Who to blame for a losing season?
By JP Sinclair | Business Manager
It has been argued recently that head football coach Joe Polizzi is to blame due to recent shortcomings with the success of the football program. However, it is not Polizzi that needs to change, but the conference that the program plays in. The UIndy football team plays in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC), which is the crème de la crème of football conferences in the world of Division II football.
The GLIAC has had a team win the national title four of the last seven seasons. It is a conference that is extremely hard for a team to compete in. Grand Valley State University (GVSU), which has won four national titles and had a consecutive winning streak of 48 regular-season games.
The median enrollment of students in the GLIAC is 6,616.5 per school, which is 2,000 more than the University of Indianapolis. According to Athletic Director Sue Willey, two GLIAC schools—Grand Valley State and Wayne State (WSU)—have enrollments exceeding 20,000, making it more difficult for UIndy to compete in a sport that relies heavily on numbers. With 4,600 students, UIndy is the ninth-largest school in the 12-team GLIAC, according to conference statistics.
Three of the six teams in last year’s Super Regional were GLIAC schools, including GVSU, WSU, as well as Ashland University (AU). [Compared to all the other schools in the conference that played the teams that went to the regional, the Greyhounds lost an average 13 points to those teams, which based on average is the best any team played those teams.] The ‘Hounds lost to GVSU by 28, AU by seven, and WSU by six. The next closest team was Northwood University which lost on average by 20 points and didn’t even play GVSU.
As far as Polizzi and his ability as a head coach, some would say that our football program has discipline issues. But of the top NCAA Division II Academic All-American producing schools of the 2000s, Indy is fifth, based largely on the numbers from the football team.
Polizzi has long been scrutinized as a conservative play caller, but offensive line coach and now offensive coordinator Todd Carter has been the play caller and has been since mid-way through last season.
Another factor stacked against this program is that they play in a northern based league despite being the southern-most football school in the GLIAC. This is because the team plays in the place of Lake Superior State which doesn’t have a football program. “We’re playing teams up in (Michigan’s Upper Peninsula),” Willey said. “Our travel is significant.”
Polizzi’s 83-87-1 record over 16 seasons is actually pretty good considering the odds. In 2008, football had five All-GLIAC honors including three Second Team Defense members. Polizzi has long been considered a master of recruiting; getting transfers from top schools in Division I and recruiting top prospects from local high schools.
The problem is the conference. The Great Lakes Valley Conference, which is the conference all other UIndy sports participate in, is considering adding football. According to GLVC Associate Commissioner Tom Daeger, the GLVC is studying whether to add football after William Jewell College joins in the 2011-12 school year. UIndy will need to give a two year notice to the GLIAC saying that they will be switching conferences. There is a semi-GLVC football conference now, called the Great Lakes Football Conference, in which three GLVC schools compete, including Kentucky Wesleyan (who the ‘Hounds have dominated in non-conference play the past two years), St. Joseph College and Missouri-S&T. The question for Willey isn’t what to do with Polizzi, but where the program needs to play to garner success.
I don’t even know where to start with this article. I think I facepalmed myself into a concussion the first time I read this.
First off if you can’t tell the difference between Wayne State University (Warriors of the GLIAC, based in Michigan) and Wayne State College (Wildcats of the NSIC, the team that actually made the super regional last year), then you shouldn’t be writing this. Your credibility is shot and wounded only to have it completely bleed out when you bring up enrollment numbers. Do you like getting upended by a team like Hillsdale that has 1200 less students than UIndy?
For as long as I’ve been a student at Northern Michigan, the Greyhounds have been the epitome of mediocre finishing a game or so around 500. This year the conference had great improvement in teams like NMU, Findlay and Northwood, and also had three teams make the super regional: GVSU, Saginaw Valley, and Hillsdale. Despite this, UIndy still had the 8th best passing defense in the country and first in the GLIAC for opponent’s 4th down conversion percentage. There are bright spots on this team, and some preliminary talks up here at NMU, have the Greyhounds as the sleeper team in the GLIAC next year. It would be simple to look at if you would have simply looked at stats from gliac.org or even your own athletics page.
In light of your defense of the former coach’s recruiting, only 21 players on the roster are from out of state and half of those are from the Chicago area. We have seven players from Ohio and Michigan, states where we play most of our opponents. Is anyone following those football rich markets? A third of the players are recruited from the immediate Indianapolis area, how masterful is that? There are examples of both alums and alumni coaches who have suggested top high school talent to the coaching staff only to be ignored.
We were fortunate to beat the weaker teams in the conference. Of the four teams UIndy beat this year, they had a combined total of five wins. It’s a tough conference no doubt, but overlooking the lack of recruiting and problems at the top is something that could no longer be overlooked.