(05-23-2020 12:03 PM)DavidSt Wrote: With the rash of D1 and D2 schools dropping sports, and schools closing for good or downgrade their sports? There may not be enough teams for a championship at both levels.
This is actually a possibility for some of these sports. From a quick zip through wikipedia, men's wrestling has only 70 Division I, 60 Division II and 94 Division III schools. And I don't know how updated those numbers are, so it might well be lower.
Baseball. 297 Division I programs.
Softball 286 Division I programs.
men's wrestling 70 Division I programs--could combine divisions
women's wrestling--emerging sport.
cross country, indoor track, outdoor track--super cheap, one staff 3 sports
swimming and diving--I don't have time to count, but there are a LOT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co...ving_teams
golf, tennis: I'm not sure how many teams there are. I don't know if there close to hockey level where the NCAA combines divisions.
Quote:Do you think the D2 schools in these areas may have helped saved Akron, ECU, CMU and others from dropping the sports?
No, absolutely not. There is not enough money in the travel budget to save a sport if cuts must be made. Akron was supposed to travel this spring to play series at LAmar, at Pepperdine, at Marshall and at Lipscomb (Nashville).
If travel was as important as DavidSt thinks, they'd have played Horizon League and Missouri Valley schools instead of traveling to Texas and California.
Quote:We might moved the sports into a single sports conference like the water sports or others like that into regions.
I don't see much appetite for reorganizing minor sports.