Football coming to George Fox?

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It’s looking like the quiet undercurrent of football at George Fox that has existed over the past several years is going to get a little louder after the school received a $1.2 million gift to help build a sports complex.

The school also referenced women’s lacrosse as a potential companion sport.

We had a really disappointing start to the offseason, with Blackburn and Principia dropping football, then Colorado College, in what remains a baffling decision, doing the same. But Stevenson, Pacific and Presentation plan to take the field in 2011, with Hendrix presumed to be joining them.

George Fox has been talking about football for a while. The concept appears to come up at Lynchburg on occasion. Southern Maine has explored football more than once in the past decade. It got discussed at Rochester Tech. And while the latter two don’t exactly need more enrollment, anywhere where enrollment is a concern will be a prime candidate for Division III football.

Even at Centenary (La.), where the school recently gave its notice it was leaving the Division I Summit League, could be headed for Division III and could add football.

There’s plenty to be happy about this offseason. Which only makes Colorado College more mind-boggling.

Ten years of D3football.com

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A decade ago at this time, I was throwing the proverbial switch and getting ready to unleash D3football.com on the World Wide Web.

Lycoming def. Widener, 1998It had been a project we were attempting to keep secret, which was difficult to do, assembling 220-some football schedules, quick facts and the like without being noticed. In the weeks before our July 7, 1999, launch, we saw the competition, Division III Football Online, really ramp up its preseason coverage, much better than it had done previously. And since we were moving into what was basically another site’s established territory, we were concerned there would be a backlash.

That potential backlash had kept us from expanding Division III Basketball Online and adding a football site the year before. We did talk very seriously about doing it for the 1998 season, and there was definitely some split opinions among our inner circle at the time, which was basically me, Jim Stout and Ray Martel. But Ray and I took a break from our coverage of Catholic University football to cover the Widener-Lycoming game that fall, a classic in which Lyco rallied from a 13-2 deficit after starting with the ball on its 1-yard line with a little more than three minutes left, and we knew we had to cover this sport more often.

When I took over Division III Basketball Online in November 1997 I had this illusion that I could do it a few hours a night, a few nights a week, which would make the site more up-to-date than it had been previously and everyone would be happy. But that illusion quickly faded and by that time, the site already took up 20-30 hours a week during the basketball season. So I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into.

Your response, the fans’ response, to D3football.com was overwhelming, from the opening days. It eventually passed D3hoops.com in traffic and popularity and really drives the whole D3sports.com network. Thanks for being a part of it and choosing to follow NCAA Division III football with us. It’s been a very rewarding decade, getting to go across the country and see great football games, meet people, find good stories and bring them back to you.

And while this site is still really a labor of love, and may well never be my full-time job, I don’t love it or Division III football any less.

Spread the word.

Welcome to the fold, Pacific

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Hopefully better late than never, D3football.com welcomes Pacific University to the Division III football-playing fold. In a year where D-III football was dealt a few blows, losing Blackburn, Principia, and most surprisingly, Colorado College, it’s good to see administrations are still seeing the value of football at their schools.

I was contacted by an AP reporter in Oregon for my take on why Pacific added football — she said it was added as a revenue generator. And while that sounds odd at the Division III level, for a sport that costs a lot of money to sponsor, it can still make sense. I wrote a piece about schools adding football several years ago and there are a few basic reasons, one of which is increased enrollment.

This isn’t to say that Pacific will bring in 200 extra new freshmen when it holds its first football camp, the way Mary Hardin-Baylor did, but football is about the biggest driver of undergraduate enrollment a school can add.

Here’s hoping Pacific, and Hendrix too, find success in Division III football.