Under the present system, there are now 358 schools in D-I. IMO, that is far too many, and it is directly related to how the NCAA distributes revenues from the D-I national championship tournament. In effect, schools are encouraged to sign up for D-I even though they can never be competitive because the NCAA’s policy of giving every conference champion an autobid essentially gives them free money.

As for FBS, the NCAA tried to impose attendance requirements when it was formed, and very low ones at that, as a condition of membership. This would have relegated the MAC to FCS, but they resisted in court and were essentially grandfathered in. Now, schools can technically qualify, not by putting fannies in seats, but by allowing boosters to buy up enough tickets to inflate their true attendance.

IMO, schools should be allowed to select which division they compete in regardless of attendance, revenues, or past athletic success. But before allowing them to make that choice, I would make one admittedly major change.

Today, the NCAA only assesses schools token dues that don’t come close to matching the costs or benefits they receive by virtue of their membership. I would change that. I would assess members an equal share of the cost of NCAA management, which I would define as staff salaries and expenses, cost of investigating and managing compliance with NCAA regulations, and cost of conducting championship tournaments at every level.

In addition to that assessment, I would assess all D-I schools that sponsor scholarship football their proportional share of the cost of providing uniform officiating, including recruiting, training and scheduling crews for all D-I games.

I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

I’m not sure if that would reduce the number of FBS schools, since their Plan B would not be to drop to FCS, but rather to D-II. Possibly imposing greater numbers of sports sponsored at the D-I level might tip the scales on that.

Personally, I’m OK with having the higher resource schools (like the FBS) subsidize athletics at lower levels of competition. Let’s leave the D-I championships to the athletic programs that truly are high resource, and let’s allow each school to decide whether they are willing to be “high resource athletic programs” by subsidizing them out of general university funds and student fees.

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  Under the present system, there are now 358 schools in D-I. IMO, that is far too many, and it is directly related to how the NCAA distributes revenues from the D-I national championship tournament. In effect, schools are encouraged to sign up for D-I even though they can never be competitive because the NCAA’s policy of giving every conference champion an autobid essentially gives them free money.

As for FBS, the NCAA tried to impose attendance requirements when it was formed, and very low ones at that, as a condition of membership. This would have relegated the MAC to FCS, but they resisted in court and were essentially grandfathered in. Now, schools can technically qualify, not by putting fannies in seats, but by allowing boosters to buy up enough tickets to inflate their true attendance.

IMO, schools should be allowed to select which division they compete in regardless of attendance, revenues, or past athletic success. But before allowing them to make that choice, I would make one admittedly major change.

Today, the NCAA only assesses schools token dues that don’t come close to matching the costs or benefits they receive by virtue of their membership. I would change that. I would assess members an equal share of the cost of NCAA management, which I would define as staff salaries and expenses, cost of investigating and managing compliance with NCAA regulations, and cost of conducting championship tournaments at every level.

In addition to that assessment, I would assess all D-I schools that sponsor scholarship football their proportional share of the cost of providing uniform officiating, including recruiting, training and scheduling crews for all D-I games.

I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

I’m not sure if that would reduce the number of FBS schools, since their Plan B would not be to drop to FCS, but rather to D-II. Possibly imposing greater numbers of sports sponsored at the D-I level might tip the scales on that.

Personally, I’m OK with having the higher resource schools (like the FBS) subsidize athletics at lower levels of competition. Let’s leave the D-I championships to the athletic programs that truly are high resource, and let’s allow each school to decide whether they are willing to be “high resource athletic programs” by subsidizing them out of general university funds and student fees.

It is also the money generating at the D1 level. I found somewhere that D1 level, $200 million + devided up to the 358 schools. At the D2 level, only $7 million distribute among the more schools there than D1. $2 million distributed at the D3 schools who are more. I guess it depends if more schools join D1 would add more money into the pot to distribute at the D1 level. We do have schools from D2, D3 and in some cases like Santa Rosa College which is a JC in archery compete in D1 sports which they do get distribute some of the pot. Dallas Baptist is one that earn some money for going to the college world series regionals. Even the D2 schools that won men's hockey gets some of the money.

You don't have to be "High Resource" to run a sustainable athletic program. It comes down to cost model.

Quite frankly some of these mid-major schools are doing it better than the big guys. Ohio State had to take out $107 million dollar loan to cover its operating deficit.

https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/new...-back.html

High resource is becoming high risk. What happens if those inflated P5 TV contracts dry up? You can't assume the money and interest will always be there.

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

Schools have shown a remarkable ability to finance football and other athletic programs at steep operating losses to maintain the status of being members of the desired NCAA category.

Thus, in the case of a MAC school that is willing to spend $25 million in student fees a year to be an FBS football team, I do not think that a $750,000 dues fee will force them to drop down to D2 at all. They will happily add that to their operating loss to be able to say they are in the "same league" as Ohio State.

Thus, without other requirements, I think far more currently non-D1 schools will declares themselves D1.

(03-02-2021 11:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

Schools have shown a remarkable ability to finance football and other athletic programs at steep operating losses to maintain the status of being members of the desired NCAA category.

Thus, in the case of a MAC school that is willing to spend $25 million in student fees a year to be an FBS football team, I do not think that a $750,000 dues fee will force them to drop down to D2 at all. They will happily add that to their operating loss to be able to say they are in the "same league" as Ohio State.

Thus, without other requirements, I think far more currently non-D1 schools will declares themselves D1.

I think those other requirements would be a substantial difference in the number of sports a D-I school must sponsor and scholarships they must offer compared to D-II compared with today.

But if the only change were that a school had to pay substantially more dues to move up to D-I, why wouldn't those schools have already moved up?

(03-02-2021 11:19 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

Schools have shown a remarkable ability to finance football and other athletic programs at steep operating losses to maintain the status of being members of the desired NCAA category.

Thus, in the case of a MAC school that is willing to spend $25 million in student fees a year to be an FBS football team, I do not think that a $750,000 dues fee will force them to drop down to D2 at all. They will happily add that to their operating loss to be able to say they are in the "same league" as Ohio State.

Thus, without other requirements, I think far more currently non-D1 schools will declares themselves D1.

I think those other requirements would be a substantial difference in the number of sports a D-I school must sponsor and scholarships they must offer compared to D-II compared with today.

But if the only change were that a school had to pay substantially more dues to move up to D-I, why wouldn't those schools have already moved up?

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought your proposal was to get rid of all current requirements for D1, such as attendance, revenues, etc. with the only requirement for remaining D1 being a substantial increase in NCAA dues up to between 500k and 750k a year. If I'm mistaken and you would keep scholarship and sports other requirements, that would be a different story.

Maybe you could clarify with a list of all current FBS requirements, and which ones you would eliminate, which you would keep, and what new ones you would add, so we could see the overall proposed change?

(03-02-2021 11:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:19 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

Schools have shown a remarkable ability to finance football and other athletic programs at steep operating losses to maintain the status of being members of the desired NCAA category.

Thus, in the case of a MAC school that is willing to spend $25 million in student fees a year to be an FBS football team, I do not think that a $750,000 dues fee will force them to drop down to D2 at all. They will happily add that to their operating loss to be able to say they are in the "same league" as Ohio State.

Thus, without other requirements, I think far more currently non-D1 schools will declares themselves D1.

I think those other requirements would be a substantial difference in the number of sports a D-I school must sponsor and scholarships they must offer compared to D-II compared with today.

But if the only change were that a school had to pay substantially more dues to move up to D-I, why wouldn't those schools have already moved up?

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought your proposal was to get rid of all current requirements for D1, such as attendance, revenues, etc. with the only requirement for remaining D1 being a substantial increase in NCAA dues up to between 500k and 750k a year. If I'm mistaken and you would keep scholarship and sports other requirements, that would be a different story.

Maybe you could clarify with a list of all current FBS requirements, and which ones you would eliminate, which you would keep, and what new ones you would add, so we could see the overall proposed change?

As far as I know, there are no requirements at present except attendance, number of sports and number of scholarships. I would eliminate the attendance requirement, and increase the difference between number of sports and scholarships, primarily by increasing the requirements for D-I, but possibly also reducing D-II requirements (but I'm not very knowledgeable those are).

Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

(03-02-2021 12:10 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:19 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 11:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 09:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.

Schools have shown a remarkable ability to finance football and other athletic programs at steep operating losses to maintain the status of being members of the desired NCAA category.

Thus, in the case of a MAC school that is willing to spend $25 million in student fees a year to be an FBS football team, I do not think that a $750,000 dues fee will force them to drop down to D2 at all. They will happily add that to their operating loss to be able to say they are in the "same league" as Ohio State.

Thus, without other requirements, I think far more currently non-D1 schools will declares themselves D1.

I think those other requirements would be a substantial difference in the number of sports a D-I school must sponsor and scholarships they must offer compared to D-II compared with today.

But if the only change were that a school had to pay substantially more dues to move up to D-I, why wouldn't those schools have already moved up?

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought your proposal was to get rid of all current requirements for D1, such as attendance, revenues, etc. with the only requirement for remaining D1 being a substantial increase in NCAA dues up to between 500k and 750k a year. If I'm mistaken and you would keep scholarship and sports other requirements, that would be a different story.

Maybe you could clarify with a list of all current FBS requirements, and which ones you would eliminate, which you would keep, and what new ones you would add, so we could see the overall proposed change?

As far as I know, there are no requirements at present except attendance, number of sports and number of scholarships. I would eliminate the attendance requirement, and increase the difference between number of sports and scholarships, primarily by increasing the requirements for D-I, but possibly also reducing D-II requirements (but I'm not very knowledgeable those are).

Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

I see. FWIW, I would want to craft changes to reduce FBS, I'm not as concerned as much by D1 per se. A MEAC school operating on a shoe-string budget as a D1 hoops team doesn't bother me. A CUSA school running a $25 million operating deficit to fund FBS football does. So I'd want barriers that discourage the latter but do nothing to the former. Not sure if that is possible, LOL.

(03-02-2021 10:21 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  It is also the money generating at the D1 level. I found somewhere that D1 level, $200 million + devided up to the 358 schools. At the D2 level, only $7 million distribute among the more schools there than D1. $2 million distributed at the D3 schools who are more. I guess it depends if more schools join D1 would add more money into the pot to distribute at the D1 level. We do have schools from D2, D3 and in some cases like Santa Rosa College which is a JC in archery compete in D1 sports which they do get distribute some of the pot. Dallas Baptist is one that earn some money for going to the college world series regionals. Even the D2 schools that won men's hockey gets some of the money.

What is this nonsense.

D1 does have 358 schools including the 8 reclassifying members; D2 has 305 schools including 7 current and future reclassifying members with the likely loss of 2 members in the next 2 years.

Show a Link that says Santa Rosa College competes in any NCAA sport.

Dallas Baptist Baseball is one of only 9 teams from 7 D2 schools that are allowed in D1 from the 2011 decision and this number might drop depending on what happens with the possible PASSHE mergers.

The D2 schools that compete in D1/National Championship Division sports, including men's hockey but not the 9 teams previously mentioned, do so because there is no D2 championship in those sports.

The real differences in d1 schools is in football.
The level of competition between fbs and fcs is the greatest between the p5 and g5. The answer is for the p5 to split from the rest and the vacuum will add the top fcs creating a more competitive division. And a better product and the semi pro P5 can exist in its own division.

So no new rule seems necessary just evolution.

(03-02-2021 12:10 PM)ken d Wrote:  Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

Is that the goal of any of the "power" conferences or schools? AFAIK, no P5 commissioner and no AD or president at an athletic powerhouse have said they want to reduce the size of D-I.

If anyone was serious about doing this, they would do it by speaking the universal language: Money. They could change the March Madness distribution so that only teams that win at least one game in the tournament earn a revenue share for their conference. Of course, the NCAA will never do that, which is just one more indication that no one with influence is serious about reducing the number of schools in Division I.

(03-02-2021 01:40 PM)cleburneslim Wrote:  The real differences in d1 schools is in football.
The level of competition between fbs and fcs is the greatest between the p5 and g5. The answer is for the p5 to split from the rest and the vacuum will add the top fcs creating a more competitive division. And a better product and the semi pro P5 can exist in its own division.

So no new rule seems necessary just evolution.

When FCS fans say this is it because they want to join the G5?

I also don't see how this creates a better product.

The issue also is that the new rules that D2 and D3 games in basketball does not count anymore. We had La.-Lafayette who lost to North Alabama in 1998 when the last time an FBS school lost to a D2 school. The question is with the pandemic, and the travel issues which caused more money to be spent for an athletics department is an issue. There are a lot of talk in the D2 level that $7 million is not enough to fund the sports especially on the west coast for football. Florida Tech dropped football because there was not enough D2 Florida schools that sponsors the sport. Lets say that schools like Long Beach State, Fullerton State, UC-Irvine, Northridge State, Dominguez Hills State, East Bay State, Chico State and other California schools restart football at the D1 level, and schools with football like Central Washington, Simon Fraser, Colorado Mesa, Colorado Mines, CSU-Peublo, Fort Hays State and the Lone Star schools move up to D1, and Seattle Pacific and Western Washington restarts football to move to D1. All these schools could help the west coast schools as countable games if they were D1. That means even the PAC 12 schools do get more schools to play with at the D1 level to cut the expense of travel.

(03-02-2021 01:47 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 12:10 PM)ken d Wrote:  Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

Is that the goal of any of the "power" conferences or schools? AFAIK, no P5 commissioner and no AD or president at an athletic powerhouse have said they want to reduce the size of D-I.

If anyone was serious about doing this, they would do it by speaking the universal language: Money. They could change the March Madness distribution so that only teams that win at least one game in the tournament earn a revenue share for their conference. Of course, the NCAA will never do that, which is just one more indication that no one with influence is serious about reducing the number of schools in Division I.

I agree with this. I don't see evidence that the P5 wants to reduce D1 for hoops or FBS in football. E.g., personally, I think more than half of the G5 football programs are ridiculously insolvent (the rest are merely very insolvent) and should be moved down to FCS or something to a more sustainable level of investment.

But it's clear to me that the P5 doesn't think the same. They like having G5 around to play as OOC games, and if G5 are dumb enough to incur $25 million in operating losses each year for the privilege of playing against P5, the P5 has zero issue with that.

(03-02-2021 02:47 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 01:47 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 12:10 PM)ken d Wrote:  Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

Is that the goal of any of the "power" conferences or schools? AFAIK, no P5 commissioner and no AD or president at an athletic powerhouse have said they want to reduce the size of D-I.

If anyone was serious about doing this, they would do it by speaking the universal language: Money. They could change the March Madness distribution so that only teams that win at least one game in the tournament earn a revenue share for their conference. Of course, the NCAA will never do that, which is just one more indication that no one with influence is serious about reducing the number of schools in Division I.

I agree with this. I don't see evidence that the P5 wants to reduce D1 for hoops or FBS in football. E.g., personally, I think more than half of the G5 football programs are ridiculously insolvent (the rest are merely very insolvent) and should be moved down to FCS or something to a more sustainable level of investment.

But it's clear to me that the P5 doesn't think the same. They like having G5 around to play as OOC games, and if G5 are dumb enough to incur $25 million in operating losses each year for the privilege of playing against P5, the P5 has zero issue with that.

Mostly they're incurring those losses for the privilege of playing each other. An annual P5 game just reduces the loss from $25 million to $24 million.

(03-02-2021 03:01 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 02:47 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 01:47 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 12:10 PM)ken d Wrote:  Essentially my goal would be to substantially increase barriers to entry into D-I so as to significantly reduce the size of that division.

Is that the goal of any of the "power" conferences or schools? AFAIK, no P5 commissioner and no AD or president at an athletic powerhouse have said they want to reduce the size of D-I.

If anyone was serious about doing this, they would do it by speaking the universal language: Money. They could change the March Madness distribution so that only teams that win at least one game in the tournament earn a revenue share for their conference. Of course, the NCAA will never do that, which is just one more indication that no one with influence is serious about reducing the number of schools in Division I.

I agree with this. I don't see evidence that the P5 wants to reduce D1 for hoops or FBS in football. E.g., personally, I think more than half of the G5 football programs are ridiculously insolvent (the rest are merely very insolvent) and should be moved down to FCS or something to a more sustainable level of investment.

But it's clear to me that the P5 doesn't think the same. They like having G5 around to play as OOC games, and if G5 are dumb enough to incur $25 million in operating losses each year for the privilege of playing against P5, the P5 has zero issue with that.

Mostly they're incurring those losses for the privilege of playing each other. An annual P5 game just reduces the loss from $25 million to $24 million.

I should have been clearer and said "playing in the same level as". Because thats why many G5 spend that money. USF may only play Florida every 10 years, but we like thinking we are "FBS peers" with Florida.

I know, it makes no sense.

(03-02-2021 01:51 PM)Bobcat2013 Wrote:  

(03-02-2021 01:40 PM)cleburneslim Wrote:  The real differences in d1 schools is in football.
The level of competition between fbs and fcs is the greatest between the p5 and g5. The answer is for the p5 to split from the rest and the vacuum will add the top fcs creating a more competitive division. And a better product and the semi pro P5 can exist in its own division.

So no new rule seems necessary just evolution.

When FCS fans say this is it because they want to join the G5?

I also don't see how this creates a better product.

Most FCS fans who say this are only referring to the top 3 or so conferences. The recent success of Coastal and Liberty may have something to do with it as well, because they weren't anything special at the FCS level, but they have quickly found success at g5 level. Look at FCS vs G5 records all you want, but those results are somewhat skewed by so many of the bad FCS teams, all games being away, and because bad G5 programs typically dont schedule games against good FCS programs.

I'd support more programs moving up from FCS to FBS if that is what they want to do as I think it weakens FCS even further and will push the idea of a FBS/FCS split.

As a whole though the Big Sky, MVCFB and CAAFb don't belong with the G5 outside of a few individual programs.

Yes there is the Liberty and Coastal move up phenomenon but also Georgia Southern and Old Dominion which were beasts in FCS not exactly the same moving up.

(03-03-2021 12:34 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I'd support more programs moving up from FCS to FBS if that is what they want to do as I think it weakens FCS even further and will push the idea of a FBS/FCS split.

As a whole though the Big Sky, MVCFB and CAAFb don't belong with the G5 outside of a few individual programs.

Yes there is the Liberty and Coastal move up phenomenon but also Georgia Southern and Old Dominion which were beasts in FCS not exactly the same moving up.

It would open spots in FCS for D2 football schools to move up.

I'm actually for combing FBS and FCS. The NCAA only gives a scholarship cap at 85 for all schools and require a scholarship floor conferences need to abide by. Let's say that the football scholarship floor is 42 scholarships. Allow conferences determine where they want to cap the scholarships at.(any number between 42-85) about the conferences hurt immediately are the pioneer and ivy league schools. Maybe just have them ineligible for bowl games or something.