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| The Lurking Dog Manifesto |
| Before the term "blog" was widely used, I started this website as way to help people find a Pioneer Football League message board. There were links to the message board and local newspapers. Ten years ago, it was the only site devoted to the PFL. News on the league (and its imminent expansion) was scarce. Fans deserved better. So I posted what I could find in local newspapers and added my own commentary. The PFL eventually developed its own website, and Jim Harbaugh's stint as head coach at San Diego brought the league press coverage that persisted even after he left for Stanford. This website no longer had a purpose, but I was having fun, so I kept it going. Men my age are now fathers of college football players. It's a good time for me to retire this website and become slightly less fanatical. This is my last update. I've seen the Pioneer Football League make a lot of progress. What started as a piece of Division III football transplanted into I-AA has become a league that Sagarin rated higher than the SWAC (Grambling, Southern, et al.) in 2008. Not bad for a league that doesn't allow athletic aid ("football scholarships"). PFLers are now beating top squads from other conferences: Dayton's 2007 road win over playoff bound Fordham is a notable example. Now entering its 17th season, the league has apparently acknowledged what everyone else has known for years--that the NCAA will not create a Division I subdivision and playoff for nonscholarship football. At this point, the PFL and the Ivy League have the only nonscholarship teams in Division I. But the Ivy has no interest in either a new subdivision or sending teams to a playoff. In fact, Ivy League schools do not offer athletic related financial aid to anyone. PFL schools, on the other hand, have no philosophical objection to athletic scholarships. Dayton, Jacksonville, Drake, and other member schools offer athletic scholarships for basketball and many other sports. So why prohibit football scholarships? Because it saves money. Football rosters are big, and so is the tuition athletic departments must pay to fund athletic scholarships. Most PFL schools have annual football budgets under $1 million. Compare that to the nearly $4.5 million spent at defending NCAA champion Richmond. Football in this subdivision is seldom profitable, and spending more money means losing more money. It's doubtful any PFL schools would be able to keep a football team if they spent anything close to the sum necessary for full scholarship funding. So has the league plateaued? Not necessarily. The PFL may never be the strongest conference in the Football Championship Subdivision, but it can make dramatic improvements. Here's how. Click Here to Continue... |