Monthly Archives: June 2008

Homeward bound

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I came out to the East Coast in August of 1990, 17 years old, about to start my freshman year in college.

And other than going home for the summer between that and my sophomore year at Catholic University, I’ve been out here ever since.

It’s been a long 18 years; it’s time to go home. We’re doing our own version of the Mid-Atlantic Shuffle, leaving Northern Virginia in August and moving to Minneapolis.

I’ll miss the vast number of Division III schools there are here on the East Coast, where I can basically stumble over a D-III school every 20 minutes on the highway. I’ve seen 222 Division III football teams play, as near as I can tell, and been in 67 teams’ stadiums. Now I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new group. I’ve been to Hamline’s gym and Macalester’s now-defunct gym, seen St. Ben’s and UW-River Falls, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville. How many Iowa gyms will I get into this year?

There will be a lot of new things to experience.

Like flying to the Final Four. 🙂

So I apologize that it’s been a bit of a quiet offseason around here, other than the silly season with all the coaching changes. We’ve spent a lot of time repairing, painting and packing. I’ll keep the same day job, as sports editor of the Verizon Central Newsroom, and simply work from there instead of Virginia.

Thanks to everyone who has been so hospitable over my years here on the East Coast. Hundreds of SIDs and coaches have made time to help us cover Division III in the past decade. Now I’ll get a different perspective, meet new people and spend a lot more time on I-94 and I-35 rather than I-95 and I-66.

Choosing Division III

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Our friends at the Double-A Zone have asked the question, Who chooses Division III? It’s the NCAA’s official blog, so you have to take that into consideration, but unlike many ways in which the NCAA deals with Division III (can’t get its own playoff brackets right, doesn’t know how many Pool C bids there should be), the blog has a healthy knowledge of Division III, run by former Brandeis baseball player Josh Centor.

In light of the fact that Division II has spent a fair amount of time over the past few years trying to find its identity, there’s now apparently some sort of buzz. For me, I’m not sure what “I Chose Division II” actually means, while Division I’s identity is fairly clear and Division III has staked out the student-athlete high ground as the only purely amateur division (non-scholarship) in college athletics.

However, there seems to be some discussion from commenters, not much of it well-informed, as to what Division III’s identity is. Those people need a good dose of D3sports.com readers to fill them in. (I myself have a comment that is awaiting moderator approval.)

Meanwhile, the core question: Should Division III do more to brand itself? Speaking as someone who has done most of the branding of Division III over the past decade, absolutely. I look at what Division II has done in this area over the past few years, in terms of fancy promotional spots, games on CBS College Sports and football playoffs on ESPN, a full package of streaming video broadcasts of football and basketball, and I am definitely jealous. All Division III fans should be.

Division III should be branding itself. It should not be left to people like us here at D3sports.com or Steve Clay and D3Cast or Robb Modica and D3Scoreboard.

We just wasted a bunch of time and money figuring out Division IV was not the place we really wanted to be. So let’s spruce up our house a little bit while we’re here. Let’s show the rest of college fandom that this is not just glorified intramurals. Let’s get our games out there for people to see.

Why did you choose Division III? Go tell them.

And tell us below.

Good clean living

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In a sports world plagued by stories of athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, it’s natural to wonder whether this is a problem for Division III athletics, too. Rich Scarcella of the Reading (Pa.) Eagle looks at how Albright College is addressing this concern.

While the NCAA tests Division I and II football and baseball players for steroids and has year round tests to determine what other scholarship sports have a higher risk of steroid use, that level of testing hasn’t extended to Division III. There is random testing at NCAA playoff events.

The cost of testing and a conventional belief that non-scholarship athletes have less incentive to use performance enhancing drugs are two reasons given for less testing at this level. But 2006 events at UW-Stout and a 2005 NCAA survey in which Division III athletes reported the highest levels of amphetamine use (see page 12) have called that conventional wisdom into question.

As noted in the Reading Eagle article, the NCAA has a pilot program that tests athletes year-round for performance enhancing and recreational drugs, including marijuana. Alcohol is only tested for certain sports, like rifle shooting. Because it’s essentially a fact-finding study, there are no sanctions for testing positive.

But Albright has gone considerably farther. There are sanctions for testing positive with a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. A missed or refused test is considering a positive result. And alcohol is a tested substance. The Albright athletes interviewed had a divided opinion on the testing.

Sophomore running back Nate Romig says, “At the Division III level a college can’t give money to someone to play football…At Division I and II, colleges are paying you to play by giving out scholarships. They can do what they want to do to those athletes. They can test. I’m paying my way here. I do feel that my privacy is being invaded to a point. It is an infringement. I have teammates who feel the same way.” Despite the reservations, Romig also feels the testing should be adopted at other schools.

Athletic Director Steve George points out that the divided opinion isn’t confined to the athletes. “I’m not sure we had the support from the other side of the street (administration). On a college campus, there’s a liberal point of view that students should be allowed to experiment and to be able to find their way. When I came over to the athletic department, we had some issues.”

Personally I like randomly testing athletes for performance enhancing drugs throughout the year. If you’re trying to police this kind of drug use, you should cover offseason workouts. And I like testing for recreational drugs during the sports season.

I’m less clear on testing for recreational drugs in the offseason. Though morally opposed to the use of illegal drugs, does a basketball player or football player represent a college any more than any other student? If you’re going to test the athletes, why not other groups, too?