It ain’t too complicated. No, you’re not messing with Murder Incorporated, but those of you who come on down to Smith Field or Jackson Field this Saturday will notice a familiar sight: Wesleyan hosting a NESCAC team from Maine. Stop by next Saturday and you’ll see another team from Maine. Here’s something you won’t see, though: a Little Three team dropping by Middletown. And while I realize the NESCAC scheduling powers don’t have the easiest job in the world, it’s imbalances such as these that they really need to be more cognizant of.

Let’s get to the main issue, at least from a fan’s standpoint: All Little Three games are on the road. That means the field hockey and men’s and women’s soccer teams have to do battle with arguably the two most important foes on their schedule, Amherst and Williams, on the road. And it’s not like this is just some petty high school rivalry we’re talking about: This is a series that has continued virtually uninterrupted since 1910 and, with all due respect to the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) rivalry among the Maine schools, is easily the NESCAC’s most heated. You’d never see the Yankees and Red Sox being forced to play all 19 games in the Toil—excuse me, Cathedral—would you? And that’s a rivalry consisting of a bunch of overpaid superstars who pretend to care to appease the fans and media. There are a total of 13 seniors on the three teams, and for the NESCAC to force them to play what could be the final Little Three games of their careers in some vast expanse of empty space in rural Massachusetts, instead of on their home field in front of a capacity crowd, is simply unjust.

(For the record, I’ll point out here that Bates has been given the same treatment: the Bobcats traveled to Bowdoin during the second week of the season and will finish the year at Colby. Bowdoin and Amherst, meanwhile, have both CBB/Little Three games at home this year, meaning both will be on the road for both contests in 2010.)
But three-way rivalries such as these aren’t the only issue at play here. Hearken back to the beginning of the column, when I noted that three of Wesleyan’s four home games this year are against the Maine schools. Since the schedule rotates between home and away each year, this means that, barring a complete schedule reorganization, all three of these games will be on the road next fall. That’s kind of a problem.

As you’re probably aware, Wesleyan’s endowment has taken quite a hit in the past year, leading to across-the-board budget cuts. This has been a problem affecting every NESCAC school, which is why the conference is now having men’s and women’s basketball teams travel together to cut down on transportation costs. Scheduling decisions such as these, however, completely contradict the NESCAC’s goal of helping its member institutions cut down on athletic costs. Other than men’s ice hockey—which competes against 10 teams from the ECAC-East as part of conference play—I can only recall one other occasion in four years here when a team was forced to take three regular-season overnight trips: football in 2006, which had to play Middlebury, Colby, and Bates on the road. While that’s certainly costly, such a situation only presents itself every four years (since the season-opening opponent switches between Middlebury and Tufts every two years), rather than every other year. Wesleyan isn’t the only team with three overnights—Middlebury, Colby, and Bowdoin, the latter of which plays at all three Connecticut squads this year, also have three such trips.

Again, I’m not saying that avoiding scheduling issues such as these is easy. In fact, given their remote locations, Middlebury and Colby pose difficulties in this regard—there’s basically no way to rearrange their 2009 schedules so that they have only two overnights. The NESCAC does, however, have the ability to more evenly distribute these long road trips. By changing Wesleyan’s game against Bowdoin this year to a road affair, the NESCAC could have eased the strain on both schools’ travel budgets. (I realize this would set off a chain reaction of sorts, but here’s how it can be done: Have Wesleyan play at Bowdoin, Bowdoin plat at Bates, and Amherst play at Wesleyan. This way, each team still has four or five home games—with nine opponents, it’s impossible to achieve a 50/50 split—and no additional overnight trips have been added. Not to mention the added bonus of solving the Little Three dilemma mentioned earlier.)

I don’t want this to seem like an anti-NESCAC crusade. As I’ve said, I realize the complexity of the task that faces the NESCAC’s higher-ups. I’ve also interviewed the NESCAC powers that be for a number of articles; they were extremely helpful, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they always keep the best interests of the conference and its member institutions and student-athletes in mind. Nonetheless, I urge the NESCAC administrators to seriously consider the recommendations I’ve outlined in this column. The NESCAC prides itself on being the most competitive conference in Division III, and there is no reason that reputation should be tarnished by a pair of fixable schedule issues.