TOO LATE TO THE POSITIONAL ARMS RACE?

The new indoor practice facility at Northern Illinois University is necessary because ... everybody else has one.

"Many of the schools in the [Mid-American Conference] have an indoor facility," [athletics director Jeff] Compher said. "Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan and Toledo have one, and Buffalo is in talks to have one put in. We understand the need to have it for our conference and ourselves for recruiting and to do the things we need to do to prepare ourselves for a championship."

Compher added the facility will be constructed behind the Jeffery and Kimberly Yordon Center, which will allow NIU to take advantage of all the facilities that are already in place.

A columnist at the Northern Star questions the preferences revealed by the plan.

If you're going to spend an ample amount of bucks on a new training facility, you should also probably have the crop of talent to be using those facilities. 

The NIU football team had a terrific season last year, but losing as many starters on defense as it did, and the offensive power it will lose soon, where are the heirs to lay claim to the starting positions? 

A nice training facility can definitely improve a team, but a team is only going to be as talented as the players. 

You can't buy a win against teams like Wisconsin. You need to steadily and consistently recruit talent. 

NIU had its share of quality players make it into pro-sports, most notably Michael Turner in the NFL. 

However, NIU is not at the top of the list for prospective student-athletes. There are a plethora of options that would be higher on a wish-list. 

NIU President John Peters also recently announced his plan to increase enrollment to 30,000 by 2020. 

Along with this proclamation, he also highlighted attaining more high caliber academic students. 

Many of the players who spend their careers in NIU are not destined for greatness at a professional level. Many of them will complete a degree, earn a nice job, and live life as a "normal" person. 

I'm all for bettering the campus in any way possible, but when the graduation rate itself has been under 60 percent since 2004 and trending down the last few years (according to Collegemeasures.org), perhaps there should be a greater focal point on improving academic life on campus rather than improving the success of athletics. 

For as much work as [donor Kenneth] Chessick has done for academia at NIU in the past as well as his scholarships, there still seems to be a disconnect in terms of the success of students. 

Maybe there is a way to get the great minds at our university together and concentrate on what makes a college great and prepares those of us not gifted with athletic talent for the rest of our lives; success in academics and programs that prepare us for our futures.

At the university, that push for additional enrollment includes a push for online and commuter students, perhaps not the clientele most likely to be impressed by big time football.  On the other hand, that same strategic plan envisions new posh student housing and improved climbing walls, perhaps to attract more football fans.

The more troubling development is the emerging concentration of college football.

For example, what is the optimum size of an NCAA Division I-A conference?  For many years, the answer appeared to be ten.  Changes in NCAA regulations and the potential to hold a conference championship football game apparently raised the number to twelve a few years ago, but it now appears to be somewhere north of there.  ACC commissioner John Swafford and SEC commissioner Michael Slive clearly believe that the answer is “at least 14.”  Note that the answer from a profit maximizing perspective may differ significantly from the answer from a welfare maximization perspective.

There's not much left of the old Southwest Conference, er, Big 12, any more, with Nebraska going north and one of the Texas teams, along with Florida State, negotiating with the Southeastern, and either the Atlantic Coast or the Big East likely to be absorbed into the other.   The mathematically appealing formula is four major conferences, each with two divisions of eight teams, a regular season schedule of twelve games (seven divisional games, four cross-divisional games, and one interconference game), a conference title game to determine the participants in a final four, and a national champion crowned a week or two after New Years Day.

The service academies and Notre Dame are on the outside looking in, perhaps.  Notre Dame already plays enough games with Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Purdue to be assigned to the East Division of the Big Ten.  West Point and Massachusetts have been negotiating with the Mid-American.  But the Mid American is a fifth conference, in Knute Rockne's back yard (or perhaps Bo Schembechler's and Woody Hayes's outlots?), with sports programs heavily reliant on student fees, and enrollments often not that interested in big time sports, or with some loyalty to their state's flagship university's athletic teams, if not to their academic programs.

Thinking ahead, that indoor practice facility has some potential for an aerospace engineering program, or for building the ultimate campus model railroad club.