FB: Liberty League

[Bartman]

"Incorrect. Based on what I see, D3 awards 28 team titles in D3. So since 2024, that's 84 team titles." IC, I was looking at the entire history of D3 Championships , and when looking at that data set I was not incorrect. I will acknowledge there is a recent trend towards high Endowment colleges winning a higher percentage of Championships which seems to be your point. They can pay higher salaries to coaches , fund more sports and offer "need" based scholarships to more athletes. This is all obvious, but the "little guy" still has a chance when setting the right priorities . HWS only has about 250MM in Endowment , but still has 20 National titles in its history, and I think Ithaca , also under a Billion  has a pretty good Championship history. I'm hoping we can still compete at a high level for Championships, that is what D3 should be about.

[Bartman]

As far as budgets are concerned, I was glad to see an Alfred-Hobart JV football game yesterday.  I was happy for all of the D3 athletes to get a chance to see the field after all of the practices. By the way, Hobart seems to have recruited some depth as they won the game 38-0, which means it's even more important to fund a JV schedule, to keep the boys hungry.

[IC798891]

I was looking at the entire history of D3 Championships ...Ithaca , also under a Billion  has a pretty good Championship history.

But things are different now in D3. The best coaches are getting poached to go to higher divisions, and that's causing a ripple effect.

Ithaca's actually a great example of this

Tufts soccer won four NCAA titles with Josh Shapiro. He got hired by Harvard, so Tufts hired Ithaca's Kyle Dezotell, who had just guided Ithaca to a Top 10 ranking and its first NCAA win in 17 years. Dezotell won a title at Tufts in 2025.

NYU men's hoops made the title game in 2025 (I incorrectly credited them with winning it in a previous post) with Dave Klatsky. Klatsky got poached by Florida, so NYU hired Ithaca's Waleed Farid, who had just been named Region Coach of the Year by this very website and guided Ithaca to the second round of the playoffs.

And of course, Ithaca's last two football head coaches were poached by Ivy League institutions.

I think you're going to see this more and more.

[IC798891]

My mistake with NYU hoops notwithstanding, there's a very common common thread running the six schools that have captured ~30% of the team titles in D3 the past three years.

1) Endowments in the billions. Now, obviously they all have much bigger student bodies than our schools so of course their endowments need to be much bigger. I will make the admittance that perhaps on a per student basis, they aren't as drastically different.

2) They're all within spitting distance of major cities

3) Their academic reputations give them national brand recognition, which massively increases their recruiting base. Coupled with their massive student bodies -- as seen in point 1 -- they're not the colleges at risk of closing/merging with this coming demographic shift. Which also helps prospective students and their parents feel good about the value of that degree.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing a shift towards these types of schools winning it all more frequently, and being represented in the upper reaches of the Director's Cup. Yeah, you might not see it in football, and sure, it's not a guarantee of anything. But like a lot of things we deal with today, being rich makes life a lot easier

[unionpalooza]

My mistake with NYU hoops notwithstanding, there's a very common common thread running the six schools that have captured ~30% of the team titles in D3 the past three years.

1) Endowments in the billions. Now, obviously they all have much bigger student bodies than our schools so of course their endowments need to be much bigger. I will make the admittance that perhaps on a per student basis, they aren't as drastically different.

2) They're all within spitting distance of major cities

3) Their academic reputations give them national brand recognition, which massively increases their recruiting base. Coupled with their massive student bodies -- as seen in point 1 -- they're not the colleges at risk of closing/merging with this coming demographic shift. Which also helps prospective students and their parents feel good about the value of that degree.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing a shift towards these types of schools winning it all more frequently, and being represented in the upper reaches of the Director's Cup. Yeah, you might not see it in football, and sure, it's not a guarantee of anything. But like a lot of things we deal with today, being rich makes life a lot easier

My mistake with NYU hoops notwithstanding, there's a very common common thread running the six schools that have captured ~30% of the team titles in D3 the past three years.

1) Endowments in the billions. Now, obviously they all have much bigger student bodies than our schools so of course their endowments need to be much bigger. I will make the admittance that perhaps on a per student basis, they aren't as drastically different.

2) They're all within spitting distance of major cities

3) Their academic reputations give them national brand recognition, which massively increases their recruiting base. Coupled with their massive student bodies -- as seen in point 1 -- they're not the colleges at risk of closing/merging with this coming demographic shift. Which also helps prospective students and their parents feel good about the value of that degree.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing a shift towards these types of schools winning it all more frequently, and being represented in the upper reaches of the Director's Cup. Yeah, you might not see it in football, and sure, it's not a guarantee of anything. But like a lot of things we deal with today, being rich makes life a lot easier

My mistake with NYU hoops notwithstanding, there's a very common common thread running the six schools that have captured ~30% of the team titles in D3 the past three years.

1) Endowments in the billions. Now, obviously they all have much bigger student bodies than our schools so of course their endowments need to be much bigger. I will make the admittance that perhaps on a per student basis, they aren't as drastically different.

2) They're all within spitting distance of major cities

3) Their academic reputations give them national brand recognition, which massively increases their recruiting base. Coupled with their massive student bodies -- as seen in point 1 -- they're not the colleges at risk of closing/merging with this coming demographic shift. Which also helps prospective students and their parents feel good about the value of that degree.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing a shift towards these types of schools winning it all more frequently, and being represented in the upper reaches of the Director's Cup. Yeah, you might not see it in football, and sure, it's not a guarantee of anything. But like a lot of things we deal with today, being rich makes life a lot easier

The other thing common across the top of the Director's Cup standing (and not unrelated to endowment) is almost all of those schools are need blind.  It's an incredible advantage if you can recruit kids without worrying about what they can pay - only a very small number of schools/programs can do that.