Intramural football is reaching playoff time and controversy is in the air. In past years, IM football was divided into two divisions of men’s teams. Division I was made up of mostly upperclassmen teams, willing to play at a more aggressive level. Division II had more underclassman and less experienced teams. On the women’s teams, scheduling conflicts are increasingly apparent.

However, this year the IM football committee decided to integrate the divisions, because not enough teams were signed up for Division I to make up a complete playoff schedule.

“Most recently teams signing up for DI were just the Greek teams with lots of intensity and aggression and that intimidated other non-Greek teams, so they remained in DII.  Because we only had three teams signed up for DI and no one was willing to volunteer to move up to the next division, we just did away with divisions and made one whole division for the men, like the women’s,” said IM Committee member Sydney Stasch.

The integration has been met with varying degrees of skepticism and support.

“I was a little anxious about the integration because there are so many different levels of play in IM football, and so many different kinds of people playing.  Division II always had a good mix, but Division I was traditionally a much tougher league consisting of bigger guys that normally were very athletic.  It’s nice having a big league with a lot of different teams to play this year, but it’s depressing sometimes to see first-year teams struggle against fraternities that have very athletic members who have been playing for all four years of school.  It’s too bad that some teams just can’t be seriously competitive in a single league when they might have been in Division II,” said Interest House Community RD Patrick Herman ’08.

Sophomore Brian Oringdulph, a member of the Beta football team, said “The competition has increased because we have people on our team who are really into playing football. So they take hold of the game and raise the intensity.”

The competitive nature of the Greek teams has added both positive and negative aspects to the game. First-year Price Hardman had a good experience playing the TKEs.

“We got slaughtered, but it in fact was the most fun game we’ve played yet. I don’t see any problem with playing teams that would otherwise be DI, it gives you a chance to just have fun and not worry about it being a close game. I think the difference in IM football between having a fun and not fun time isn’t the ability of the team you’re playing, but their attitude and sportsmanship. Although the TKEs were a lot better than us, we still had a great time because we were all being nice and congratulatory: Hey, nice play, etc,” said Hardman.

Overall, the goal of IM football is to have fun. For some teams, this involves a higher level of competition, which only becomes a problem when sportsmanship is compromised.

“When I hear stories about teams beating freshman teams by 50 and 60 points and playing as if the game is all tied up, I think that shows some really poor sportsmanship. I don’t think that kind of attitude has any place in IM sports, especially if the DI and DII leagues are integrated like they are now,” Hardman said.

For the women, conflicts arose in the scheduling. There are almost twice as many women’s teams as men’s, so each team ends up playing only half of the division. For this reason some teams end up playing almost all of the top teams, and others play one or none.

Senior Erin Morris from F-YeAh! said, “Playoffs are being done strictly by record – the teams with the harder schedules are disenfranchised and good teams have a chance of not making playoffs because a less skilled team had an easier schedule and thus a better record. They needed to have either weighted schedule or records or broke it up into two divisions.”

“Basically, it’s bullshit that less qualified teams will end up in the playoffs simply because they didn’t play the best teams in the league during the regular season. The IM committee should weight each team–I have no idea if this would be possible for this fall, but team schedules for next year should definitely be put together with less randomness,” said Senior Robin Hansen, also on F-YeAh! player.

Some senior teams are stuck in this playoff schedule, but opinions are important for changes in next year’s scheduling.