As you may know, there is a waiting list to get into Division III.

Since Division III is the largest subclassification in all of college athletics, with more than 420 members, we can’t simply take everyone who wants to join right away. Each of the past two years, six new schools have gotten the opportunity to enter Division III from the NAIA or other non-NCAA affiliations. (Last year we got Crown, Keystone, Mitchell, Mount Aloysius, Presentation and Tri-State. They just finished the first year of a four-year transition process, at the end of which they will be eligible for the playoffs, if successful.)

The NCAA has not released an updated list of schools on the waiting list in a while. However, the waiting list is known to be full through the 2006-07 school year. Those schools would not be eligible for the playoffs until the fall of 2010!

There’s an easier way in, however, and Green Mountain has taken advantage of it, whether planned or not. Green Mountain applied for Division II membership from the NAIA, and after one year, decided to join Division III instead. This upcoming fall they’ll be in the third year of the four-year transition period.

Never heard of Green Mountain? It’s a school in Poultney, Vt., with a grand total of 639 undergraduates. (Not clear how many are full-time.) The school offers 15 intercollegiate sports if you count skiing, which puts it safely above the minimum 10 Division III members require. So welcome aboard — I hope we get scores from you!

The school is a natural fit for the North Atlantic Conference, although the Great Northeast Athletic Conference is possible as well.

And for those insanely curious, the other six schools slated to start their D-III transition this year? Bethany Lutheran (Minn.), La Sierra (Calif.), North Central University (Minn.), Northwestern (Minn.), SUNY-Purchase (N.Y.) and Salem (N.C.). This means the entire UMAC will be either D-III members or in the pipeline, and we will track UMAC basketball standings.

Yeah, thrilling, I know!

For the second year in a row, attempts to redraw the three-point line and the lane in basketball have been defeated.

The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Rules Committees have pushed for a deeper three-point line. Division III has objected. In fact, a search of NCAA News and NCAA releases on the topic reveals many times this topic has been raised and rejected.

This point in the process seems key: “Because the basketball rules committees’ proposals involve financial impact (institutions would have to budget for new court lines), the divisions may consider the recommended changes separately and, on a division-specific basis, ask the Executive Committee not to apply the change.”

And here we are, still at 19-foot-9. That’s because this is not free. A member of the rules committee told Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis in a recent column that stripping and repainting three-point lines would run about $15,000 per school.

While that seems high to some, throw in a trapezoidal lane and you’re still running into a lot of money — money which Division III schools can’t afford.

Let’s just say it is $15,000 to strip and repaint each three-point line and lane. In a spot-check of Division III basketball budgets, that could run anywhere from 17% to 60% of a school’s combined men’s and women’s basketball budget, according to our analysis of numbers provided to the U.S. Department of Education for the 2003-04 school year.

I pulled 20 Division III schools at random and checked what their institutional budget was for men’s and women’s basketball, then their overall athletics budget. Four of the schools were state schools, in keeping with the nature of the Division III membership. On average, the $15,000 would take up 27% of the schools’ basketball budgets, or 5% of the overall budget. (It’s higher at schools that don’t have football.) And if you don’t think that 5% is a big deal, consider that next time you’re asked to go without an annual raise.

I’m not personally against moving the three-point line to 20-foot-6, which is the most recently used number. But I’m against unfunded mandates, and unless the NCAA would like to filter down some money to the Division III schools as a grant to repaint their floors, I’m against the effort.

And you should be too.