Quote from: WUPHF on April 04, 2026, 10:58:49 AMI have to think that the cuts are partially budget related because basically every Division I athletics department is struggling to adjust to the pay to play.  But if you know otherwise...

The Syracuse Provost has been quoted as saying they aren't. We don't have to take them at their word but, to me, the relevant detail is this:

"No positions or departments have been slated for elimination"

They're not eliminating, for example, the professors who teach French and Francophone Studies. They're simply eliminating the ability to pursue it as a major.

Just as a D3 example, Ithaca College offers a degree in World Languages and Cultures, and minors in various specific languages -- one being French and Francophone Studies. There are also other degree programs at the college that require taking a second language as part of the degree requirements. Also, people may just want to take some of these programs' courses as general electives.

So you still need professors who can teach French, even without a French major. And that's your main cost

Quote from: Gray Fox on April 03, 2026, 07:16:29 PMNot just D3:
Syracuse University is closing or halting enrollment in about 20% of its academic programs, in a move that the school's provost said was designed to create a university that would be "more focused, more distinctive and more aligned with student demand." The humanities and the fine arts represented the largest share of programs that will be closed or paused.

Includes Classics, Ceramics, and Italian.

I'm not being critical of you specifically, but having dealt with this kind of ...incomplete...framing first-hand, it has always been a pet peeve of mine.

In 55 of the 93 programs that are closing, there are zero students enrolled. Literally, zero.

In total, just 1.2% of Syracuse students are enrolled in one of these programs. This is basically a nothing-burger. You don't need to offer every single thing under the sun, just in case one kid might want to pay like, $55,000 a year --taking into account the discount rate -- to major in French, or Jewelry/ Metalsmithing (two of the programs being cut).

Syracuse is doing fine financially, and these cuts aren't budget related.

Ithaca's Dan Raymond announces his retirement. An all-timer in D3 women's basketball

Quote from: WUPHF on March 15, 2026, 12:59:53 PMShe references social media reach increasing 200%, but also admits that they hired a social media manager.  The UAA did not do much on social media before this season.  They would not even post the preseason polls, for example.

So in other words, the idea of the 200% increase being attributable to Flo is almost certainly bull****.

Imagine that.

Quote from: Kuiper on March 13, 2026, 06:15:18 PMShe admits there was a financial benefit from the payout, but focuses on the branding benefit, stating that their social media reach increased 200% by having stuff on Flo. 

I can believe the reach point.

A 200% increase in reach is a positive. The name of the game is increasing, well, everything. So if they're seeing a 200% increase, that's good.

Few caveats, though:

1. My bolding was intentional. My guess is, they've had their social media reach increase since having stuff on Flo. I'd be surprised if they have enough data to attribute it completely to Flo.

2. The UAA has just 3,289 followers on X, and 7,212 on Instagram. Clicking on the Insta followers, I see a lot of accounts of people who have very few followers and who make almost no posts.

https://www.instagram.com/susan7854229/
https://www.instagram.com/lucasgusoccer/
https://www.instagram.com/carolinegandelsoftball2027/
https://www.instagram.com/tkswaney/

Given that the baseline was based on their own relatively small followings, a 200% increase might represent a small number of accounts*. And given the number of bot and legitimate but largely inactive accounts on social media, reaching X number of additional accounts doesn't mean actually reaching 200% more people.

*I'm reminded of this often when we're given enrollment updates. Deposits may be up 13% year-to-date, but that might represent an increase from 30 to 34.


My guess is there's a reason they picked a percentage to share rather than absolute numbers.

Was planning to stream Ithaca/Wilkes baseball, but it's paywalled. Too bad

Two more games for IC, both wins. 9-6, and 16-7.

Early standouts for Ithaca include first-year outfielder Anthony Mestre, who despite only getting plate appearances in four games so far, has racked up 14 RBI.

Senior Lucas Orlovitz, who entered this year with 8 career RBI, has 12 already this season.

Jumping in late to this, but what the heck.

I wouldn't fan of using the Learfield standings for major decisions. As I often come back to (and as UMHB fans know) the core philosophy of Division III athletics is centered in conference and regional play, not where you sit nationally. I mean, we have sports where you don't even earn Director's Cup points for winning the team-wide conference championship, but instead for where a small handful of athletes finish at the NCAAs.

On a more micro level, treating every non-NCAA qualifier the same is problematic. A perennial 7/8 win football team like Brockport isn't the same as a perennial 1/2 win team like Hartwick, but the Director's Cup treats them that way.

Quote from: maripp2002 on March 06, 2026, 06:59:55 PMThe thing is, and I've said this before, the one thing you can always control is your conference. That's always going to be your best bet to partner with like minded institutions - academically, geographically, size, money, etc. If you choose to let a school that's 10 times your size, or has a 100 times your budget in, or is much more or less academically selective, you've made that bed and you lie in it. Win your conference, that's as even as you're going to get.

1,000 times this. It's not always going to be a perfect fit -- see Buffalo State football in the Liberty League rather than the E8 where they belong (not that it impacts the autobid) -- but absolutely. Find the [however many] schools that you call peer institutions, compete against them, let the results speak for themselves.

Ithaca baseball is off to ... a start. Three games into the season, and here's what sums it up:

The fewest number of runs the losing team has scored in an Ithaca game is 11. And one of the games was called after five innings.

We'll see if the pitching settles down, or if it's a season of barnburners for the Bombers

No one remembers how fun Buff State used to be than an Ithaca fan who came of age during Boyes 1.0.

But as a program, they are 24-114 since Boyes 1.0 -- when anyone other than him is the coach, and a lot of those wins are against similarly non-competitive programs like Hartwick, Hilbert, Dean, etc.

Paradoxically, football is probably less essential at a place like Buffalo State, which has more than 6,000 total students and doesn't really need it to drive enrollment the way those schools do.

I want them to do well, and they certainly hired a coach with the pedigree to accomplish things. But that is a really, really tough job

Quote from: Jonny Utah on February 20, 2026, 08:59:29 AMIf Ithaca asked for $100 donations to keep free broadcasting going I might even through in $100. 

This has always been the strange thing to me.

The existence of FloSports' model shows that people are willing to pay for access to D3 sports. So why not ask for that money directly, and as you say, cut out the middleman?

Every school has a Giving Day with various funds set up. Why not set up a "Athletics broadcasting fund" and ask for alumni to contribute?

Quote from: unionpalooza on February 13, 2026, 11:54:10 AMI confess I have a hard time getting too fussed about PPV for D3... I don't see how it's any different than charging for a stadium ticket, which everyone has been doing for years without (much) complaining.

My main issue with it is from the perspective of a college.

We're in an age where we're all fighting for every high school student's attention, every alumnus/alumna still feeling connected enough to the college to make a donation, every parent living hundreds of miles away from their child and already writing a whole bunch of checks.

Putting athletics' content behind a paywall reduces points of contact between all those constituent groups and the college. Your goal should be the exact opposite. You want more points of contact, more exposure.

And that exposure isn't limited to the athletic teams. You're highlighting your campus facilities, your staff, the social life component of your college, heck even the quality of the student broadcasting opportunities.

All that stuff has value. The problem of course, is the difficulty in quantifying that value.

For budget strapped colleges, $30,000 a year, as insignificant as it is to any institution's bottom line, is in fact quantifiable. So they take the money and run.

From a completely anecdotal standpoint, they day Ithaca College goes to Flo is the day I stop contributing to their Giving Day campaign. Not out of some principled stand or anything. But I have a limited amount I can spend "on" IC, and the $108 Flo subscription comes from that pile, regardless of the fact that IC doesn't actually get that money.

Quote from: UMHB03 on February 14, 2026, 05:01:31 PM

Quote from: The Third Division on February 14, 2026, 01:15:30 PMUMHB's two year scheduling agreement with Keystone screams desperation. It is not a good look for the program.

Go ahead and list the teams who are interested in scheduling a series with us. Then we can discuss which ones would be better options.

One would think the Division 3 philosophy is grounded in conference and regional competition rather than national and most schools are interested in scheduling as such.

Oh wait: It is

I know you all filter everything through the lens of "What's best for the football team?" which means you think everyone's just too scared to play you, but the sooner you realize that most D3 institutions have bigger concerns than the football team picking up an elite OOC game, the easier it'll be for you.

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on February 13, 2026, 07:42:53 AMI'm not sure why we're re-litigating 40 year old decisions, but it's pretty clear the NCAA is going to give the Power 5 whatever it wants.  If they want to have one set of rules for revenue sports and another set of rules for non-revenue, they'll just do it where they are.  No reason to come to d3.

The schools who should drop down are largely schools that don't factor in football or basketball anyway.

No one's "re-litigating" anything. I was offering historical context to possibly help someon more fully understand an issue

Quote from: maripp2002 on February 12, 2026, 10:07:27 PM

Quote from: IC798891 on February 12, 2026, 03:06:09 PMWhich essentially amounted to giving someone a track scholarship but then strongly encouraging them to also join the football team.

That would work out MUCH better if your D1 sports were football or oddly essentially cheerleading. The old scholarship limits were barely enough to give partial scholarships to fill out a roster.

But even a few thousand dollars for a partial scholarship to track might be enough to sway him to come to your school. Once he's there, even if he's lower on the track totem pole for you, he might still be the fastest dude on a football field. So you convince him to concentrate on football, and even if it doesn't impact the track team that much, and you have a D1 caliber athlete (raw perhaps, but still there) on a D3 roster.