The New England Small College Athletic Conference, of which Tufts is a member, is one of the oldest Div. III conferences in the country. It's athletic reputation is paralleled by few in Div. III, and its academic status by none. This article, the first of three, explores the evolution of the league from a loose philosophical alliance to a coherent and dominant athletic conference.
The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) was created in 1971 as exactly that - an athletic league comprised of 11 institutions with a geographic proximity, roughly comparable academic standards, and a shared commitment to keeping in check the rapidly exploding business of intercollegiate sports.
But in the three and a half decades since its inception, the league - originally comprised of Tufts, Amherst, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Trinity, Wesleyan and Union (which left in 1977 and was replaced by Connecticut College in 1981) - has taken on an identity and a cache that far surpasses its original purpose and intent.
What began as simply a collection of schools abiding by the same recruiting, admissions and playing standards, but lacking any conference schedule, postseason play, or collective identity, has coalesced into the goliath of New England athletics and one of the strongest Div. III conferences in the nation.
"NESCAC was so different back then," said Russ Reilly, who is now the Middlebury Athletic Director but was a coach at Bates in 1971. "Rather than being what we would today classify as a conference, it was more of an affiliation - 11 institutions who shared similar philosophies athletically and academically. Scheduling was very autonomous, and people were encouraged to play as many other NESCAC schools as they could, but there was no conference schedule like there is now."
Today's over-specialized world of college sports - three divisions, conferences splitting and reforming, and the overlay of league, regional, and national tournaments - is a trend largely of the last 30 years. Post-WWII, there were only two divisions, University and College, and little organization in regulations, scheduling, and postseason play.
Until the creation of NESCAC, Tufts was a loose member of the New England Collegiate Athletic Conference (NECAC) and the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), but both lacked uniformity in competitions, set schedules and recruiting policies.
"NECAC and ECAC were all divisions, and would only structure competition that wasn't being offered by the NCAA," Rocky Carzo, Tufts' athletic director from 1973-1999, said. "Within that, people started forming compatibility groups. What we wanted to do was get a reasonably compact geographic core and have a good, competitive schedule predicated on the long haul."
Much of that sustainability revolved around the central role of money - athletic scholarships offered to recruits, skyrocketing budgets for facilities and coaching staff, and the insane potential revenues of big-brand basketball and football.
Higher alumni revenues and lower per-student tuition (which decreased the financial impact of giving athletic scholarships) allowed larger universities and state schools to begin pulling away in the 1960s and early 1970s. While the NCAA did not officially split into its three divisions until 1973, this stratification was well underway in terms of athletic philosophies and administrative procedures.
And so, in the early 1970s, the athletic administration of 11 New England schools began a dialogue about the need to establish some control over intercollegiate athletics, to provide a baseline framework of rules, and to keep themselves grounded as larger state schools moved into the realm of athletics as revenue source.
"Tufts was trying to find compatibility with institutions, as were the other NESCAC schools," Carzo said. "They were all trying to find some place that they could go where they could be competitive, to figure out how they could continue to grow and have competitive teams and keep it under some sense of control."
"We were just trying to bring some control and make sure that uniqueness of playing sports at that time at those kinds of institutions was kept in more restrictive perspective than was occurring elsewhere," Reilly added.
Because it began as a reaction to the perceived shift in intercollegiate athletics, eventually codified by the ascendancy of big-time Div. I sports, NESCAC created the most restrictive regulations in the nation at the time, many of which are still in place today.
"When it was first founded, the conference was really established on [the principle of] all [financial] aid based on need and no off-campus recruiting," Carzo said. "With the original NESCAC rules, we played the fewest number of games, we had the fewest number of preseason practice sessions, and we had very strong limits on postseason competition, which means that you could only qualify if it was a regional, terminal tournament."
While some changes have occurred, most notably allowing NESCAC teams to compete in national tournaments, the conference remains grounded to the rules upon which it was founded.
Carzo believes that the close geographical concentration of NESCAC schools, as well as their similar academic and institutional profiles, creates a unique character of competition and has facilitated the league's growing competitiveness.
"Geography is critical; there's only one school in Nebraska, and it wins like hell," Carzo said. "The NESCAC arrangement has the best possibilities of compact, academic, athletic offerings and geographic proximity of any other league in the country."
