The Program On The Hill

It’s not the kind of thing we talk about much anymore, but what Stonehill’s doing in 2025 is as much admirable as it is a throwback.

Looking at college football in 2025, there’s a lot of trends in program building that are downright predictable, if not exactly ideal. Take the transfer portal and its use in turning around struggling programs.

At the FBS level, a program like Virginia hit the transfer portal hard to try and turn around a program that had been struggling. It’s working in the case of the Hoos- they just downed Florida State, after all- but it’s a complete departure from what we used to see in college football. It speaks to how much the game has changed in this era of rapid fire coaching changes, conference realignment, NIL, and most notably the transfer portal. If your team and your recruits aren’t hitting for you, well, you go and buy a new team. Push out the old recruits via the transfer portal and bring in some new faces.

But it kind of stretches the idea that we’re ultimately here in support of higher education, opportunities at a degree, and building better people through the game of football. These can all be attributes of our sport and when college football is at its best, these attributes are present. You’re not seeing a ton of this at the FBS level anymore and the pressure to win now is immense.

It makes what’s happening at Stonehill all the more remarkable.

The Skyhawks went 1-10 last season (0-6 in conference) and heading into this season, something I saw on social media whenever New England football was talked about in depth (love when these conversations happen, by the way), there was often the same thing said about Stonehill- the Skyhawks weren’t very good last year, and they didn’t seem to add much to get better this year. Well, think about that line for a second.

There were always JUCO players and a limited amount of transfers that had to sit out a season by default, but adding players to right the ship? As in, for next season? That’s a foreign concept to college football as I grew up watching it. No, what you did was kept recruiting, kept developing, kept building your culture, and as your kids got older and more mature in your system they’d improve. But the flack Stonehill was taking was because they seemed to be sticking to that formula.

The Skyhawks weren’t active as buyers or sellers in the transfer portal. It led me to remark on a few occasions that Coach Gardner seemed to really know how to recruit to his school. At Stonehill, they didn’t seem to just be selling the idea of playing and transferring up to FBS. There had to be something about the kids they were bringing in that made them Skyhawks. Not just for a season or two, but they really seemed to be sticking around at an abnormal rate.

So instead of hitting the transfer portal, the Skyhawks changed up their strength and conditioning program. Something wasn’t working last year when they went 1-10, obviously, and it would be insane to go into the season with the same approach. There didn’t seem to be any thought of blaming the athletes or finding new ones. Instead, they set over 50% of their strength and conditioning records, got more reps, and brought back more starters on offense and defense than either everyone else in conference or close to it.

So they didn’t add much in the transfer portal. That’s a far cry from not doing anything to improve.

The other factor is that I’ve believed for as long as I’ve watched college football that continuity and experience are the two keys to how well a team will perform. It’s been thrown to the wind in our sport lately, but Stonehill seemed like a place where continuity and experience were going to be present in 2025. It led me to immediately point to the Skyhawks as a team that seemed poised for a big improvement in 2025. But these days, we’re conditioned to look for what the new additions are. The new playmakers replacing the talent you’re committed to developing. And maybe that’s what the problem was for a lot of people when they looked at the Skyhawks before the season. They were developing what they had, not chasing something new.

I don’t know that this kind of program building works everywhere anymore, and certainly don’t know if it works with every coach. But for a fan of old school college football like myself, well, Shovel City fits that old William Penn mentality of making a City On A Hill. Except what Stonehill does- regardless of how the rest of this season plays out- that’s an example of what I hope all programs strive to achieve. I’ll be watching closely and hoping that it keeps working.