A better approach would be to have competition tiers based on performance.

You get in the top tier by scoring TD's, runs, or baskets; not what your TV ratings are, or what you pay the coach, or who your frat brother is.

For DI football you could have three tiers with 12 districts of seven teams, that would play six district games three at home and three away. District champions and four at-large qualify for the playoffs.

Sixth and seventh place teams from Tier I might potentially relegate and be replaced by 1st or 2nd place teams from Tier II, with the same also occurring between Tier II and Tier III.

With district play only taking six games, conferences could continue to schedule conference games, with some district games counting for both.

This tiered system could potentially be extended to DII (2 tiers) and DIII (3 tiers). If a DII school has a good football program, they can compete at a higher level of competition without having to upgrade the lacrosse or track team.

For basketball, there could be three tiers of 16 districts of 8 teams.

(03-11-2022 02:51 AM)AZcats Wrote:  

(03-11-2022 02:20 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(03-11-2022 01:18 AM)AZcats Wrote:  

(03-11-2022 12:00 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 11:56 AM)dbackjon Wrote:  Why would the say, Patriot/WAC/SWAC/MEAC get in instead of the America East and Big Sky?

Why automatically include G5 conferences if they have sub par basketball?

Why would you leave out the two largest (in number of sports offered, scholarships given, and budget) schools in the Big Sky? (Sac State and NAU)


Get ready for litigation.

What they are going to likely do is increase the number of sports/scholarships a school has to provide.

Why doesn't Arizona and Arizona State play NAU on a regular basis in both basketball and baseball?? And why not football too?? If the Arizona legislature doesn't want to see Arizona and Arizona State in different conferences, why doesn't the Arizona legislature force Arizona and Arizona State to schedule Northern Arizona non-conference??

Northern Arizona does not have baseball. Arizona plays NAU pretty much every year in either football or men's basketball or both. Including this past football season where UofA lost to NAU. Arizona State also plays NAU, just not as frequently.

Yeah I imagine being at 7000 feet the climate isn’t ideal for baseball. Probably doesn’t consistently stay above freezing at night until around May.

I saw a blurb about NAU signing multi-year football deal but didn’t remember if it was Arizona or AzSt.

We have minor league baseball here in Colorado Springs. Until about five years ago it was the AAA team for the Rockies. The stadium is just above 6500 feet and is the highest professional baseball field in North America. Yes there are issues with cold weather and I am being totally serious when I say it's possible to have a snow-out all season.

I believe it.

(03-10-2022 10:38 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 01:59 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 01:41 PM)shizzle787 Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 12:32 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 12:10 PM)Wedge Wrote:  IMO some of these comments are reading things into the NCAA statement that are not there.

The key part is "those that may be contemplating reclassification to Division I or movement within the Division I membership".

That's meant to change the rules to move D-II to D-I, or FCS to FBS. Not to kick out anyone who is already in D-I or FBS.

The changes might even be in response to the recent Supreme Court case, and its suggestion that there are many NCAA rules that are illegally anticompetitive. If that's the case, the changes might even make it *easier* to move, to try to insulate the NCAA from more lawsuits.

To use an example mentioned in another thread here recently: The requirement for a 4-year transition period when moving into Division I is ridiculous. That requirement could easily be eliminated, as could any transition period for FCS-to-FBS movers.

That's a good point.

I could see a proverbial splitting of the baby: requiring the sponsorship of more sports with higher funding levels on the one hand (which sets the competitive bar for Division I higher), but not have arbitrary rules beyond those requirements (e.g. the transition period, having to find a D-I conference home or really any type of requirement outside of the requisite number of sports and funding). Essentially, the NCAA could set a higher bar for getting into Division I, but it's truly a straight-line bar. If you meet those requirements, then you can be Division I (even if your only option is to be an independent in all sports - that should be completely the prerogative of the applicable school). It's when you start adding in arbitrary requirements where whether you get into Division I can depend upon small "p" political moves or items that can be easily manipulated and/or don't really reflect financial strength (and I'd actually put attendance requirements in that category at this point), that's where the NCAA gets into trouble.

In essence, make the truly substantive requirements for moving up to Division I harder, but simultaneously remove the non-substantive requirements for moving up to Division I.

I think the dropping the requirement to be sponsored by a conference is a non-starter. That would in theory allow 10-12 schools from the same region to all move up at the same time and in theory form a conference and then cry about not getting an AQ bid until they get one. It will lead to an already bloated D-1 getting bigger.

If the following leagues (who have no legitimate reason for being Division 1) dropped out (with the better schools finding homes in other D-1 leagues), the NCAA tournament could go back to 64 and actually gain 3 at-large bids:

OVC (Morehead State might find a home somewhere)
MAAC (Iona, Siena, Fairfield, and Quinnipiac might find homes)
Big South (Winthrop might find a home)
A-Sun (FGCU might find a home)
Horizon
NEC (Bryant/Wagner might find homes)
Southland

I go back to a point that I've made elsewhere: Division I status is NOT supposed to be some type of elitist line in the sand (which I think some people on this forum are attempting to do). IMHO, if you commit the resources to the requisite number of sports to be a Division I school, then you should be Division I. It's not for me to judge whether your conference is worthy or if it's a wise allocation of your school's financial resources. As long as you can meet the Division I requirements, then you're a Division I school.

Individual conferences, on the other hand, can (and should) be free to be as absolutely elitist as they want to be.

I have no issue with raising the bar for Division I requirements, but call me crazy, but I highly doubt that the outcome is going to be any reduction in the current number of D-I school. Instead, my guess is that it will temporarily slow down the D-I move-ups until the money gets large enough (e.g. when a new NCAA Tournament contract gets into place) that more schools are incentivized to move up again come hell or high water.

Honestly, what would throw cold water on D-I reclassifications more than anything is a prospect that not many non-power conference fans want to talk about: a revamp of the NCAA Tournament revenue distribution system that provides much more to the P5 and maybe the Big East in a way that's closer to football. You basically have to remove the financial incentive of moving up to D-I in the first place if the goal is to reduce D-1 call-ups (which I'm not sure is truly the goal of the NCAA). The P5 only care about the number of Division I schools insofar that such schools are (a) taking away money from the P5 and/or (b) preventing the P5 to enact its preferred governing rules (such as how many scholarships that they can fund for non-revenue sports). If those items are negated, then I doubt that the P5 would care if there are 1000 schools in Division I.

^THIS^

The NCAA when it went to the federated governance system in 1972 laid out very plainly that there would be three divisions.

Division I for schools sponsoring broad athletic departments with many sports, awarding a lot of athletic based aid, and playing schedules with games outside their region

Division II for institutions wanting to play scholarship sports on a regional basis with financially appropriate levels of aid.

Division III for institutions not wanting to award ability based aid.

Very unlikely they depart from that framework of you pick your level.

I don’t expect any Division I to II or III stampede. The looming demographic gap when the number of 18 year olds drops significantly in 2025 is more likely to cause reclassification than any new rule.

So Alabama Football should be DII?

(03-11-2022 12:00 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 11:56 AM)dbackjon Wrote:  Why would the say, Patriot/WAC/SWAC/MEAC get in instead of the America East and Big Sky?

Why automatically include G5 conferences if they have sub par basketball?

Why would you leave out the two largest (in number of sports offered, scholarships given, and budget) schools in the Big Sky? (Sac State and NAU)


Get ready for litigation.

What they are going to likely do is increase the number of sports/scholarships a school has to provide.

Why doesn't Arizona and Arizona State play NAU on a regular basis in both basketball and baseball?? And why not football too?? If the Arizona legislature doesn't want to see Arizona and Arizona State in different conferences, why doesn't the Arizona legislature force Arizona and Arizona State to schedule Northern Arizona non-conference??

It's the board of regents that controls that.

And for football, NAU, in alternating years, has right of first refusal to play ASU and UA in football.

Why doesn't Alabama play Jacksonville State? Or UAB?

(03-11-2022 02:20 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(03-11-2022 01:18 AM)AZcats Wrote:  

(03-11-2022 12:00 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(03-10-2022 11:56 AM)dbackjon Wrote:  Why would the say, Patriot/WAC/SWAC/MEAC get in instead of the America East and Big Sky?

Why automatically include G5 conferences if they have sub par basketball?

Why would you leave out the two largest (in number of sports offered, scholarships given, and budget) schools in the Big Sky? (Sac State and NAU)


Get ready for litigation.

What they are going to likely do is increase the number of sports/scholarships a school has to provide.

Why doesn't Arizona and Arizona State play NAU on a regular basis in both basketball and baseball?? And why not football too?? If the Arizona legislature doesn't want to see Arizona and Arizona State in different conferences, why doesn't the Arizona legislature force Arizona and Arizona State to schedule Northern Arizona non-conference??

Northern Arizona does not have baseball. Arizona plays NAU pretty much every year in either football or men's basketball or both. Including this past football season where UofA lost to NAU. Arizona State also plays NAU, just not as frequently.

Yeah I imagine being at 7000 feet the climate isn’t ideal for baseball. Probably doesn’t consistently stay above freezing at night until around May.

I saw a blurb about NAU signing multi-year football deal but didn’t remember if it was Arizona or AzSt.

Correct - we used to have both baseball and softball, too hard to keep that going.

NAU plays either ASU or UA every other year in football, unless NAU opts out for a particular year.

It should be kept in mind that the NCAA has always bent over backwards to not exclude schools from D-I who are in D-I. Take the ticket sale/Attendance rule. You only have to meet the minimum every other year, and that can be done by purchase of tickets at "not less than 1/3rd" regular price, which is not defined. Those could be $15 bleacher seats sold 3 for 1 to boosters to meet the attendance requirement (MAC schools have a lot of experience working this angle). That empty seat purchase rule is a "fix" for not removing the attendance requirement rule.

So I am with Wedge on this. It's not at all likely we'll see more restrictions on membership beyond additional "linear" requirements such as say 16 sports sponsored for D-I and 18 for FBS, instead of 14 for D1 and 16 for FBS (or whatever it is). The big impact will probably be a rise in Beach Volleyball and Bowling (maybe even Men's Bowling) sponsorship, or inclusion of E-sports in the list. It's not likely to have the desired impact of restricting anyone.