The four best teams in the NESCAC traditionally dominate the bottom four, with two teams hovering around .500. These trends do not stray much from year to year, as certain programs, coaches, and players can carry teams through an era. Over the past five years, the bottom four teams in the standings have finished a combined 30-134 while the top four teams have finished 134-30. This unfortunate commonality between years leads to few competitive games on an already short schedule. However, coaching changes and shifts within the conference offer a chance to shake up the standings.
New coaches to struggling programs face two challenges: the first being dealing with the talent or lack there of at the school they’re arriving at and the second is attracting recruits to a losing program. This is process often takes multiple years to complete, as coaches look to bring in new players that they got to recruit themselves. Of course, the results of regime changes are not black and white, and first-year coaches, despite the challenges that they face, look to make a splash and bring home a winning team in their first season at the reins. Mark Raymond took over as head coach of the Williams College Ephs prior to the 2016 season when they went 0-8. The next year? 6-3.
In February 2016, Williams announced that Raymond would take over. He’d graduated from Buffalo in 1993 after lettering for three years in football. He spent time as an assistant at St. Lawrence, Syracuse, and SUNY-Canton, and was defensive coordinator at Ithaca before returning to St. Lawrence to take the head coaching job. Raymond resurrected a struggling program there and turned it into a powerhouse, earning Liberty League coach of the year honors twice along the way. By his second season at Williams, he was NESCAC coach of the year.
It took one recruiting class for Raymond to build a winner, which is an exciting prospect for Colby and Bates, as both brought in new head coaches this offseason. There have been three head coaching changes within a two-year span in the NESCAC, changing the coaching landscape. This brings in entirely new schemes and overall program attitudes to recently struggling programs.
Malik Hall joined Bates in June of 2018, becoming the program’s 20th head coach. A native of Detroit, Hall played at UMass and coached the defensive line at Central Connecticut State and Hofstra University. Hall spent three years serving as defensive coordinator and linebacker coach at Wagner College, where his defense was one of the top units in the nation. He served as the defensive line coach at Pennsylvania for the past three seasons before accepting the head coaching position at Bates.
His transition will be particularly compelling to watch as he transitions a run-heavy team to an Air Raid offense, looking to follow a more traditional approach in a passing-heavy conference. This drastic short-term change could be enough for his team to compete against league favorites Trinity, Wesleyan and Amherst. Hall looks to foster both “grit and talent” at Bates and hopes that he can lead his 2018 Bobcat team to “overachieve,” perhaps using a new scheme to overlook the deficit in offense that Lewiston has seen in recent years (Sun Journal, Lee Horton (http://www.sunjournal.com/dropping-dimes-new-bates-football-coach-bringing-the-juice/). His team will change its defense to run a 3-4 to add pressure in the middle tier of the defense and utilize QB Brendan Costa to distribute the ball more, moving away from a ground heavy offense (Lee Horton, Press Herald https://www.pressherald.com/2018/06/18/hall-ready-to-kick-off-new-era-for-bates-football/).
Colby hired Jack Cosgrove as its new head coach in January 2018. Cosgrove graduated from Maine in 1978 where he played quarterback. By 1993, he had taken over as head coach of the program. He served as head coach of the Black Bears for 23 years, and during his tenure compiled a school-record 129 wins and made the NCAA tournament five times. Since stepping aside as head coach in 2015, Cosgrove worked as the senior associate director of athletics at UMaine until accepting the head coaching position at Colby.
The Mules have struggled mightily in recent years, following the losing path of the other Maine schools of Bowdoin and Bates, but are making a push to improve all of their sports programs. A new baseball field and a soon to be new field house will take Colby above many of the other schools in the NESCAC, transitioning into a more attractive destination for incoming collegiate athletes. As a result of a current absence of big-play making personnel, this transition to on field success will take longer than that of Bates and Williams but should be complete in a few short years.
Cosgrove faces a tough task by inheriting a team that hasn’t had a .500 record since 2013, but will look to improve his program through recruiting. There is a rising belief that he will have an edge in the NESCAC in attracting top high school players, likely due to his history as a former Division I head coach. His connections and history are going to be key in bringing Colby football back on the NESCAC map (Drew Bonifant, Central Maine, https://www.centralmaine.com/2017/12/29/colby-to-hire-jack-cosgrove-as-next-football-coach/). Since he was hired in December of 2017, Cosgrove had enough time to add recruits to the Mule roster for this coming season, so changes will be evident on the playing field in 2018 as he looks to bring a quick turn around to a developing athletic program at Colby.
Aside from the three newest coaches, the average NESCAC head coach has held the position at their school for over 10 years – a long time in the coaching world. Many of the coaches are alums of the school they coach, or were assistants in the program or in the conference beforehand. As schools begin to take D-III athletics more seriously, the role of the head coach in guiding, shaping, and recruiting players becomes even more important. It’ll be interesting to see how this change in attitude manifests itself as coaches Raymond, Cosgrove, and Hall look to usher in successful eras of football in each of their new roles.