Assessing the SoCon, post realignment

[FurmAlum]

Ran into FU recruit (from Clarksville HS) Blake Hundley's dad today. He saw the Paladin Club sticker on my car and tracked me down in the hall near my office. He is very excited about Blake going to Furman and told me as soon as they visited in Nov. and talked with Coach's Hendrix and Quarles, it was a done deal. The freshmen players were supposed to report 6/5, but that's been moved to July. But at least they are still scheduled to report to school.

[Michael in Raleigh]

Thanks for all the feedback.

Regarding the idea of whether the SoCon is/ought to be a football league or a basketball league, I ask, "Why not both?"

Judging by the recruiting Coach Hendrix is doing, Furman has the chance in the next few years to really make some noise in the FCS playoffs. Wofford has struggled to make it much past the quarterfinals, except for once, but they're a reliable contender every single year. The Citadek has been around the top 25 of and on.

Of the three non-military public schools in the conference, I think the league should expect a lot out of two of them: Nooga and ETSU. ETSU, because they didn't invest this much to restart football only to half azz in their efforts. Chattanooga because they have had winning in the past and they want to get back to it ASAP.

It would be unreasonable to expect much out of WCU. They have hardly even tried in 35 years. Even the fans on their own message boards say that.

Football can return to former glory while basketball continues to capitalize on recent years' success. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

[Affirm]

The academic thing puzzles me a little. Furman is test optional- no ACT or SAT required. A few years ago I did interviews for the admissions office and I got a girl in who had cratered on her SAT and chose not to submit it. But when they were seniors Dejuan Bell told my daughter he was stressing over his SAT because Furman was requiring a high score. He did fine because he was always a very good student. But it almost sounds like we require more from fb players than we do from regular rich kids. That doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t know if what you’re saying is correct or not. But here is a reason we should require more from fb players than “regular rich kids”: Furman is obligated to PAY (scholarship) the former to come, and they have less time to study because they have to spend a lot of time on their job (fb); while the latter has to pay Furman to come. Of course, if you are referring to non-scholarship players, the differentiation would not make that much sense.

[Affirm]

Thanks for all the feedback.

Regarding the idea of whether the SoCon is/ought to be a football league or a basketball league, I ask, "Why not both?"

Judging by the recruiting Coach Hendrix is doing, Furman has the chance in the next few years to really make some noise in the FCS playoffs. Wofford has struggled to make it much past the quarterfinals, except for once, but they're a reliable contender every single year. The Citadek has been around the top 25 of and on.

Of the three non-military public schools in the conference, I think the league should expect a lot out of two of them: Nooga and ETSU. ETSU, because they didn't invest this much to restart football only to half azz in their efforts. Chattanooga because they have had winning in the past and they want to get back to it ASAP.

It would be unreasonable to expect much out of WCU. They have hardly even tried in 35 years. Even the fans on their own message boards say that.

Football can return to former glory while basketball continues to capitalize on recent years' success. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

Based on your comment on WCU, I will say they would be 1 more candidate we could also try bring along (along with Wofford and Citadel and VMI) if Furman would decide to go the Pioneer League route.

[Affirm]

Where did any talk of realignment originate? I didn’t know it was on the table.

We don’t need any more non-football schools in the SoCon.

I respectfully disagree. The SoCon is a basketball conference. Football will not bring in the revenue to keep the conference in business.

If I ran the world, I'd drop VMI and add Kennesaw. Heck, any one of those Big South teams would take a SoCon invite. If you add a program like Kennesaw, exact a blood price if they ever decide to move to the FBS.

With their new basketball chops, I'd also have no issue with brining back in some non-football schools with decent basketball programs (Belmont, Lipscomb, CofC, etc.). Reduce the need for non-conference games.

Not just blood from KSU in their contract for leaving, but also at least 1 arm and 1 leg plus maybe some additional fingers and toes. Or actually just $100,,000,000.00. They are going FBS.

[Affirm]

Why did Furman football drop off after 2005… that's a dead horse we've whipped a lot. I'll try to be quick about it: very little administration support, tougher academic requirements, facilities were tired. Then we got a boost with a stadium upgrade, admin engagement, but our coaching was inconsistent and we played without an identity. And another big factor our SoCon brothers were out-recruiting us. One more big factor - limited player depth.

Under Hendrix > IMO things have changed quickly. Furman football is building an identity, impressive depth, we've got great coaches, and the players are bought in. Recruiting has improved year after year, and the payoff of CCH's fourth class of recruits is considered one of the top classes in FCS.

Astro, you make a great list.. Thanks.

I am piggybacking on Jackal here but I think there are Two issues still that we always have to overcome. One you mention is academics. I wish there was more equality here but it is what it is.

The other is what Jackal said and wasn't listed here. The enormous proliferation of G5 and new programs. Jackal makes a great listing. Instead of Furman and program X both getting 10 great players (from 20 great total players available).. now w Woff being D1 and Mercer and Coastal and etc etc etc we all get 1 or 2 of those 20 players. DILUTION. Probably why the coaches are going with a wide net in recruiting!

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I also have to agree with the lack of identity in the later 2008-2017 or something. Our OL play (not the OL PLAYERS !) was just weird and convoluted for several years. We seemed to have some scheme where we struggled to keep Presbyterian out of our backfield. Literally 3DL would break through and sack our QB with us having 5 OL AND a RB to block! We were losing when we had 6 and the opponent brought 3 DL ... that was painful and, honestly, without explanation:

As Furmanoid said here:
quote=Furmanoid post_id=27349 time=1587561314 user_id=431]
I’m hoping it was just a coaching thing that is now fixed. All through that span we just looked physically soft to me on both the ol and dL. On D the plan seemed to be to lure the opponent well inside our red zone and then draw a penalty or turnover. On O we seemed to think controlling the los was old fashioned or something and we were too smart for that. But this new guy is all about getting physical and athletic on the line. We aren’t there yet. But I think we’ll get there.

As Jackal said, that level of D and special teams with almost NO offense ( counting on +12 turnovers) is just unsustainable. This was 2013 I think and probably kept us hoping longer than we should have.

All that said, we need to overcome academics and find a way to recruit. Hope to see it. CH is doing great things. Need to break through 8-5 soon and hit a second / third round playoff game in next few years !!

“Overcome academics at Furman” is an oxymoron. I hope what is meant is “we need to be able to have good athletics along with academics.” There are schools similar to Furman that are more highly rated academically than Furman (Colgate, Bucknell, Lafayette, Holy Cross, Davidson) that have athletics at a level approximately equal to or in some areas better than Furman. We don’t need to literally “overcome” academics. Actually, we need to improve academics while maintaining or improving quality in athletics.

I think the academics requirement was an easy crutch and excuse for a long time.

Yes, we have higher entrance requirements than many programs. No, we cannot just accept every JuCo transfer that can bubble in his name.

That just means we have to be better.

Edited my original post to add Richmond to the list of higher ranked liberal arts colleges.
No, we do not need to be talking about “overcoming academics”.

Granted, we're better than Richmond in football right now.

I'm wondering Russ Huesman wishes he'd stayed at UTC. I imagine the Richmond folks won't be as patient with a rebuild as the UTC crowd was.

We may be better than Richmond in FB right now, but if you look at the overall last 14 years, they’ve been better than us in that overall time frame: 12 playoff wins and 1 FCS Championship. In the same 14 years, we have 2 playoff wins. We may be catching up with them.

[The Jackal]

Interesting bit of information I had not had occasion to look up until now -

The only team to draw a bigger home gate at Georgia State last year was Army. The Furman game (albeit, their opening home game) outdrew every other team on their schedule, including App State.

[Stumpy]

Not really surprising. Atlanta has a lot of Furman alum, and GSU had just beaten UT.

[The Jackal]

Not really surprising. Atlanta has a lot of Furman alum, and GSU had just beaten UT.

No question, but it wasn't particularly close.

The Furman game drew a reported 3,000 more fans than App State and 8,000 more than South Alabama. Furman's got a lot of Atlanta-are alums, but so do a lot of schools on their schedule.