To be fair, I am not an expert. My ITH co-host Frank Rossi had a good discussion on this earlier today on Twitter with Lake Forest College AD and HC Jim Catanzaro (who also was the Chairman of the NCAA D3FB National Championship Committee back in 2019), who was at the event in Indy.
You can listen to the recording of that conversion here. Tomorrow Frank will be releasing our first ITH post / offseason show of the new year. We previewed that show / released our comments early on these items, as well as how a new playoff model could work, here.
While there are broader implications nationally, the majority of the newly adopted measures shouldn't "hurt" Hobart at all. Of particular (national) interest was the measure to drop the required conference membership from 7 to 6, which passed, pretty easily.
This will cause some potential conference realignments and residual chaos in the fall 2022 Championship selection process if the number of Pool C bids drops because of an increase in Pool A's, but for Hobart, it's kind of a potential relief. One of the sponsors of this measure was in fact the Empire 8, which, like the Liberty League was barely hanging onto a 7-member conference structure.
In fact, if you recall, the LL basically recruited Buffalo State (which just announced a new HC btw) to join as an associate member from the E8 so it could retain their AQ. The one potential issue is that a Pool C bid for the LL runner up in future years may become nonexistent, unless of course the playoff field expands to 36 (which we cover in our next ITH show).
There was a positive vote for pads in spring and preseason practices (maybe the one "good thing" that came out of the 2020 "COVID season") and now D3 schools that offer D1 programs (e.g., Hobart Lacrosse) can now offer athletic scholarships.
The one caveat on the latter is that a D1 Hobart lacrosse player who's on an athletic scholarship can't also play a D3 sport, so no more FB/LAX crossovers (which haven't been that prevalent in recent years anyway, to be honest).
That's basically it. I don't foresee the above really impacting the Statesmen for the near future, barring some major national shifts. Ultimately this 7-to-6 rule mainly impacts the bigger D3FB conferences (e.g., CC, OAC, WIAC, CCIW, etc.).
End of the day, Hobart will simply need to win the LL AQ to get back into the Championship tournament, and years in which they don't, the ECAC Bowl will be the alternative (kind of like this past season).
I hope the above helps. Drop any comments or questions you have below.
Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!
