With all respect to Rochester Institute of Technology, I think the decision to admit Bard to the Liberty League is the most intriguing part of the transaction that we broke the news about last week and was formally announced today.

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It’s the case of Bard continuing to climb the conference-level ladder over the past few years despite not becoming more competitive. Yes, the soccer teams were around .500 last year, the cross country teams did well in the Skyline meet and there were some bright spots, but .500 in the Skyline does not equal .500 in the Liberty League. Bard lost to Vassar, a team around the .500 mark, 5-0 in men’s soccer and 6-0 in women’s soccer. And it’s an even longer way from the NEAC, where Bard was until two years ago, to the Liberty League.

In men’s basketball, Bard went 1-24 this past season and did not play a Liberty League team. The women were 5-20. Until the past two seasons, Bard women’s basketball did not even play a full 25-game schedule.

Bard is getting into a league with a lot of schools with similar academic goals and the like. But it’s not at all on the same playing field athletically. Bard reported to the U.S. Department of Education that it spent $556,802 on athletics in the last reported year. I won’t compare them to the schools in the LL with Division I hockey, but compared to the $2.28 million that Vassar spent that year, it’s clear Bard is not in the ballpark.

One can only hope that the school made the conference some assurances that it would cut into that gap and take athletics a little more seriously.