First official NPI rankings probably coming out next week but here is where the WIAC stands in terms of overall ranking through Week 6. The strength of that non-conference performance by the league is definitely shining through.

1. UW-La Crosse
6. UW-River Falls
12. UW-Whitewater
13. UW-Platteville
23. UW-Stout
42. UW-Oshkosh
75. UW-Eau Claire
76. UW-Stevens Point

Full rankings: https://d3datacast.com/npi/fb/

I imagine No. 1-14 that would allow larger conferences to gain a second automatic qualifier could garner a lot of discussion here and elsewhere. It should be noted that the Championships Committee has recommended that the Management Council NOT support this proposal.
https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/committees/d3/champs/Sep2025D3CC_Report.pdf

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on September 21, 2025, 04:24:09 PM"We don't want students who make college decisions based on athletics and we don't want to compete against schools who accept students who make college decisions based on athletics."

That's the vibe I get from a lot of places.

Quote from: ronk on September 21, 2025, 07:17:27 PM

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on September 21, 2025, 04:24:09 PM"We don't want students who make college decisions based on athletics and we don't want to compete against schools who accept students who make college decisions based on athletics."

That's the vibe I get from a lot of places.

 College decisions are made based on a number of factors: academics, finances(public vs private; merit vs income aid; commuting vs room & board), student body size, prestige, and, for the athletes, program success; separation of D3 athletics into tiers of philosophy will largely depend on what proportion of that decision should be allocated to athletics vs all the other factors.

Whenever these kinds of statements and comments get out, I think it has less to do with the future of DIII and more to do with that particular institution's future in DIII.

Quote from: Freddyfud on September 29, 2025, 01:38:18 PM

Quote from: deiscanton on September 29, 2025, 12:44:50 PMFreddyfud and others--

The NCAA DIII Men's Soccer Committee released their first NCAA DIII NPI Summary Report of the season this morning.

It is through games of Sunday, September 28, 2025

The report is available at:  http://stats.ncaa.org/selection_rankings/nitty_gritties/45791

Interesting and thanks for the heads up!  Will investigate the differences now for education purposes.   

Just seeing this but interested to see how close a proxy approach comes to actual NPI. Cool to see people out there trying interesting things!

One thing we have definitely noticed on the basketball side is that a good/bad SOS in the old system doesn't automatically look like an equally good/bad SOS in NPI. That would be my worry using OWP in the proxy since the old SOS was based on OWP and OOWP and SOS in NPI is average opponent NPI.

Quote from: sac on September 29, 2025, 06:24:03 PMI believe that play will be used as a "learning video" at future referee jamborees.

In light of this, how shocking would it be if the league doesn't adopt an instant replay system next season?

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on September 30, 2025, 10:30:44 AM

Quote from: Ron Boerger on September 30, 2025, 09:19:50 AMI didn't even know this was a D3 institution, or that you could participate in D3 with so few sports offerings.

That could be why they're leaving.  I'm not going to take the time to go back through the membership committee minutes, but maybe there was a waiver denial in there that forced their hand?

They were granted a waiver request for cross country per the Membership Committee minutes from the August 2024 meeting. I notice this particular sport is absent from the list mentioned in the NAIA release. Whether actually forcing their hand or just one factor in the decision (it doesn't appear another waiver request was made), it does seem you are on the right track here.

Calvin is on the board for 2026 with a commitment from Owen Vander Waal from Unity Christian.
https://x.com/Owen_VanderWaal/status/1969828577102217414?t=ZdAGTdrpnG6APH6iSqjSDQ&s=19

Quote from: Pat Coleman on September 20, 2025, 11:34:26 PMHeard lots of bad things about the Lyco-Wilkes broadcast of football today. That's a conference in the third year of its contract and what we got was the one robot camera, no clock on the screen, no broadcasters. It was difficult to know where we were in the game.

Does this put them in breach of their contract and what are the ramifications?

Quote from: IC798891 on September 10, 2025, 02:04:44 PM

Quote from: Kuiper on September 10, 2025, 12:09:58 PMAnother anecdote from an SID of a new Flo school via Bob Quillman.

QuoteMore @flosports viewership info.  This from the SID of a very successful D3 school in a "power conference"...new to Flo this season.

In the opening football game of the season, vs a big opponent, they had 168 total viewers...down from 1,170 the last time they hosted this opponent.

Total viewing minutes were down 85.5%

That "total viewing minutes" doesn't really offer additional information since the decline from 1170 to 168 is also an 85% drop.  It just suggests that the 168 viewers are watching a similar percentage of the minutes of the game as everyone watched before Flo.

Crucially though, what this tells us, is that the drop in viewers isn't just coming from people who use video to pop in, check the score, and leave.

If it was, the percentage drop in minutes would be much, much less, because the minutes 160 or whatever people paying for it — and presumably watching most/the whole game — would outweigh them.

As an example, if you typically have 10 people who view your game, and one does it for the full 150 minutes, and the other 9 do ~3 minutes of "checking the score", you have a total of 177 viewing minutes. If the only people being turned off by the paywall were the "checking the score" people, you'd have a 90% in viewers, but only a 15% decrease in minutes viewed.

Enjoy that $30,000.

This is a great explanation. "Views" or "Viewers" needs the added context some kind of watch time stat gives. Think about a video as you scroll social media - it might autoplay as you scroll on by and get counted as a view but did you actually watch the video? No. I think everyone knew the number of viewers would drop but the hope had to be that it came at the expense of casuals or scoreboard checkers. The watch hours dropping by the same percentage as views is bad news.

Quote from: Kuiper on September 10, 2025, 12:09:58 PMAnother anecdote from an SID of a new Flo school via Bob Quillman.

QuoteMore @flosports viewership info.  This from the SID of a very successful D3 school in a "power conference"...new to Flo this season.

In the opening football game of the season, vs a big opponent, they had 168 total viewers...down from 1,170 the last time they hosted this opponent.

Total viewing minutes were down 85.5%

That "total viewing minutes" doesn't really offer additional information since the decline from 1170 to 168 is also an 85% drop.  It just suggests that the 168 viewers are watching a similar percentage of the minutes of the game as everyone watched before Flo.  It also doesn't tell us the drop among that school's viewers, since the "big opponent" could have been responsible for a large percentage of those viewers the last time they host the opponent and they aren't going to sign up for Flo for a single game.

I actually think football is the statistical anomaly for schools and conferences when it comes to viewing and Flo.  It seems that it attracts the largest number of viewers at the schools that have reported data, which is not surprising since the rosters are by far the largest of any sport and I think football is more popular among alums, but they play fewer non-conference games than most other sports, so the value proposition for Flo is lower for the visiting fans.  Subscribing has more value than purchasing a single game, but if your team is only going to play one game against a Flo opponent, most people would skip it.  In other sports, by contrast, they may play the majority of their non-conference schedule against Flo schools, especially as more conferences sign those deals, making it more worth it to subscribe for the first month and then cancel.  I'll be interested to see how these numbers shake out in other sports for new Flo schools when conference play starts and all games are on Flo.  I expect that will give a better indication of how many people are subscribing per sport since both teams that are playing will be Flo schools.

I disagree that the similar drop in watch time is not meaningful to know. One of the pro-Flo narratives that was out there was an indication that overall watch time did not drop as much as the view numbers, suggesting that the lost views were people who might be scoreboard checking rather than a significant drop in people who were actually tuning in to watch the whole (or bulk of the event) who are more likely their core audience.

With similar percentage drops in both views and watch time you can conclude that there is no difference in viewer behavior/engagement between those lost in the transition to Flo and those retained. It takes away validity to an argument that only "low value" viewers were lost.

Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on September 10, 2025, 09:02:46 AMWeek 2 predictions (from HansenRatings: https://hansenratings.github.io/) are for a 8-0 week for the MIAA!

@Adrian 31 Thiel 3
Albion 37 @Bluffton 14
@Alma 43 Denison 23
@Calvin 32 Concordia(WI) 26
Hope 43 @Franklin 6
@Kalamazoo 32 Bethany 14
@Olivet 52 Madonna 31
@Trine 33 Rose-Hulman 23

I'm very interested in this matchup for Calvin as a gauge of progress from year one to two. Flipping the script on their 34-24 loss at CUW last season would be nice.

I just discovered yesterday that North Carolina Wesleyan games are on FloSports. While all the pub has been about conference broadcast rights the streamer has been acquiring, it appears they will also do deals at the institution level, which apparently happened with NCWU beginning a year ago: https://ncwsports.com/sports/2024/8/26/flosports.aspx

I'm not sure of another example of this, but then again I wasn't aware this one existed until yesterday. Only other exception to the conference all-or-nothing deals I'm aware of is when we saw the SCAC deal with FloSports announced with a couple schools opting out.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 02, 2025, 02:13:25 PM

Quote from: Kuiper on September 02, 2025, 01:09:09 PMEven now, I think it's fair to say that there are some bottom of the barrel DIII schools that really operate on the same kind of shoestring, minimal facilities and travel, budget of a low NAIA or NCCAA etc school that many would consider a level below traditional DIII.

I don't think that that's generally the case, though, because there's a mandated minimum of 12 sponsored sports required for a co-ed school to hold D3 membership. The NAIA only requires the sponsorship of six sports, and the NCCAA has no such minimum at all.

Is there an overlap in the Venn diagram of NAIA-member athletic budgets and D3-member athletic budgets? I'm sure that there is, because there are some NAIA schools that sponsor a fairly comprehensive menu of sports (I'm thinking 20 or more is "fairly comprehensive" by D3 standards) and there are some D3 schools that stick to the bare minimum of 12, or close to it. But, after glancing at a number of NAIA sports webpages, it doesn't seem to me that the overlap in terms of number of sponsored sports is terribly large.

Looking at what is by far the most expensive and resource-intensive sport to operate, football, around 56% of D3 institutions that admit males sponsor that sport, whereas only about 41% of NAIA institutions sponsor it. That's a pretty big discrepancy.

It seems to me that those shoestring D3s that have athletic budgets lower than the mean average of NAIA athletic budgets are definitely outliers.

It may be of interest in this conversation to note that the Championships Committee meeting report from April included a study of Championships participation for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years and found that in both years over 77% of institutions had some kind of exposure to D3 championships (team or individual). Certainly overall athletic budgets and resources will vary but I don't think you would see a number this strong if there were many athletic programs that weren't actually trying to compete.

Quote from: lmitzel on August 26, 2025, 10:51:24 AM10/10 no notes, CCIW.

https://cciw.org/news/2025/8/26/general-cciw-partners-with-hudl-to-launch-cciw-network.aspx

I really like any D3 stream that is either on YouTube or one of these Hudl-based conference networks so this is good news. The only thing that got a half eyebrow raise out of me was that apparently not all games will be available for people not able to tune in live.

Quotewith select broadcasts being archived and available for on-demand viewing.

Could be problematic for #d3dunks!

Quote from: Ron Boerger on August 19, 2025, 11:31:45 AMIt's not Flo, but the MIAC has decided they want to get in on the PPV action and will charge either $10/game or $25/sport to watch its playoff contests.  That could rapidly add up to more than the yearly cost of a Flo subscription.  It's supposed to be a trial; regular season webcast remain free (for now at least).

The MIAC likely won't be the only conference doing this. I'm not sure if this directly factors into the decision making but an interesting comment made to me was that a conference going this route allows them to observe first-hand the impact charging has on viewership without having already signed over your rights in a multi-year deal.