Future of Division III

[IC798891]

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.

I think, if we injected coaches, players, and ADs with truth serums, we'd see there are four tiers of compete in D3. And most schools don't live in just one tier, but have different sports in different tiers.

1. Competing for National Championships
2. Competing for being the best in the geographic region
3. Competing for conference titles
4. Play hard, do everything right off the field, and help us with enrollment goals.

I'm sure #4 will be controversial to some, but I believe it to be true. (I also don't think it's very big.) But I'm sure we can think of examples of programs in various sports that are never really especially competitive, even at the conference level.

.

[Ralph Turner]

I would include in #4 those programs in which a significant number of players appreciate the discipline that intercollegiate athletics add to their lives.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

I would include in #4 those programs in which a significant number of players appreciate the discipline that intercollegiate athletics add to their lives.

Totally agree Ralph - made me recall several conversations I've had over the years with various Hope athletes, and asking them how things were going in the off-season for them.  Most, if not all of them said it is much easier for them to maintain their study discipline while in-season, simply because you have to in order to survive and thrive,  In the off-season it just becomes too easy to procrastinate on studying because you "have all this free time since you don't have practices or games".

[Ron Boerger]

Unfortunate news for schools serving significant minority populations (free account required to read):

The Education Department announced its intention Wednesday to end grant funding for minority-serving institutions, a move affecting hundreds of colleges that serve a disproportionate number of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.

The department said it would eliminate programs aimed at colleges serving large numbers of Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students, Asian American students, and Hispanic students. Also affected are grants for predominantly Black institutions and Native American-serving institutions — designations for colleges that educate a large share of Black and Native students but were not founded as historically Black colleges or tribal colleges.

[...]The department said that its move would affect $350 million in discretionary funding that was already allocated by Congress to minority-serving grant programs in the 2025 fiscal year.[...]

The federal government doled out $1.3 billion to minority-serving institutions in the 2023 fiscal year, according to the most recent data available. About one-fifth of all colleges are eligible for MSI grants, though a far smaller number actually receive funding. (Those figures includes historically Black colleges and tribal colleges, which are not affected by Wednesday's announcement.)

[Ralph Turner]

Do we have rumblings of D4 again?  This appeared on D3Playbook.

https://stevedittmore.substack.com/p/what-ncaa-division-iii-schools-excelled?utm_source=www.d3playbook.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=is-it-time-for-division-iii-to-revisit-its-structure

[Ron Boerger]

This was spurred by the speech the DPU AD gave back in late August (and the substack is a couple of weeks old as well).  Not sure why it took D3Playbook this long to pick it up but if you go back a couple of pages the talk was discussed here at the time. 

[WUPHF]

Do we have rumblings of D4 again?  This appeared on D3Playbook.

https://stevedittmore.substack.com/p/what-ncaa-division-iii-schools-excelled?utm_source=www.d3playbook.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=is-it-time-for-division-iii-to-revisit-its-structure

This blog did not add much to the conversation, but this quote from a former president of Carleton College was interesting:

"Since there are very different interests of institutions within the current Division III, a new Division, comprising those institutions that would like to see intercollegiate athletics brought back into better balance with both the academic and the other co-curricular activities of our colleges and universities, still seems to me an outcome that could be highly beneficial"

If I could talk to the former president, I would ask him to imagine two subdivisions within Division III and then ask him to give examples of the institutions that would end up in the same subdivision as Carleton and examples that would end up in the other?

Is he, for example suggesting that a UW-La Crosse or Loras does no not have the proper balance with academics and co-curriculars just because they happen to compete very well?

[CNU85]

If I could talk to the former president, I would ask him to imagine two subdivisions within Division III and then ask him to give examples of the institutions that would end up in the same subdivision as Carleton and examples that would end up in the other?

I would be interested in this as well.

IF...all CAPS...IF, there are ever serious discussions of D3 subdivisions, how in the world would that be accomplished? Academically? Success of athletics? If so, which sports? Some are super competitive in some sports, not so much in others. I could see the criteria for entry in the various subdivisions ripping apart current conferences. This could force increased expenses as the geographic footprints of newly formed conferences would surely have to be expanded.

All rhetorical questions at this point. And maybe it will just never happen.

[Kuiper]

If I could talk to the former president, I would ask him to imagine two subdivisions within Division III and then ask him to give examples of the institutions that would end up in the same subdivision as Carleton and examples that would end up in the other?

I would be interested in this as well.

IF...all CAPS...IF, there are ever serious discussions of D3 subdivisions, how in the world would that be accomplished? Academically? Success of athletics? If so, which sports? Some are super competitive in some sports, not so much in others. I could see the criteria for entry in the various subdivisions ripping apart current conferences. This could force increased expenses as the geographic footprints of newly formed conferences would surely have to be expanded.

All rhetorical questions at this point. And maybe it will just never happen.

I'm getting the sense the people musing about a split are contemplating something like a cap in the number of sponsored sports or varsity sports or something like that.  I think some presidents look at schools adding sports right and left to drive enrollment and think they are elevating athletics to a role of outsized importance in the university compared to where it stood in the past.  That's kind of the gist of the comments from Carleton's former president.  It's already changing the nature of a conference since so many schools have to be affiliate members of different conferences for different new sports that they have decided to sponsor in recent years.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

There are definitely schools that resent all the talk of "it runs like a d1 program," that are often selling points for recruits at high performing d3 schools.  I think even things like coaches who don't teach, full time assistants, geographic expansion of the travel, less regional tournaments.

Now, what leads me to think there's no real traction for this is simply that there's no chance these schools can ever agree on what is necessary and what isn't - that's why d3 overall keeps pushing forward.  The more ambitious and aggressive programs push the whole thing.

There are certainly some who believe it needs to be a system in which winning your conference is bigger than competing for a national title.  Getting together to see how conference champions fare against each other is nice and all, but the conference is the main thing.  There are some who already see the conference itself as a concession - athletics should be an extra curricular like anything else.  That's a divide I don't think you can ever bridge or fully delineate.

[y_jack_lok]

There are certainly some who believe it needs to be a system in which winning your conference is bigger than competing for a national title.  Getting together to see how conference champions fare against each other is nice and all, but the conference is the main thing.  There are some who already see the conference itself as a concession - athletics should be an extra curricular like anything else.  That's a divide I don't think you can ever bridge or fully delineate.

If "Getting together to see how conferences fare against each other..." isn't necessary, then neither is the NCAA.

[Kuiper]

There are certainly some who believe it needs to be a system in which winning your conference is bigger than competing for a national title.  Getting together to see how conference champions fare against each other is nice and all, but the conference is the main thing.  There are some who already see the conference itself as a concession - athletics should be an extra curricular like anything else.  That's a divide I don't think you can ever bridge or fully delineate.

If "Getting together to see how conferences fare against each other..." isn't necessary, then neither is the NCAA.

That's probably the way DIII schools should think about it, since the NCAA subsidy for the NCAA tournament (which is by far its largest contribution to DIII) can no longer be counted upon. 

Moreover, for the vast majority of DIII schools, the NCAA is already largely irrelevant.  Conference play is the only thing and non-conference games might as well just be called preseason contests because most DIII schools have no chance of getting an NCAA bid and those games have no effect on their conference finish.  Their only "postseason" hope is qualifying for a conference tournament bid.

[Pat Coleman]

Our group of schools is never going to get more than 3.18% of the pie regardless of how they divide themselves -- I can't imagine that a Division IV or a III-AA is really going to be financially viable, even if we were able to keep the same size overall pie as we have now.