Future of Division III

[Gregory Sager]

I know that you're kidding, but it's eminently logical for the three non-SUNYAC colleges of the SUNY system that are current D3 members (SUNY-Purchase, SUNY-Maritime, and SUNY-Old Westbury) to stay outside of the SUNYAC. The SUNYAC is an upstate-only conference, whereas SUNY-Purchase is in Westchester County, SUNY-Maritime is in the Bronx, and SUNY-Old Westbury is on Long Island.

[pabegg]

NCAA Release on 8/13 has additional information on the reclassifying.

Highlights include:

Concordia is indeed the Seward, Nebraska campus.

The Upper Midwest Athletic Conference and New England Collegiate Conference are new active conferences.

St. Joseph's of Brooklyn is listed as Skyline Conference. As this is the first that I've seen of that, it may be a mistake; their sister campus (SJ of Long Island) is a Skyline member.

Maryville MO and Cal State East Bay are reclassifying to D2.

Active membership is now 429.

[Ralph Turner]

January 2009 Legislative proposals, as per NCAA press release, including these two...

Establish a uniform date of August 15 as the first permissible practice date in the sports of cross country, field hockey, golf, rugby, soccer, tennis and women's volleyball. The sponsoring conferences (New Jersey Athletic and City University of New York Athletic Conferences) want to replace the current formula for determining the first practice date for those fall sports, under which schools may begin practice on a date that permits 16 practice opportunities before the first scheduled competition.

Allow institutions to view throughout the season NCAA computer data related to primary and secondary criteria for ranking and selection of teams for championships. The Colonial States Athletic Conference joined the Capital Athletic Conference in sponsorship.

[pabegg]

The first of the 2008-09 Championship Manuals, for men's soccer and women's soccer have been published.

At a quick browse, I didn't see anything notably different from last year.

Northern Athletics Conference is now a Pool A conference, as expected.

[Ralph Turner]

New Presidential White Paper

Championships

• Change the access ratio policies, as necessary, to limit the championships field in team sports to 64. This appears to be the most viable option for the division to explore.

• Establish related sports sponsorship projections, and corresponding bracket and "Pool" timetables, as appropriate, in both team and individual sports, through 2020.

• Identify necessary bracket enhancements and related costs for planning purposes.

• Emphasize the quality of the student-athlete experience as a priority in future championships discussions.

White Paper pdf

[wilburt]

Interesting article on the current status of Division III

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/02/ncaa

[old ends]

Interesting article on the current status of Division III

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/02/ncaa

They will try the split again. By keeping it front of the noses of those who want it.

[old ends]

Ralph,

What are the " white papers" they want to review.? See attached article.
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=39156

Or is this just another way of saying---here comes D4.

[Ralph Turner]

Ralph,

What are the " white papers" they want to review.? See attached article.
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=39156

Or is this just another way of saying---here comes D4.

Hello, old ends.

I think the link to the white papers is linked below in the White Paper pdf.

New Presidential White Paper

Championships

• Change the access ratio policies, as necessary, to limit the championships field in team sports to 64. This appears to be the most viable option for the division to explore.

• Establish related sports sponsorship projections, and corresponding bracket and "Pool" timetables, as appropriate, in both team and individual sports, through 2020.

• Identify necessary bracket enhancements and related costs for planning purposes.

• Emphasize the quality of the student-athlete experience as a priority in future championships discussions.

White Paper pdf

[old ends]

missed that so thank you very much

[pabegg]

NCAA finally got around to publishing the minutes of committee meetings since January.

Go here (http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=24) and then pick your committee.

Some interesting stuff from the championships committee.

All conference games will officially be regional games in all sports; this has been a waiver process (which apparently has always been accepted).

Soccer is redoing its regions for next year (and making the mens and womens the same).

Basketball and soccer will have a "pilot" program that will allow one extra plane flight in order to allow a deserving team to host.

I've been trying to figure out how the "one extra flight" rule would come into play, and I realized the obvious example would be the 2008 men's basketball "west coast pod," where Whitworth hosted the winner of the game between Occidental and Pomona-Pitzer. This setup had one flight. If you assume that Occidental deserved to host the pod, then this rule would have allowed a 4-team pod with Whitworth and someone else flying into Los Angeles. Or if no one on the west coast deserved to host (as was likely the case), Lawrence would have gotten to host a pod, Whitworth would have flown to a 4-team pod in the midwest, and the Oxy/PP winner would have been sent to the midwest in a 3-team pod.

[frank uible]

Sounds as if it is rife with potential for the practice of petty politics.

[pabegg]

Sounds as if it is rife with potential for the practice of petty politics.

It looks like the committee felt they had to deal with that possibility. The minutes included the following statement:

"That the parameter for implementation of this pilot program is to allow higher-seeded institutions the opportunity to host when the geographical guidelines would normally not have permitted this opportunity. It is not within the sports committees purview to approve the additional flight for seeding purposes (i.e., to create a specific matchup based on seeding; to avoid a matchup based on seeding)."

See my example added to the initial post for an example of how this would work. In this case, Lawrence, the #2 team in the Midwest region, was not able to host because of the "minimize the flights" constraint. The pilot rule would have allowed the committee to keep Lawrence at home rather than making the change that the constraint forced it to do.

[Ralph Turner]

Future of Division II.

President of D-II talks about D-II and the challenges that they face.

He talks about D-II as a destination.  D-III schools that chose D-II as a destination include:

CSU-East Bay was geographically isolated from several D-III schools.

Maryville MO decided that its peer institutions were in D-II.  An extensive discussion was conducted on the SLIAC board about this decision.  SLIAC Men's Post 5234  Maryville goes in 2009-10.

Lake Erie added football.  The AMCC is a non-football conference, so there may not have been as much "glue" to  hold LEC in D-3.

After years as a D-III, Lincoln PA went to the Central IAC where its traditional rivals were.

Add Chowan, Seton Hill and Chestnut Hill and you have a varied assortment of schools.


Those are the only ones I can think of who have gone to D-II in the last 2-3 years.  Maybe twice as many schools have come to D-III in that period!  (Did I miss any others?)

[Ralph Turner]

Legislative proposals for January 2009

The Division III Management Council endorsed a 2009 Convention proposal during its fall meeting to permit student-athletes in six team sports to participate in one date of competition during the nontraditional season without being charged with a season of participation.

In addition to recommending that the Division III Presidents Council support that proposal, which is sponsored by two member conferences, the Management Council asked the presidents to oppose proposals that would exempt conference championships and postseason tournaments from the requirement to give student-athletes one day a week off from athletically related events, and permit institutions to view NCAA computer data throughout a season related to criteria for ranking and selecting teams for a championship.

Yea!!!!  Maybe Pat Coleman can get those data published on these sites!