Throwback Thursday: The Founding of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC)

from Princeton University Press

Today marks 71 days until the start of the 2013-14 NESCAC men's ice hockey season on November 15th. In 1971, Bowdoin won its first ECAC hockey championship and future Conn College program founder and head coach Doug Roberts represented the California Golden Seals in the NHL All-Star game.

71 was also the year the New England Small College Athletic Conference, or NESCAC, was founded. As the 'Cac's official site says:

Founded in 1971, the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) is a group of eleven highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities that share a similar philosophy for intercollegiate athletics. The Conference was created out of a concern for the direction of intercollegiate athletic programs, and remains committed to keeping a proper perspective on the role of sport in higher education.

The league had eleven members in 1971, only Union College was a charter member while Connecticut College was not. Williams' President John Sawyer, the first chair of the NESCAC Presidents' Conference Committee, articulated the philosophy of the league: "The largest feasible participation in a wide variety of sports well coached by high-quality people who remain genuinely interested in the students' personal growth and genuinely mindful of the educational goals of the enterprise."


This stress of the educational experience, which includes shorter seasons than other Division III schools and a ban on NCAA postseason play prior to 1993, has not always been easy. Union resurrected its hockey program, dormant since World War II, in 1975. Led by former Red Wing coach Ned Harkness, the Dutchmen immediately became a D-III hockey powerhouse, though as with all things that seem too good to be true, it was.  Numerous recruiting violations eventually lead to an ultimatum for Union from the NESCAC and the school's departure from the conference. In 1982, Conn College replaced Union to return the number of member institutions to 11.

In 1993, the NESCAC lifted its postseason ban for all sports except football. The conference maintained its perception as an academically oriented conference full of student-athletes and not athlete-students. This 1994 feature on the NESCAC from Sports Illustrated waxes poetic about the 'Cac and includes laudatory quotes like this one from the late owner of the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner (Williams '52). "What Williams and the other schools understand is that you learn just as much on the line of scrimmage as you do in the library stacks," Steinbrenner says. "But the point is, a student shouldn't just drink from the gymnasium fountain but from all the fountains."

In the ensuing two decades, the 'Cac has proved it can handle the national stage, as this long list of national titles shows. The list includes Middlebury's record eight Division-III men's hockey titles. In 1999, the NESCAC formally became a playing conference when it started to host post-season conference championship. Since 2001, the NESCAC hockey champion has received an automatic bid into the NCAA D-III hockey tournament.

But not everyone has seen the expansion into post-season play as a positive thing for the NESCAC and its core principles.  In the stats oriented 2005 book "Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values," William Bowen and Sarah Levin argue that the drive to produce more competitive athletic teams has led to the NESCAC diluting the academic quality of the student body. 

Whether or not the academic values of the 'Cac have been compromised, recruiting in the league has certainly gotten more complicated in the conference's 40 year history, especially in hockey. At his retirement presser back in March, legendary Boston University coach Jack Parker lamented the ever increasing age of college hockey players. While Parker coached in D-I, the situation is not much better in D-III. Even a cursory glance at a NESCAC roster will show that players are at least one, if not two or three years, older than their classmates. The small number of college hockey spots (138 programs across divisions, as compared to 347 basketball programs in D-I alone) creates a competitive recruiting atmosphere that often necessitates repeated high school years at prep schools, PG years and extra seasons of junior hockey after high school.

While the NESCAC may not be as pure or as academically oriented as it was in 1971, it still represents one of the most pure - perhaps the most pure- academically oriented experiences in collegiate athletics. So Congrats on 42 years NESCAC, here's to 42 more.