Where in America can you find any team in any sport, at any level, that goes 8-0 and goes nowhere?
Welcome to Amherst College, where the football team went unbeaten and then stayed home.
"When I came into the league in 1993, they were just beginning to allow our teams in other sports to go to postseason," said coach E.J. Mills, whose team capped a perfect season with a 26-21 thriller over Williams.
"The rule (against football playoffs) might have made more sense before that."
In the New England Small College Athletic Conference, otherwise brilliant college presidents still live in the 1930s, denying their football champion a chance to play in the Division III playoffs that begin this weekend.
Amherst should be playing a game Saturday. Anyone who thinks NESCAC teams would crumble when exposed to the cruel outside world is perpetuating a myth and a stereotype.
These are not nerds playing an exalted brand of intramurals. They are outstanding athletes, with size and skill, who happen to be really smart.
NESCAC coaches accept the playoff ban, however grudgingly. But they are petitioning to play a ninth game.
NCAA rules require playoff-eligible teams to play at least nine games. Allowing Amherst to go 9-0 and not 8-0 would make the Lord Jeffs bowl-eligible, so to speak.
Mills says that's not why the coaches want it. They just want a full round-robin in their 10-team league.
The eight-game limit is a line in the sand. Like their Ivy League comrades who also ban playoffs, NESCAC execs don't intend to let Big Football take over their campuses.
Fine, but in trying to keep proving a point not worth proving, they are engaging in what they decry elsewhere.
They are being discriminatory. Against football players.
Mills said in other sports, NESCAC teams win more titles than any other league. They would not win a title in football.
A team like Amherst, which was ranked No. 1 in New England, might win a game, even two. But its season would end with a loss, not a win-of-a-lifetime over Williams.
"In the Division III playoffs, there's a roadblock at the end with (powerhouses) like Mount Union, Wisconsin-Whitewater and Saint John's of Minnesota," Mills said.
Still, to go 8-0, and have no playoff chance, is not a tradition. It's an anachronism.
Trust me, presidents, a playoff game or two won't cause your jocks to run amok or flunk their finals.
Give them a Week 9 – and the playoffs. Your schools are good enough to withstand it.
"We would do well (in the playoffs), as we do in other sports," Mills said.
"We would represent the NESCAC well. I know that."
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