GoCrossVideo Contest Results!

After much debate, wrangling, horse-trading and greased pig wrestling, the GoCrossCampus team is proud to announce the winner of the GoCrossVideoContest. Michael Rog from Rice University did by far the most exceptional job of projecting megalomania onto the screen:

(it helps to know that his team, Will Rice, is yellow)

Choosing the best video wasn’t simple. Ultimately, we wanted to pick an engaging video that could get a new player excited to play GoCrossCampus. Since it wasn’t an easy decision, we decided to pick some submissions to highlight as Honorable Mentions below:

The “Game Pride” Award goes to Matthew at Virginia Tech (via Cornell). Simple, subtle and well-done.

The “A Commander’s Life” Award goes to Ian at RPI. Sadly, I think this happened to a couple of my friends at Yale. They will be sorely missed.

The “Would Watch Over and Over Again” Award goes to Kurt at Yale. Hilarious, and even got some coverage in the blogoworld.

The “Most Intense” Award goes to Andrew at RPI. His video, clocking it at 11 minutes (unfortunately, only 10 of which can be uploaded to YouTube), gives an in-depth look at team dynamics that the ILC commanders will surely appreciate.

All entrants will receive GoCrossCampus t-shirts. Thanks to everyone who participated in the inaugural GoCrossVideoContest!

From the Department of Unsolicited Predictions

No, this isn’t an update on the site. I think we’ve had enough of those recently. This is a small tribute to our Ivy League Championship players. This is an homage to one of America’s favorite pastimes: making unsubstantiated projections. Specifically, this is my honest-to-god prediction that Yale, Harvard or Princeton will win the NCAA Division I-A Football Championship in the Next Fifty Years.

And what does this have to do with GXC? Blah blah inter-campus blah competition blah—in short, absolutely nothing.

Now that that’s out of the way: anyone who has watched a game of college football (or American football in general) in the past twenty years knows that I have to be completely off my rocker to make such a seemingly outlandish assertion. Division I-A (FBS), the technical term for what most people call “College Football,” has been dominated by the Michigans, USCs, LSUs, Nebraskas and Oklahomas for the past half century. In fact, this year marks the 80^th anniversary since an Ivy League school last captured a college football championship—Yale shared the 1927 crown with Illinois.

In fact, the Ivies haven’t even been in the mix since the Ivy League athletic conference formed in 1954, with the break from mainstream college football being solidified with the Ivies’ inclusion into Division I-AA (FCS), which as far as I can understand is college football’s equivalent to playing in NFL Europe. More specifically, I-AA teams don’t offer the volume of athletic scholarships that I-A teams do, so the NCAA figures that they shouldn’t play on the same field. Occasionally shit happens, but in general the system stays in equilibrium.

The Ivies, keeping with tradition, don’t offer any athletic scholarships and actually abstain from the I-AA playoff. A significant portion of football recruits come from less-than-WASPish backgrounds and need the scholarship money to attend school, and some like the opportunities to go pro that playing for Michigan or LSU can afford.

Thus, the Ivies have lost top recruits and slowly slipped out of the football world.

Yet times can change. A lot has to happen for Walter Camp’s Bulldogs to be competitive again, but I see no reason why the next fifty years won’t bring as drastic of changes to the football world as the past fifty years did. In the past couple years, for example, the advent of spread offenses have drastically lowered the contrast between top and mediocre teams.

But, really, this isn’t about football. This is about financial aid. Specifically, this is about free school.

There is little doubt that an undergraduate education at Harvard, Yale or Princeton will be essentially free within the next twenty years. A surprisingly small and ever-shrinking chunk of Ivy revenues come from tuition payments, with the vast majority coming from obscene returns on obscenely large endowments. Other types of schools—especially public schools that require state support—simply don’t have this kind of projected income stream. And it’s clear that the long-term investment focus that university presidents have afforded their investment offices has paid off. And increasingly, Ivy League schools are responding to student and alumni pressure by greatly increasing financial aid. And in some cases, as in Yale’s School of Music, making education within specific schools totally free. It certainly seems to be the case that—at the very least—the Ivies will take the policy of “you only pay if it doesn’t hurt.”

Right now, money runs the college football world, and State U is willing to put money into it. Good football provides decent returns to investment, so the Louisiana Department of Education is willing to carve $2.8 million every year from a cash-strapped budget to pay Les Miles to lead their program. Another $6.5 million annually flows from the State of Louisiana to fund athletic scholarships. This isn’t an obscene amount of money, but it is breaking rules the Ivies won’t break—namely, providing merit-based scholarships. And it provides the impetus for good football players to choose LSU over other schools.

However, the Ivies don’t seem to have a problem favoring athletic ability in their Byzantine admissions process. The main problem has always been money—if Joe Quarterback has a 1200 (err—a 1900 or whatever a 1200 is these days) on his SAT and has to choose between a Harvard diploma and a shot at the NFL by going to State, it might be a hard choice. Until, of course, you think about the money—going to Harvard and graduating with thousands in debt, or taking the scholarship at State.

But if Harvard is free, the choice gets a little cloudier. Especially if dozens struggling with the decision before him have already chosen Harvard, gaining at least scant attention from NFL scouts. And if Harvard essentially has a school-wide full-ride scholarship, the Ivies should be unceremoniously dumped out of Division I-AA, likely returning to the mix as a full-fledged NCAA FBS competitor. After all, the League’s main argument against competing right now is that it is unfair to play against teams with athletic scholarships. Well, problem solved.

And if the Ivies are in the Division I-A recruiting mix, they should be able to make up for at least some of what they won’t have—top coaches and facilities—by relying on uniqueness, history and prestige. In other words, the same things that have been winning “academic recruits” over to their side for the past two centuries. And after all—there are a bunch of schools with great workout facilities and highly-paid coaches. But there’s only one Yale.

Happy Three-Week-Long Winter Break!

In case our adult readers have forgotten the typical college schedule, let me remind everyone: typically, at least three weeks of bumming around during the latter half of December and first half of January. I’m not sure what relevance January 8^th has to the US holiday calendar, but whatever… most colleges aren’t in session.

This has interesting implications for our games. We wanted things to be over a couple weeks ago, but (given the month-long pause) that wasn’t happening. Things are working great now, so what are we to do? Two-hour turns in an attempt to get the games over quickly were a brief but probably ill-considered experiment. Now it’s the weekend before Christmas, and we don’t want to force the game on people.

So we’ve decided to compromise and finish up the Ivy League and Rice games next week with four-hour (not two-hour) turns. Hopefully this will allow everyone a little extra time to sleep, since it was evident that we were dealing with some really sleep-deprived players. (I shouldn’t have to say that if you don’t want to get up at 4 AM to place armies, don’t.) All the games will be over by the new year, so we don’t need to worry about things running into next semester.

So what’s next for us? Well, for starters, we’re going to try to keep the blog a bit better updated. Then, we’re going to be launching two games to Indian engineering schools. The games will very much be an experiment, as this is not only our first venture overseas but a new kind of team division (by majors) and a new way of marketing the games (by seeding, not by top-down adoption). Most of this is just our way of adapting to the different situation and culture at these schools.

Will it work? Who knows! That’s half the fun of GXC…