Musical Chairs

[legend334]

sorry forgot womens track and CC is 8.3 at UND D2 max is 12.6 D1 max is 18

interesting article in the student today about D1...Kupchella is quoted as saying he would like to see two divisions..scholarship and non scholarship....does that give any indication where UND might be going??? he stated then a school can choose which sport to put money into...

[The Sicatoka]

Kupchella in the Dakota Student:

Kupchella would rather change the NCAA.

"It's a train wreck ready to happen," Kupchella said. "It's out of control."

Ideally, Kupchella said he'd like to see the NCAA split into two divisions - those with scholarships and those without. That would allow schools to pick and choose what sports to put more money behind to be competitive.

"What we've done with hockey is a model that it can be done," Kupchella said.

"The NCAA train wreck." It almost has a ring to it.

Two divisions? Sounds like the model before 1973.

Why not invest in something that you can be successful in and have it be fiscally self-sufficient (ala UND mens hockey)?

Hold it. Two divisions, scholarship and no-scholarship? Is he saying there really isn't that much difference between the scholarship-offering divisions today? Isn't that sort of like ... what DI Board of Directors chair Hemenway said over here? Sounds like Dr. Kupchella's answer to my question (in the link) would be "old system" (two divisions).

[tony]

Two divisions. 1300 members. 10% offer hockey.

[jimdahl]

Two divisions. 1300 members. 10% offer hockey.

OK, you got me; this post so brusque that I don't know its point. Are you trying to say the two division idea Sicatoka was mentioning works for hockey but not other sports because hockey has a smaller member base? If so, I disagree. I think the sticking point to number of divisions for a sport is how many levels of championships you want to hold, which is dependent on the number of plateaus of competitiveness, which is tied to the sports' number of scholarships.

In Football it would be difficult to have only two divisions because a full load requires so many scholarships that its nice to have a post-season tournament for teams that only support a percentage of the scholarships, requiring another division (hence DI currently being split into IA and IAA). In basketball, which like hockey requires fewer scholarhips, one giant DI seems to work; I'm not sure why an even bigger scholarship division wouldn't.

[The Sicatoka]

Two divisions. 1300 members. 10% offer hockey.

I'd guess about the same percentage sponsor lacrosse. But I'd also guess that we could point to Johns Hopkins Lacrosse as a model of success (by the criteria implied by Dr. Kupchella) also.

Finding what you can succeed at (on the field and off, meaning fiscally which could mean either "self-sufficient" or "engine for an entire department") and consistently doing it is success:

Johns Hopkins Lacrosse

North Dakota Hockey

Denver Alpine Sports

(there have to be others)

[tony]

The NCAA split into three divisions back in 1973 because they concluded that 600 members divided between two divisions was unworkable. To me, two divisions means two sets of championships.

Seems like only yesterday we were debating about adding a fourth division between DII and DI.

[The Sicatoka]

The NCAA split into three divisions back in 1973 because they concluded that 600 members divided between two divisions was unworkable. To me, two divisions means two sets of championships.

Seems like only yesterday we were debating about adding a fourth division between DII and DI.

The NCAA puts on three championships in a lot of things today. Putting on championships costs the NCAA money (except for DI mens basketball and DI mens hockey). Fewer championships means less dollars spent on them and I'm sure the NCAA number-crunchers are well aware of that.

Is three divisions best? The chair of the DI Board of Directors poses that question himself.

As far as debating two vs. four divisions, we fans (of all schools) didn't roll out the two division talk as much as the chair of the DI Board of Directors and the president of the NCAA did.

" .... blurring of the lines between classifications ... " and " the line between them (DI and DII) is much less distinctive ... " are some strange statements coming from those highest levels of the NCAA folks. They almost sound like they see things in terms of "scholarship", excuse me, "grant-in-aid" granting programs and non-"grant-in-aid" granting programs.

[bisonguy]

Putting on championships costs the NCAA money (except for DI mens basketball and DI mens hockey).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

.....and DI men's wrestling, and DI men's baseball, and DI men's Lacrosse.

Hmmmmm..... if the NCAA was really concerned about costs and turning a profit, they could just eliminate women's sports and have just one division.

[The Sicatoka]

Have they gotten rid of the red ink on wrestling, baseball, and lacrosse championships? I hadn't seen those numbers positive as of yet (but I'll admit I haven't looked for probably two years). The one I knew was getting close to black ink (then) was DI womens basketball.

PS - Expect to see Amy Ruley and a couple of friends to stop by and "talk" to you later about that "eliminate womens sports" thing.

[Bisonfan1234]

The two divisions would work very well simply because all the good, big schools are going to jump off the NCAA ship and start their own league.

No one is going to care about the NCAA anymore except ESPN for their football and bball title games.

[The Sicatoka]

The two divisions would work very well simply because all the good, big schools are going to jump off the NCAA ship and start their own league.

No one is going to care about the NCAA anymore except ESPN for their football and bball title games.

And I'm not sure if you said it intentionally, but without the "bigs" all ESPN would care about would be the title games (not the tournaments).

[Bisonfan1234]

Yes, exactly.

[DamStrait]

OK, you got me;

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Jim, DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!!!

[JESUS,family,rutgers]

Hartwick College is another school that splits their sports in different divisions. All of their teams play in NCAA Division 3,except for men's soccer and,strangely enough, girls water polo. This seems like a strange girls sport to choose as division 1 because Hartwick is in New York, not exactly a water polo hotbed.

[tony]

NCAA DII Football Discussions.

The piece I thought might be most interesting to you guys is that the DII guys talked about going to five football classifications with 80, 60, 40, 20, 0 scholarship maximums respectively and then letting schools choose which division to compete in.

NCAA DII: Divisional Stability

The above story describes how DII is going to do a cost analysis of going DI. Maybe when they do that, they could also check to see why schools reclassified to DI in the first place... NCC members naturally think schools leave DII because of football, but NDSU is probably the only school where DI-AA football played a bigger factor in the decision to move than DI basketball. Just a thought.

[The Sicatoka]

NCAA DII Football Discussions.

The piece I thought might be most interesting to you guys is that the DII guys talked about going to five football classifications with 80, 60, 40, 20, 0 scholarship maximums respectively and then letting schools choose which division to compete in.

Letting schools choose the level of football from one of five? That's crazy. Only somebody way out there would come up with a pick-a-level, cafeteria plan, like that.

[The Sicatoka]

NCAA DII: Divisional Stability

The above story describes how DII is going to do a cost analysis of going DI. Maybe when they do that, they could also check to see why schools reclassified to DI in the first place... NCC members naturally think schools leave DII because of football, but NDSU is probably the only school where DI-AA football played a bigger factor in the decision to move than DI basketball. Just a thought.

In my last conversation with someone at UND Alumni, who has been tracking these matters for a while, it was pointed out that many, many DI-AAs are in more basketball oriented communities. Those schools greatly benefit by the great revenue to costs ratio basketball offers. Those schools tend to have football but not really fund it at the DI-AA level (examples: Valpariso, Drake, Dayton, Butler, Georgetown). There's where those schools can make it work fiscally. (That and better location, meaning lower cost and distance travel to games.)

Jumping back to football, and to put it admittedly harshly, they aren't serious (meaning competing for titles). My (rhetorical) question: Why make any effort if you aren't serious.

I don't think UND wants to be "not serious" about anything they compete in.

PS - Good articles. You gave me something to read over lunch.

[Bisonfan1234]

It's not enough to just create 5 divisions with scholorship limits.

Those numbers need to be the required number of scholorships for that division.

Anything else will result in underfunded and thus undeserving programs wasting the time of fully funded programs.

[Cratter]

Interesting poll at the Herald site.

http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.as...&msg=23.1&ctx=1