'Varsity is a state of mind'

It's been suggested that American rugby's varsity model collapsed in the 1970s when college football coaches put their scholarship players on ice, and won't regain its footing because the sport will never surmount Title IX.

So what makes me think the varsity model can again take root? Varsity is a state of mind, not a status, and the results are most evident in the high schools and colleges that have closely followed the mainstream prototype.

Instead of rehearsing the key components, consider the vision of a leading practitioner at both the high school (and college) level:

A varsity model doesn't mean that the rugby team must be in the athletic department and/or recognized by the state high school athletic association. It means that kids play for their school and the competition is similar to every other mainstream sport in the US. They wear lettermen's jackets. They wear their jerseys to school on Friday. Their scores are announced in the morning before the pledge of allegiance. They look forward to beating on the kids from their rival high school and they play for state championships.

Recent high school eligibility revisions, though well-intentioned, miss all of this just as surely as former Eagle coach Peter Thorburn overlooked American sports' scope and scale in suggesting American rugby should be should get rid of 40-yard dash times and start thinking in meters ‘like the rest of the world.’ But how is rugby to transform American basketball players into locks, as Thorburn also talked of doing, if we do not understand that the 40-yard dash is the bedrock of measuring elite players in mainstream sports?

Why would rugby shut itself off from the massive network of athletic summer camps, high school and college recruiting services, and pro trials camps -- all of which measure in inches, feet, and yards? And why should we make it hard for school administrators to understand by trying to redefine scholastic competition?

Not every region will cross the varsity threshold at the same time, but there is evidence enough in Oregon, Tennessee, the Washington DC area, and above all Northern California, places where there are so many 'frosh-soph' teams that there are not enough qualified referees. That is what one calls a success problem.

Related:
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Comments

[Fan]

That sounds like Marty.

[ISP8]

Why not measure both?

Kurt brings up a great point, in that players who are domestically focused -- i.e. US domestic comps -- should be benchmarking themselves against US domestic sport -- i.e. the 40 yd.

Alternately, measuring metric should really be for externally focused players -- those looking to go abroad, or to benchmark an existing national team pool against another national team pool.

But when all is said and done, it's not like training for the 40m vs 40 yds is vastly different. Run one one day, run one another day.

Even better, get some collegiate sports science grad student to write their MS thesis to correlate 40 yd vs 40m times and give us a conversion factor.

That way, Melville can stop worrying about what side of the road we drive on, that we don't spell color or flavor with a u.

[out of time]

ISP8,

Of course do both, but the substance of the post is why turn our back on the American athletic system and the worlds largest data base of speed measurements?

I think Kurt's point is Melville and Roberts were allowing old cranky pants Thorburn to do just that. Whereas, an experienced US CEO would have told him to slow his jets. We need to build the Eagles with American athletes and the data base and those measurements are critical to the process.

For example, when we have a team of Eagles with D1 college football speed we won't be comparing them to anybody externally. With all do respect to the rugby world powers, we will have won the athlete battle.

This is the type of fact which is lost on our current administration. Maybe because they supported Johnson's plan to fly in non-US players before he'd look at a kid like Kevin Swiryn. Or how about Johnson's junior college plan?

We don't have enough time to teach these pretenders how to think American. We have wasted almost four season trying. When is enough, enough?

[ratings]

Any word on the ratings for the USA Sevens on ABC? F-ing bball game went over. Who didnt think that was going to happen?

[Neilson]

Total bust in the ratings including a report that there were many calls into affiliate channels around the country from people looking for Oscar pre-show programming (red carpet, fashion, etc).

[David C]

I was looking for the ratings too, to see how it did. I'm in the middle east and they showed the cup semi's and all the finals 4 days later over here. But I kept looking online to see how the ABC telecast went. Sucks if it got pre-empted some by B-Ball.

[At least take a fricken swing]

The 7's telecast was a huge success. It may have not been a homerun, but they certainly loaded the bases.

Who cares about the ratings. It was possibly the most opportune time slot on one of the best days of the entire year.

The event was successful, showed foresight and shines bright on the future of USA Rugby. USA 7's loaded the bases for USA Rugby.

Now if only USA Rugby could step up and at least hit a single.... but they whiffed and continue to whiff - or whatever they call that in cricket.

[Former HS Coach]

Having rugby on ABC is a success in anyway, the ratings do not matter. However the highlights were on ABC because USA 7s paid for it, and i heard it was $450k. That is where USAR did a great job (by accident I think) by outsourcing the 7s to a private organization who have the money to invest that amount of money.

If USAR came out and said "we are going to take $450k and put a game on ABC" everyone would be up in arms and rightly so.

[More Waste]

Nice return on investment. The first 15 minutes of the show were clipped, which I am sure were the best 15 minutes for someone who stumbled upon the broadcast because it would introduce the sport.

[P. Kane]

Been my teams motto for years: "Just because we're not a varsity sport, it doesn't mean we can't act like one." I think I read recently that Tom Billups had a similar motto when coaching the Eagles: "Professional in attitude, amateur in pay," or something like that. Look at teams like BYU, Kutztown, San Diego State, etc. They aren't varsity teams, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the way their programs are run.