The little Northeast Conference grew up considerably with Wagner College’s historic 31-20 victory over nationally-ranked Colgate in the NCAA football playoffs last weekend.

It took years of perseverance for the NEC to land an automatic berth into the Football Championship Subdivision national tournament, but just one glorious afternoon on Grymes Hill for the conference to demonstrate that it finally had arrived.

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“It’s definitely a monumental time for NEC football,” said Noreen Morris, the conference commissioner. “To have a convincing win over a very quality opponent in our third year in the tournament really proves we belong and that the NEC is a force to be reckoned with in the (FCS) football world.”

That world, formerly called Division I-AA, has long been the domain of power conferences such as the Big Sky, Colonial Athletic Association and Missouri Valley. Wagner, on the heels of its first-round victory, takes a 9-3 record and nine-game winning streak into the Sweet 16 round and will face second-seeded Eastern Washington of the Big Sky on Saturday (6 p.m., ESPN3) at Cheney, Wash.

Eastern Washington won the national championship in 2010 and ended the current campaign with a 9-2 record and No. 4 ranking in The Sports Network’s final regular-season Top 25 poll.

Morris said that the reaction throughout the NEC has been overwhelmingly positive in regards to Wagner’s triumph over Patriot League champion Colgate. It was the NEC’s first tournament win in three tries — Robert Morris dropped a 43-17 decision at North Dakota State in 2010 and Albany let a late lead slip away in a 31-28 loss at Stony Brook last year.

“I’ve seen a number of the e-mails going back and forth between school presidents and athletic directors and the sentiment is tremendous,” said Morris. “Each of us knows how big a win that is for the conference. It gives us an enhanced reputation within college football and also helps our coaches in recruiting.

“Not only do we have a bid but we have a convincing win in the first round and move on to the second round.”

FINALLY A REALITY

The NEC lobbied long and hard to be included in the FCS playoffs and that finally became a reality in 2010.

“It was a pretty significant battle politically and financially at the NCAA level to expand the bracket enough to get the automatic qualifier,” said Morris, who was named NEC commissioner that year. “It’s something the conference had been working towards for a long time.”

The NEC remains at the lower end of the FCS spectrum in regards to athletic scholarships (capped at 40 per school), enrollment, game attendance and budgets. More high-profile conferences, like the Big Sky, are more likely to use the full 63 scholarships allotted by the NCAA.

Of the 16 remaining teams in the FCS field, only Wagner (2,400) and Wofford (1,525) are small, private institutions. The rest are larger state schools. Eastern Washington has 12,130 students and seven institutions have enrollments exceeding 17,000.

Still, to be on the national scene is a dream come true for someone like Wagner football coach Walt Hameline, who is in his 32nd year on the job.

“Everyone’s looking at the (20-team) bracket and they see an NEC team and then a week later you move to the round of 16 and you’re still there,” said Hameline, also the Seahawk athletic director. “I think everybody in the country takes a good look at that and it gives the NEC a great deal of respect.

“From a recruiting standpoint, it gives you the ability to recruit kids that are involved with other schools throughout the country.”

The NEC showed foresight by establishing a fund designed to make a bid for a home game in the national playoffs — and then watching it pay off when the NCAA selection committee sent Colgate to Wagner for a first-round game. The NCAA required a minimum bid of approximately $30,000.

Colgate didn’t submit a bid to host a playoff game.

“We created a fund where each of the schools submits monies so we can help our champion put in a bid that’s competitive,” said Morris. “The money was designed to help pay travel expenses during the years when we’d send our champion to the Gridiron Classic.

“We actually were able to exceed the NCAA’s minimum bid. And if you looked at Colgate and Wagner, I don’t think it would have been an easy decision from a competitive standpoint. When they saw that Colgate didn’t have a bid, it made the decision much easier.”

The NEC will lose perennial power Albany to the Colonial Athletic Association next season. Rhode Island had been rumored to be considering a move from the CAA to the NEC, but that fell through.

So the NEC will continue as an eight-team football conference.

HUGE STRIDES

The conference has taken huge strides toward football competitiveness in the past seven years. Central Connecticut State’s 24-22 win over Colgate in 2005 was a watershed moment; Albany knocked off six-time national champion Georgia Southern 17-13 and Delaware 17-10 in 2006; and Monmouth downed Fordham 23-9 and Colgate 17-12.

This season, NEC teams went 2-5 against the CAA and 4-5 against the Patriot League, including Wagner’s playoff win. The NEC had never defeated an Ivy League team until 2009 and since then owns a 7-3 record.

NEC teams have also cracked the FCS Top 25 polls the past three seasons, following Central Connecticut State and Albany appearances in 2006. Wagner has been knocking on the Top 25 door during its current run, listed among schools receiving votes.

Over the past decade or so, the NEC is playing a significantly larger portion of its non-conference games against upper-echelon FCS teams, notes director of communications and social media Ralph Ventre.

And after last Saturday, the little NEC doesn’t seem quite so little anymore.

By Jim Waggoner, Staten Island Advance
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