D3 Football Map

Started by FCGrizzliesGrad, September 12, 2019, 03:45:07 AM

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Ron Boerger

Quote from: Ralph Turner on March 28, 2024, 09:47:11 PMI have always wondered about Colorado College's persistence in D3. They have "grandfathered" men's ice hockey and have scholarship women's soccer, so "Scholarship" athletics is not an anathema. It seems travel would be much easier if they went D-2 and played in the Rocky Mountain AC.

I wonder if that grandfathering is part of the issue; the NCAA might not let them go D3->D2 while retaining their D1 sports, and they're too small to go all D1.

Kuiper

#61
I thought this article about the history of the athletic program at Colorado College was interesting.

Here is a quote from the former AD about the decision to drop football amidst the 2008 financial crisis:

Quote"In 2008, we had to make vertical cuts after we realized horizontal cuts to programs who were already underfunded would undermine a team's ability to play a nonconference schedule," Ralph says. "We decided to eliminate football because they had the lowest academic profile and performance of any team, worst giving rate of any athletic program, worst retention, and we had just come off an 0-10 season. They only had one winning season in the last 33 years. Then the elimination of softball and water polo allowed us to support quality over quantity."

QuoteThough controversial, the cuts proved successful. In the three years prior to discontinuing football, CC won one conference championship (men's cross country). In the three years after the discontinuation of the three sports, CC won 16 conference championships.

"The worst correct decision I've ever made," Ralph says.

I still wonder why the SCAC teams put up with having CC in the conference.  It seems like it would be in a similar position as UC Santa Cruz in terms of needing a Coast-to-Coast Conference plus a lot of non-DIII opponents to survive.  Here's a quote from the same AD that suggests the SCAC AD's aren't always happy about the travel either:

"Many SCAC opponents feel that CC doesn't add anything to their own student-athlete experience, because of the travel and the abundance of other Division Three schools in Texas. "It's a bone of contention all the time. Schools don't like coming up here to play us. For many other conference affiliates, it's a major strain on their budget," says Ken Ralph who was CC's most recent athletic director until his departure in September of this year."

In a league without Trinity and Southwestern (two schools that might have cared about Colorado College's academic standing), you wonder who Colorado College's remaining allies are in the SCAC.