Simon Fraser University Football

I've decided to start a thread on SFU football because there is hope, if limited, for the future for this one-time CFL talent factory that has fallen on such hard times that it has not won a game since 2014 and is in the midst of a 33 game losing streak. SFU is also unique because it is the only Canadian university playing in the NCAA, making it distinctive in another respect. To be fully transparent, I also admit that I am a SFU graduate.
The hope comes in the form of a new HC, Thomas Ford. Under the previous HC, Kelly Bates, who played for the BC Lions, the SFU Clan were 0-29. Ford may or may not succeed. However, he does have a track record of success elsewhere and of rebuilding teams.
In a recent CIS post, ArgoGabe22 talked about York being Yorked during its losing streak. SFU is well past that point, so we could say it's SFUed. But, it still has a way to go to beat U of T's 49 game losing streak, a CIS record set between 2001 and 2008, so the team is not yet in a Blue mood.
Ford's rebuilding plan outlined below seems reasonable and time will tell if it works out. As noted in the article below, one problem that he faces in recruitment is competition from the highly successful UBC program for new talent. Nevertheless, his proposal for a revival of the Shrum Bowl against UBC should help build community support.
It is not simply that SFU's mostly Canadian players cannot meaningfully compete against American talent, as the team went 5-6 in its first season against its NCAA Division II rivals in 2012. However, it's been downhill since then because of poor recruiting and coaching.

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Thomas Ford was named head coach of the SFU Clan football team Monday and we hit him straight away with the tough question: Why do it? Ford, a Seattle man who had been guiding the gridiron team at Stadium High School in Tacoma, Wash., was obviously looking to get back into the NCAA after three coaching stints there. ...

“UBC has been phenomenal,” said Ford. “With the job they’ve done, it shows the talent that’s here. It means that I’m going to have to do a really good job at getting myself out to schools in B.C. and presenting our case.” Ford, in fact, says he wants to help resurrect the Shrum Bowl, the UBC/SFU game that had been mainstay on the Lower Mainland football calendar for years but hasn’t been played since 2010 because of scheduling conflicts. “I want to find a way to do it,” said Ford. “I want to compare apples to apples.”

Ford had been a star running back at Linfield College, helping the McMinnville, Ore., program to a 41-4 record during his time there, which included the 2004 NCAA Division 3 national title. He went on to assistant coaching jobs at Linfield, Division 2 Southeastern Oklahoma State and Division 3 Puget Sound before taking on the head job at Stadium High in 2014. Stadium went 0-10 in his inaugural campaign, but made steady progress and finished 6-4 in 2016, marking their first winning season since 1993.
“I look at this situation and this is a university that has all the tools to have a successful football program,” said Ford. “The keys are there. It’s about having the right person driving.
“I’m a small college guy. I take great pride in knowing about the small college programs in the Northwest. I knew quite a bit about SFU before the job came open. There is a rich tradition here. They’ve been a successful program before. That was a selling point to me. I want to reach out to the coaches in B.C., and especially the SFU alumni who are coaching. I know there are a lot of SFU grads who are coaching high school football. To me, recruiting is about building relationships more than anything.”
Clan grads include former B.C. Lions stars such as Lui Passaglia, Glen Jackson, Nick Hebeler, Sean Millington and Angus Reid. Former CFL standouts like Doug Brown and Glen Suitor are also SFU products. ...

“I know at some point we will be measured by wins and losses, but, right now, I just want to improve daily. I know we have to improve our roster size and make sure that the competition for spots at spring practice is hot and heavy.”
SFU had a 21-17 lead in the fourth quarter on the road against Western Oregon in their season finale on Nov. 11, but surrendered a touchdown at the 7:26 mark of the frame and ended up losing 24-21. That was their closest game of the season. They were outscored by an average of 55-11 on the campaign.

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http://vancouversun.com/sports/university/new-sfu-football-coach-aims-to-revive-program-end-33-game-losing-skid/wcm/353c774b-8cfe-4d72-9b21-f0469483ee63

For anyone wondering why SFU plays in the NCAA here is a history of why and some of the problems associated with that, including why the football or any other SFU team will never be allowed to host a championship.

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It’s been about seven years since SFU joined the NCAA, and SFU has yet to be a winner in any of their Division II sports. They’ve had a few playoff appearances, and even a few playoff controversies, but it’s been awhile since SFU brought home any hardware.
This isn’t to say that SFU has been terrible, as they’ve actually been pretty successful overall. They recently ranked 15 out of 306 in the Learfield Directors’ Cup standings, which measures the overall success of collegiate athletics programs. ...

Simon Fraser University had been trying to join the NCAA for nearly fifteen years before they played their first game in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC), which is the division SFU plays in.
The first attempt to join was back in 1997, when SFU was still part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), but they were turned down. They would later go on to partly join the Canadian Interuniversity Sports league (CIS, later renamed to U Sports), which was one of the top leagues in Canada.
SFU would have teams play in both the CIS and NAIA up until 2009, after they successfully made a bid to join the NCAA. They gained conditional acceptance for the 2011–12 season, but ended up starting a year earlier thanks to a proposed ban on SFU teams by CIS. ...

Many have questioned why SFU is even in the NCAA to begin with, which is a valid question for those wondering about the history. The truth is, the administration meant for the school to play in the United States when it was built back in 1965. Gordon Shrum, the first Chancellor of SFU, loved American football so much that he wanted his school to be playing that over the Canadian style.
They joined the NAIA right away, which is catered to play in the United States, although it does have several teams outside of it. According to Wikipedia, “The SFU Clan holds the NAIA record for most All-Americans and U.S. National Champions (individual),” which is hilarious, but also showed the high competitive level that was the school’s standard. ...

However, this was far from ideal for some teams, like football, basketball, volleyball, and wrestling. The travel and the cost associated with it shot up exponentially, as travelling to Manitoba proved much more difficult than games in Washington and Oregon.
Oddly enough, it would be the University of British Columbia that would open the door for SFU to join the NCAA. They were the main school leading the charge of the Canadian team pilot project, however they would ultimately opt out. Thanks to that, SFU gets the claim of being Canada’s team, which makes for a great sales pitch. ...

Controversies of a Canadian team
The switch to the NCAA hasn’t been the easiest road, especially because of the hurdles that being an international team has created.
Most famously, the men’s soccer team — which might arguably be the most successful teams in SFU’s NCAA era — was denied hosting playoff matches twice.
The first time was in 2012, when the team was ranked number one heading into the playoffs, giving them the opportunity to host their first-ever playoff game. However, other schools in the GNAC objected, because players and team staff did not have passports to enter into Canada.
Their arguments were heard by the NCAA, and SFU saw its host status taken away, eventually being forced to set up shop as the “home team” in San Francisco. Despite going out of their way to find a solution to the issue, the NCAA would eventually decide to just take away SFU’s hosting rights entirely, giving them to Grand Canyon University, who finished number two in the region.
This would happen once again in 2016, although renting out a neutral field in Seattle allowed them to keep their hosting rights.

SFU teams that aren’t in the NCAA
When SFU was petitioning to join as a full-fledged member, then-director of athletics Milton Richards said, “We have 17 [teams] and you only need 10 be be a Division II member [so] I really don’t see us adding any more programs,” in an interview with The Globe & Mail.
However, that may not be the case, as there is a chance that hockey might be on the table to join the NCAA. Currently, SFU lists hockey, field lacrosse, and cheerleading as non-NCAA sports, to go along with their recreation and recreation clubs.
The reason that hockey isn’t a part of the NCAA is that there just isn’t a Division II for hockey. Currently, the school plays in the British Columbia Intercollegiate Hockey League (BCIHL) as an alternative.

In the summer of 2016, new athletics director Theresa Hanson made waves by announcing that SFU would like to join Division I for NCAA hockey, potentially joining as early as next season. Under the current rules for Division II, teams are allowed to have one men’s and one women’s team join the uppermost echelon.

What comes next?
As we mentioned, Simon Fraser University ranked 15th in the Learfield Directors’ Cup. This comes after placing 55th the year before, which is still impressive considering there are 306 entrants. Teams like cross-country, women’s basketball, volleyball, and our soccer teams might not be grabbing headlines, but they are doing right by the school.
However, SFU might start to get more recognition as a trailblazer in the international aspect of the NCAA as another team might be joining.
In April of this year, SFU officially joined a pilot program created by the NCAA, allowing other schools to go through the same process. Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior, a school in the Baja California region of Mexico, wants to join the NCAA. They even have the backing of the California Collegiate Athletic Association.

Perhaps if more teams join the NCAA outside of the US, it will lead SFU’s inclusion in the sporting league to be seen less as an experiment and more of a pioneering effort. Unfortunately, this might dramatically reduce the odds of Simon Fraser University remaining “Canada’s team.”

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https://the-peak.ca/2017/10/our-sometimes-troubling-history-with-the-ncaa/

I wonder if SFU still thinks they'll play in a Rose Bowl one day.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GNACFB?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GNACFB</a> | True North Rising! <a href="https://twitter.com/SFUClan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SFUClan</a> breaks 33-game losing streak in first game under head coach Thomas Ford.<br>SFU 54, Willamette 7<a href="https://twitter.com/D2Football?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@D2Football</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/d3football?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@d3football</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/D2FB?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#D2FB</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NCAADII?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NCAADII</a> <a href="https://t.co/LkCNug3qST">pic.twitter.com/LkCNug3qST</a></p>&mdash; GNAC Sports (@GNACsports) <a href="https://twitter.com/GNACsports/status/1036053948573003777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 2, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


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Good for them, but a D-2 team should win against a D-3 team

SFU has cancelled its 2020 football season due to the fact that the Great Northwest Athletic Conference has cancelled all sports until November 30th because of Covid-19.

Simon Fraser University has decided to drop the Clan name for all its sports teams. Playing against American teams they have received a fair amount of criticism for the Clan, which comes from Scottish clans associated with its namesake, name with questions about whether it has anything to do with the Ku Klux Klan. There was strong support among student athletes to change the name. Since all SFU sports have cancelled through November 30th, the school has lots of time to pick a new name. Since the majority athletes prefer to change the name, this might not see a lot of opposition.

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Simon Fraser University is getting a new nickname for its varsity sports teams. The “Clan” nickname has been retired, SFU announced Wednesday.

The university initiated a “stakeholder engagement process” in January after a poll of student athletes indicated strong support for a new name.

Meant to honour Simon Fraser’s Scottish roots, the term “Clan” has confused for the “Klan” of the KKK racist white supremacist group.


SFU says it will launch a process this fall to choose a new name, with “key groups within the university community” involved in the process

“SFU student athletes are very pleased with the decision to move to a new team name,” says Ryan Stolys, president of the SFU student athlete advisory committee. “This is something that we have been working towards over the last year and we look forward to supporting the process to determine a new team name, so we can proudly represent SFU in all aspects of competing in the NCAA.”

Many have suggested the school rename itself the “Highlanders” to continue to honour its Scottish roots, though all options are on the table. Whatever they decide, when student athletes return to competition, they’ll do so with a name they can be proud to shout.

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https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sfu-...-clan-nickname

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Originally Posted by jerrym

Simon Fraser University has decided to drop the Clan name for all its sports teams. Playing against American teams they have received a fair amount of criticism for the Clan, which comes from Scottish clans associated with its namesake, name with questions about whether it has anything to do with the Ku Klux Klan. There was strong support among student athletes to change the name. Since all SFU sports have cancelled through November 30th, the school has lots of time to pick a new name. Since the majority athletes prefer to change the name, this might not see a lot of opposition.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sfu-...-clan-nickname

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The proud Scottish heritage has been eliminated...erased really. Pretty sad that faculty and even the students were in favour of this change is worrisome.

I hope the new “improved “ name does not confuse or offend anyone.

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Originally Posted by gilthethrill

The proud Scottish heritage has been eliminated...erased really. Pretty sad that faculty and even the students were in favour of this change is worrisome.

I hope the new “improved “ name does not confuse or offend anyone.

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If SFU goes ahead with a name such as Highlanders, which is being considered as noted above, at least the links to the Scottish tradition will be kept. My oldest son was on the SFU swim team years ago. They wore kilts and had a bagpipe playing to the opening ceremonies of swimming championships to celebrate the universities Scottish roots. It definitely made them stand out amongst all the teams. Everybody soon knew who they were. Swimming is a predominantly white sport, so there were virtually no questions about the Clan being connected to the Ku Klux Klan, especially with SFU having usually having more non-white swimmers (usually of Asian descent, including my son who is half Filipino) than the vast majority of American teams.

Incidentally, the New York Highlanders was the name of baseball's New York Yankees until 1913. I understand that team didn't too badly over its history.

I don’t even know why the York Yeoman changed their name. Like McGill, SFU allowed its name to become a totally different meaning, and failed to promote the history behind each name.