Quote from: DagarmanSpartan on April 20, 2026, 09:54:00 AMOK, so does this mean that in D3 teams can only travel every three years, or can they now travel every summer, as D1 schools apparently can?

The 2025/2026 manual is the most recent one out.

17.32.1.5 Time Lapse Between Tours. An institution shall not engage in a foreign tour in each sport more than once
every three years. Participation during the summer is counted in the previous academic year. (Revised: 1/11/89)

Only the DI cabinet approved tours every year, so unless the DIII group does the same, the previous rule is still in effect. So no, as of right now, DIII schools cannot go every year.

Quote from: crufootball on April 17, 2026, 09:07:42 AMIn this mythical situation, they would sponsor the sport just not play any games.

Sponsoring a sport in the NCAA means an institution (college/university) officially recognizes a sport as a varsity program, providing funding, coaching, equipment, and competition opportunities that meet NCAA requirements.


The boldest part you'd have to check the manual, but I suspect having a phantom team that does not play any games doesn't count because the definition of a "varsity program" referenced earlier is "athletes represent their institution in NCAA-sanctioned competitions across Divisions I, II, or III." 

So much of a school's identity is tied up in D1, whether it makes sense or not. The alumni lose their collective minds when those few schools, like Hartford, make a smart financial decision to step away.

VMI has no business in D1. In almost every sport in which they used to play W&L, W&L was better. Outside of a few special cases now, VMI has stopped allowing itself to be embarrassed by its D3 neighbor.

But it really is a joke. The bottom of D1, in almost any sport, ranges between the upper middle and the top of D3 in terms of competitiveness. D1 schools are spending a fortune, and they still don't get kids that are much better than the dedicated kids playing D3. And the NIL rules are only making it worse.

Yeah. A lot of us in Birmingham have scratched our heads over it. But... it is a ready made facility for boarding and teaching, with plenty of facilities for physical education. Building something like that from scratch to meet the Coast Guard's needs would be a lengthy and expensive proposition.

From a certain point of view, the old B-SC campus might actually be a square peg in a mostly square hole. There weren't many options for who could buy B-SC, and there probably weren't many options for the Coast Guard getting a mostly ready-made campus up and running quickly. It's not perfect, but it might have been the best of the less than perfect solutions.

Do I still think it's a little ridiculous? Sure.

yeah. it's not going to be a college from all reports. The Coast Guard Academy will stay in CT on a beautiful campus next to Conn College, on a bluff overlooking the Thames River.

This is a training center for officers and enlisted men, so I'm assuming advanced skills coursework. Can't imagine there will be much practical seamanship in Birmingham! But it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

There was a limited audience for a college campus in a rough area of town, it can't exactly be redeveloped into premium housing or senior housing or any of the other things we've seen defunct campuses do. So it's nice that there will be a use for it, even if I wish it was still B-SC.

Quote from: Ralph Turner on March 04, 2026, 11:38:32 AMThanks for the response.

I recall the 2022 Gallaudet season when they won the ECFC.

Sure, DelValley beat them 59-0 in the first round, but Gallaudet played their peers and won a conference championship. Del Valley beat everyone in the MAC by 3 TD's including Misericordia by 41 and FDU-Florham by 35, so that score was no surprise.

Sure 2022 was special for the school, but D3football.com ranked the ECFC 26th out of 27 conferences that year. Gallaudet has 5 seasons over .500 in 25 years, only one with more than 7 wins. You can put lipstick on the bison, but it's not going to get prettier.

Quote from: SierraFD3soccer on March 03, 2026, 03:06:21 PMHe's got a lot lot of work to do well at Guilford in the ODAC. Pretty much one of the doormats of the ODAC. Only team in NC, and, while not VWU, is pretty far from other teams in the conf.

FYI Manhattanville is in Purchase right next to the CT border and not NYC. However, living in NC is substantially cheaper to live than Purchase or NYC. Might have an opportunity to coach offseason and/or have camps around the Greensboro area. No big soccer college powers in the area really. 

UNC Greensboro is one of the best programs in the SoCon and made the NCAA Elite 8 back in 2022. I mean, we aren't talking elite, but they are very good consistently.

Guilford, with the exception of men's golf and men's basketball, has struggled in pretty much every sport in the ODAC. The school is very dependent on tuition, has been holding on by it's fingertips for a while, and while it got a vote of confidence from the accreditors recently, it's exactly the type of school in the crosshairs of financial struggles going forward.

I wish him luck. He has a lot of work in front of him.

Quote from: WUPHF on February 20, 2026, 12:18:03 PM

Quote from: Ron Boerger on February 19, 2026, 04:51:54 PMThe last thing D3 needs is NIL ruining the sport like it has D1.  But given the total lack of awareness shown by Flo$port$ about what makes D3 great, it's no surprise.  VC sucks the life out of everything except profit for the backers.

Cynically, when I read that part of the interview, I read that as a marketing ploy more than anything.  It will be interesting to see if they back that up with a clear strategy.

Flo only has 1 strategy... get a monopoly on as much of a niche market as they can, and then raise the price until it becomes profitable, dangling just enough money on the other side to keep the actual content providers in line.

We had to use FloWrestling this year for my son's middle school/high school matches. They bought out a perfectly functional and useful app called TrackWrestling and turned it into an abomination.

Everything about Flo is negative value....

W&L's schedule is up. Season starts home for Wittenburg, at Gettysburg, at Salisbury. Roanoke has replaced Shenandoah in our final week game. I like this. W&L has always lacked their own ODAC rival in football. With H-SC and R-MC occupying each other, the other options just never fell into place. Shenandoah never covered the gap. But W&L does have a healthy rivalry with Roanoke and Lynchburg in a lot of sports, including soccer and lacrosse. So maybe this will grow into that type of game. Unless Lynchburg starts football and steals Roanoke....

What I think is really going to happen. 60-80 schools are going to break off from the NCAA. They are going to form 4 conferences of 15-20 and it's going to be developmental pro ball. These schools are going to play football, m&w basketball, and baseball, maybe softball or women's soccer thrown in.

The rest of the former D1, FCS and FBS, who all get "left behind", are going to rebrand as the "real" Division 1. They aren't going to want to give up the prestige of that title, and they will basically turn back the clock to pre-NIL days. It's going to look like the early 90s. Lower conference payouts, facilities will age, coaching contracts will be reasonable, along with staff size, and scholarships will be the big point. The big difference might be an FCS style playoff instead of the bowl games. They will hold most of the current NCAA sports, as it will be reasonable and useful to these sports to amortize facilities over many more student athletes.

D2 and D3 will remain mostly the same, though NIL will, eventually, disappear again. A few schools will move down from the "new" D1 as the money no longer is as sweet a temptation, but most will be fine.

The new "pro" league will continue to raid the new D1. In fact, I think the majority of their players will come from the new D1 in football. Less so in the other sports. But very few h.s. kids are going to make that jump in football. In accommodation, the new D1 will have majors/degrees that focus on athletics. That way they can prepare for the jump and they don't feel like the schooling is a waste.

There will be some jockeying for those 60-80 spots, though the major conferences pretty much have that sown up already. You might see a few schools like Memphis, who offered to pay their way in to the Big 12 and take no payout, try and desperate jump in, you might see a few schools get booted. I suspect they will do this by making schools put some skin in the game to get started, like a franchise fee. But basically, that's what you are going to have.

If these schools want to have other athletic programs, they will do it amongst themselves. I could see golf, tennis, t&f, etc., all sports with pro pathways, but not too many, and not among all schools. The only real hang up I see is the time frame of eligibility. Somehow it will need to be enforced. And the pay is going to have to be fixed. At some point NIL is going to have to actually mean something. The deep pocketed donors are not going to give the way they have been, recently, forever. It need to be sustainable. So I suspect it will start to work like a business. Players will get their own sponsorships, but pay will come from the school based on revenue.

Anyway, I give it a 5-10yr timeline, max, mainly due to tv contracts, with the only wildcard being Washington stepping in and doing something to stop it.

Yeah. I don't think there is a D3 soccer equivalent. Indiana is a byproduct of the massive shift in D1 athletics, especially football and basketball, and a fantastic coaching hire. The ingredients required for this kind of rags to riches shift, impossibly fast roster turnover, traditional power becoming irrelevant by dollars, and a coach that learned what Calipari struggled to learn... strong, proven men all over the playing surface are better than outstanding young talented boys.

But without the earthquake of changes to how FBS football works, it doesn't happen like this. I'm not saying Indiana couldn't have improved, I'm saying the lightning shift doesn't happen without the transfer portal, the importance of dollars, and a brilliant coach.

If FBS programs have any sense, the value for proven 20+ year old players should have just blown past the value for flashy 5 star incoming freshman. Honestly, the G5 has become AAA. They should be able to recruit better young players now, but they are going to get picked clean for any of them that actually develop after a year or two.

Quote from: Ron Boerger on January 16, 2026, 09:51:58 AM

Quote from: jknezek on January 16, 2026, 09:08:49 AMBloomberg's latest on the demographic challenges facing colleges, more than a few D3 schools are mentioned in various ways in this piece:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-college-enrollment-cliff/?embedded-checkout=true

Paywalled; assume you have access, could you provide a gift link which seems to be an option for subscribers (5 per month)?

Try this. It's a pain to get their web article based on how I use Bloomberg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-college-enrollment-cliff/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2ODU3ODc5MiwiZXhwIjoxNzY5MTgzNTkyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFlLVFZLR0NURlUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJGQzA5OTZBRTdCNTk0RjgxQTlFQUM4Q0QyNTM1RjU5NyJ9.x2k8QomozgtpD4u514N4igqO5iUHIR3ZJdrUllCwtX4

Bloomberg's latest on the demographic challenges facing colleges, more than a few D3 schools are mentioned in various ways in this piece:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-college-enrollment-cliff/?embedded-checkout=true

Man the ODAC just can't hold on to members. I don't know what Gallaudet expected though. Winning a game was more than I expected from them, but Averett or Guilford gave them a chance every season to get a win or two. And yes, I'm aware Guilford absolutely pasted them this year, but let's be realistic about the program outside of 2012-2015.

Anyway, I don't see how this helps Gallaudet. Does it help the ODAC? I suppose it depends on who the teams can add OOC, but it definitely adds to schedule heartburn. RMC playing Gallaudet doesn't really do much but take up a weekend, but that's not much different from Averett or Guilford, and if you have to add Apprentice to fill the weekend, that's not helpful either.

With both Averett and Guilford in and out of money trouble, ODAC football has to be sweating bullets. Thank goodness for Roanoke, and here's hoping someone can convince Lynchburg to start football.

Quote from: Tigerfan on January 12, 2026, 01:30:37 PMYou ought to be. The Generals have some young talent (Amorosi, Newkirk, Breeden, Die and Ransom) and should be a top tier ODAC team soon, if not already. 

Except for last year they've been knocking on the door for a while. But the ODAC basketball door is a tough one to get through! Until last year (and ignoring COVID), six straight years of double digit conference wins. An ODAC tournament run or two. McHugh has been a difference maker for a program that was middling at best, miserable at worst, since the late 70s. Hutchinson got the ball rolling a bit, but McHugh has been strong.

Still big hurdles to get over though.