is this simple fact: rather than a plot to participate in vicariously, perhaps as a distraction or enchantment, Bunyan contended that his was truly a universal quest, designed to set up the primary contours of the saved life.
Inevitably, the book has nothing like its former influence today, but it still has a significant legacy. My sense is that this can be detected even in a hit movie like 1917.
A Quest: Into the Wild
1917 compresses its entire quest into just twenty-four hours but the ingredients are all there. Unlikely heroes, an absurd mission, lethal odds, and a binary outcome lead to mission accomplished…or not. Here, there is no "try." Mendes' film is further intensified by its celebrated full immersion-technique of appearing to use only one take. The cinematic experience is visceral, doing for World War I what Saving Private Ryan did for the D-Day landings.
Two young, English soldiers, Blake and Schofield, are sent on a do-or-die mission by the jaded General Erinmore (Colin Firth). Communications are down so they must deliver a message to two battalions of the 2nd Devons (currently nine miles away) by hand. German forces had withdrawn but it was now clear they were by no means in the disarray that the Devons hoped to exploit. It was a trap, evidently weeks in the planning. They had retreated to heavily fortified lines—the Hindenburg Line. The Devons' Col. MacKenzie simply has to call off their dawn attack. "If you fail," says Erinmore to the two men, "it will be a massacre."
Now, some artistic licence comes into play here. Historically speaking, the Germans did retreat (in Operation Alberich). They left the intervening territory scorched and studded with mines and booby-traps. Anything of potential use to the allies' cause was systematically destroyed. It was a hell of Isengardian proportions. Furthermore, director/co-writer Sam Mendes pieced the story together from his grandfather Alfred's tales from the trenches as well as the wider historical record. Alfred Mendes was indeed required to run through no-man's-land with a message—for which he was later awarded the Military Medal in 1918. We discover early on that Schofield has already won his, and it is clear that success in the narrative's mission would easily warrant the award. Finally, the weeks of Spring 1917 were undoubtedly a chaotic and terrifying phase of the war for Britain and France.
However, the likelihood that the fate of nearly 2,000 men depends on just a couple of squaddies (as in the film) is slim, although not unthinkable. Furthermore, how a large detachment found themselves so far ahead by the time the enemy's ruse was rumbled is never clear; nor is the reason why others in the original British line (led by Andrew Scott's character, Lt. Leslie) are still attacking the evacuated German trenches. Communications, even when lines got cut, were constantly attended to and supplemented by other methods (such as carrier pigeons).
It seems the greatest Quest narrative of them all is as relevant, and needed, as ever.
Mark Meynell
Still, these pedantic quibbles are small-fry. 1917 is all about the vivid and traumatic experience of war's chaos, horror, and absurdity. With Blake and Schofield, we are thrust into the horror of trenches and no-man's-land, and it all feels very real: the mud and gore, vermin and stench, tree stumps and bloating corpses. No one knows what is happening. One moment, the man standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you marches forward, the next he is face down in a blood-streamed puddle. It was just the luck of the draw.
Like Bunyan's Pilgrim, Schofield must prevail over appalling obstacles. For both, the temptations to abandon the mission are legion. Schofield must persevere despite his stunned grief at Blake's death, anxiety about infectious wounds, trauma of being buried alive, and the constant threat of snipers. Nor can he afford to recuperate in the sanctuary of the cellar where he finds a young woman and orphaned baby. The quest is all. On his life depend two thousand lives. He must continue. Like Pilgrim's before him, this journey has value only if completed. Otherwise, it is futility.
But of course, Schofield succeeds. And we are with him all the way. So far, so archetypal, and the film is none the worse for that. It is a remarkable experience.
But then something weird happens.
A Cycle: There and Back Again
The film's closing image is of Schofield leaning against a tree. He has been looking at photos of his family; it's the first time we discover he even has one. And then, at last, he closes his eyes. He sleeps. Fade to black.
But the thing is, we have been here before. This is where the film began: Blake lying asleep under his helmet in a beautiful field full of spring flowers. The camera then pulls back to his companion, Schofield, also asleep but up against a tree. Schofield's sleep thus brackets the entire film. It is an elegant device, common, in fact, in the Bible (termed inclusio by commentators). But its significance is quite profound.
Dial back a few scenes. How does Schofield first chance upon the 2nd Devons? He's been propelled downriver by overwhelming torrents, having just escaped another sniper in Écoust. It is the one stage of his journey entirely beyond his control but it results in him being washed up in rocky shallows, defeated and despairing. He then glances up, catching intermittent billows of muffled singing. It's ethereal, angelic almost. But the music has a strange familiarity and we soon realise that, of all things, they're intoning that classic, lamenting African American spiritual, The Wayfaring Stranger. It is almost a minor-key lullaby. Schofield scrambles up the bank and into the forest where he finds hundreds of soldiers resting. We could almost be in Elysium, ancient Greece's Underworld resting place for heroes. Schofield sits with them and relishes this scene of almost unimaginable balm and beauty:
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Travelling through this world below
There is no sickness, no toil, nor danger
In that bright land to which I going
I'm going there to see my Father
And all my loved ones who've gone on
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
I know dark clouds will gather 'round me
I know my way is hard and steep
But beauteous fields arise before me
Where God's redeemed, their vigils keep
I'm going there to see my Mother
She said she'd meet me when I come
So, I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home.
It is the perfect song choice. Schofield has just crossed over a river, for one thing. And he has been "travelling through this world below", which of course originally refers to our world, even though Schofield's experiences might more reasonably be associated with the world below ours. He is not a member of this battalion and so is unknown, a wayfaring stranger who is passing through. He too is spurred on by hope through both the hard and steep way and the beauteous fields. Yet despite his grief for the "loved ones who've gone on" (Blake is the primary example) we know by the end that it is a different hope that sustains him: reunion with his wife and children. And Blake's last words?
"Will you write to my mum for me? Tell her I wasn't scared."
The film's agony is that the river Schofield crossed is no Jordan River. It grants none of the finality that Bunyan's Pilgrim receives when he crosses the River of Death into the Celestial City. For he does not enter a "bright land"; instead he is funnelled into another war zone. Even though he can rest against his tree after completing his mission, we know that this cycle will be repeated. This thought is made explicit by Col. MacKenzie's response (played with searing economy and latent violence by Benedict Cumberbatch) once he accepted Gen. Erinmore's command to stand down:
"I hoped today would be a good day. Hope is a dangerous thing."
He goes on, "There's only one way this war ends: last man standing."
For Erinmore's communiqué doesn't actually protect soldiers from the fight; it merely postpones it. Schofield can rest from his heroics, but there is no knowing what tomorrow will bring.
This is what makes it all seem so futile. There is such little progression; it is more like an infernal hamster-wheel. Or consider the nightmarish Merry-Go-Round painted just the year before the film's setting in 1916 by London artist Mark Gertler. What should be a source of innocent delight and joy, especially for the young, has mutated into an instrument of torture. The individuals depicted are dressed in stylised military uniforms, their faces suspended in rictus grins. This circus-favourite is in constant motion, so dismounting is impossible. There is no escape. To my mind, this is one of the most powerful images from the period.
Merry-Go-Round by Mark Gertler (1916)
A nightmare is surely Mendes' intended effect of the surreal and stunningly shot night scene in the blazing Écoust. Before the end of this war, countless thousands more will die. Bravery in such circumstances is absurdly unbearable. As Andrew Scott's embittered Lt. Leslie comments on learning of Blake and Schofield's task, "Nothing like a strip of ribbon to cheer up a widow." We now better understand Schofield's unexpected disposal of his medal early on. Just what on earth was the point? Who wouldn't rather return home in person than have his family receive a medal in his place?
1917's narrative inclusio is cinematically and emotionally satisfying. In the grand scheme of things, however, its vision of reality is anything but.
A Trajectory: From Here to Eternity
Now it should be said that Mendes does not leave his audience entirely adrift. There are glimmers, but that is probably the best that can be said of them. The film takes place on 6th April, two and a half years since the outbreak of World War I. But for American viewers, it should have special significance. That was the day on which the USA declared war on Germany. It was thus the war's last significant turning point. But only history buffs could possibly know that! Nothing on screen even hints at it.
So we must conclude that, for all its individual cases of heroism and self-sacrifice, this war of attrition leaves little grounds for true hope. Of course, the spiritual sung in the forest holds out hope for life after life. And for the majority of those soldiers preparing to go over the top, they would have taken comfort from that, chiming as it did with the Christian worldview that permeated pre-World War I culture. They might never have given it any thought previously, but with their mortality brought to the forefront, many would have sought solace in precisely this reality.
Yet that is not the way most people today think, especially on this side of the Atlantic. They simply lack the intellectual substructure that makes the hope on offer seem even remotely plausible. This is because most in the West still live with the residue, if not the furniture and framework of Modernism. This has slyly appropriated the structure of a Christian worldview but shrunk it by removing the divine elements:
Where there was Divine Providence, there is now an arbitrary commitment to human progress.
Where there was sin to be rescued from, there is still a liberation required, but it is couched in terms of liberation from the so-called superstitions of religion and the mystical.
Where there was a rescue made possible by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, there is now the self-sacrifice of revolution (in which, as Stalin would say, eggs must be cracked in order to make the omelette). This is what will usher in that liberation.
Where there was a hold-out for a new society in an other-worldly kingdom (as articulated in the "Wayfaring Stranger" spiritual), now the best that can be offered is some heaven on earth, a utopia built on capitalist or communist foundations.
In these and many other ways, then, the Christian worldview has been contracted, shrink-wrapped and desiccated.
But here's the horror. The "war to end all wars" blew any nineteenth century utopian aspirations to smithereens. For many, the possibility of a divine providence—as well as personality at the heart of reality—now seemed utterly implausible, obscene even.
Yet many others came to believe, not just despite the horrors of the trenches, but through them. Oxford's Inklings were a case in point. Tolkien and the Lewises (both Jack and Warnie), Barfield and Dyson all endured and survived the trenches. Many of their dearest friends did not. But in their various ways, each grasped that despite the noxious evidence of their senses while on the fields of France and Belgium, this was not the totality of reality. They had come to see that Bunyan had articulated truth, that the Bible reveals a trajectory for life that transcends all these horrors. We really are wayfaring strangers in this world, just as Peter describes the Turkish recipients of his first letter (1 Peter 1:1). Or as Paul can say without any glib deprecation of the torments that life can subject people to—remember, he himself endured many of the worst of these—"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
A modernist living within a shrink-wrapped and reductionist reality can never say that. Certainly not with any confidence. Sam Mendes doesn't seem to be offering the possibility. But, with the prominence of "Wayfaring Stranger" in the film (whose melody is in fact prefigured in the soundtrack from the start), it is nevertheless offering it.
So it seems the greatest Quest narrative of them all is as relevant, and needed, as ever.
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Home > Politics > Fillon, Macron, Le Pen :Today's Robin Hoods ... rob the poor to give to the (...)
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ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Fillon, Macron, Le Pen… jouent les « Robin des riches »
by Pierre Duquesne and Gregory Marin
Fillon, Macron, Le Pen :Today's Robin Hoods ... rob the poor to give to the rich!
Translated Sunday 16 April 2017, by Hervé Fuyet
Fillon promises 50 billion in tax cuts. The second, Macron, 20 billion. But they are careful not to say who will pay the bill. As for the FN, it stubbornly refuses to tax the rich.
"We should stop using taxation as a punitive weapon," François Fillon proclaimed again on Wednesday in Lyon. He promises to give 40 billion euros to businesses and owners of capital, especially through the reduction in corporate tax (to 25%), and the elimination of the tax on wealth (ISF). To families, he offers a 10 billion drop in "tax on labour." But he is careful not to point out by what all that will be offset. This "tax break" will initially be funded "by the necessary reduction of public spending," he wrote in his program.
The tax cuts will also be "compensated" by an increase in the sales tax, that will rise from to 22% from 20%. "No one realizes it when they pay that tax", say economists Henri Sterdyniak and Dany Lang. But the sales tax is an unfair tax because it affects more the poor (who consume all their income) than the richest (who save). Specifically, the 10% poorest see 12.5% of their income swallowed up by this indirect income tax. The tax hammer with Fillon will strike every day in the supermarket! The candidate of the right "will take 300 euros per year from the pocket of every employee paid at the minimum wage" stated Jean-Luc Mélenchon. And what else will Fillon do? "He will give back 15,000 euros per year to each millionaire in France! " As if that was not enough, wealthier people will benefit from a discount of 2.5 billion euros on their income tax through "raising the ceiling of the family quotient."
Macron and Fillon take good care of the Rich
Emmanuel Macron, likewise, did not forget to care for the rich. At first glance, his fiscal program is less brutal. He did not want to touch the sales tax, but still pampers shareholders. These will now be exempt from wealth tax, which will apply only to real estate (excluding primary residence). That's not all. He invented a new type of tax shield for income from bank interest, dividends, capital gains and any income from movable capital. These would therefore taxed at a flat rate of 30%, including social security contributions and income tax. This principle of "flat tax", which is also found in the program of François Fillon, constitutes an offering of $ 3 billion to the richest. To get closer to the people, the former banker has indeed promised a reduction in residence tax (10 billion euros) for households of working and middle classes. Except that in reality 40% of households already are exempt from this tax. It is not clear that in the end households will benefit from this measure.
As for the Front National, it also surfs on ambiguities.
While it proposes to maintain the ISF (wealth tax), Marine Le Pen's program, however, plans to cut "low yield taxes" - a class to which the ISF could belong in view of what it yields ... And if Le Pen says she refuses "any increase" of VAT and that she will "decrease by 10% the income tax for the first three lowest tax categories", she is careful not to mention a drop in the sales tax. She does not advocate either, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon does: a better progressiveness of the income tax ... the FN, never takes anything from the richest! In tax matters, the only clearly visible measures are in their favor. The pretext being that it helps "strengthen intergenerational solidarity," Le Pen would allow "transmission without taxation of 100,000 euros for each child every five years (instead of fifteen years now), and to increase the ceiling for donations without taxation to grandchildren to 50,000 euros, also every five years."


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