Tag Archives: NCAA

Division III’s identity project

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Division II just went through this big identity crisis and identification process over the past several years. They ended up with an “I Chose Division II” slogan, which didn’t convey to me what Division II is all about or anything. But then again, I’m not a D-II devotee.

Now, honestly, I think the Division III community knows what Division III is all about, and though I know some differ over whether some schools should be Division III members, I don’t share their opinions. To me, any school willing to sponsor a broad-based athletics program without athletic scholarships is welcome in Division III, whether they have 422 full-time undergraduates (Southern Vermont) or 19,914 (NYU).

But the general public, or even the general sports fan, doesn’t necessarily understand this. And Division III schools have started the process of defining that identity and communicating it in the same way Division II has. To that end, the NCAA is beginning the process of collecting ideas about said identity and distilling it down.

I was honored to be considered worthy of comment on this issue by the NCAA, and spent about an hour on the phone with a consultant a couple days after the D-III Final Four.

Here’s what I told the consultant who called:

We talked briefly about the history of the site (he was surprised to find I was not an NCAA employee), the Division IV movement, how D-III is the highest form of purely amateur sports (my words), “the love of the game,” and the so-called national championship tournament.

He also asked about common misconceptions people have of Division III, and I certainly had a boatload of them for him, since I hear them from all sides. Briefly:

  • Division III is glorified intramurals, no better than high school ball. This couldn’t be further from the truth, of course, and anyone who has played Division III knows that. But that’s the mantra of some people, often coaches who measure themselves by the number of athletic scholarships their players go on to get. I’ve been collecting stories and quotes from people who get to Division III schools and are surprised by the level of competition. Just in case more debunking is needed.
  • Division III is for small liberal arts colleges. There are certainly a lot of small liberal arts colleges in Division III, but that doesn’t mean that public schools, large research institutions and everything else in between can be Division III members. And, to the WIAC haters, I’m sorry, but they have just as much right to be here as you do.
  • Division III is a community. More so than other levels, Division III fans have a camaraderie with each other off the floor or away from the stadium that I don’t see at other levels. There’s a sense of “we’re all in this together” among die-hard Division III fans, where fans of opposing teams will tailgate together before games. I suspect that most interaction between fans of D-I schools in a parking lot are not so friendly.
  • Division III has a national championship. Sorry, not in men’s basketball, it doesn’t. It has a handful of regional championships that all send representatives to the Final Four. For as much time as we spent explaining to people why the NCAA’s bracket is set up this way on Matchup Monday, we spent even more time later in the tournament explaining to people why Wash U faced its toughest opponents the first two weekends.

Now, unfortunately, time ran out on us and while I had made some notes ahead of the call, I didn’t get everything said. Here’s what I didn’t get a chance to get out:

We try to make Division III still feel like it’s big time for the student-athletes, coaches, parents and fans involved. And having just come back from Salem, I know that what we do is noticed. The NCAA does do this as well, don’t get me wrong, but it also doesn’t do this.

The NCAA has certainly worked over the past few years to really enhance the student-athlete experience in terms of the things happening around the competition itself. But it’s time to work on the competition, too. And in basketball especially, that means enhancing the national nature of the NCAA Tournament. Too often money is used as an excuse as to why we can’t do things in Division III, and I get that — I, too, don’t want to see The College of New Jersey or Amherst flying off to St. Louis or St. Paul or Tacoma, Wash., for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, either. But when there’s a choice between sending UW-Whitewater or Wash U. to Elmhurst for the first round or to Centre, both are bus trips and one makes the tournament more national, why in the world aren’t we doing that?

Support for Division III within the NCAA office needs to be better. Why are D-III’s championships handbooks riddled with errors? Why are D3sports.com personnel and Division III fans having to tell the NCAA sports committees who is eligible for its championships? Why aren’t the committee members well-versed enough in the handbook to know that sectionals need All-Tournament teams?

Division II spent a lot of money trying to find its identity. In Division III, the identity is much clearer. If we spend a little money communicating that, great, let’s go for it. That way we won’t have to answer as many questions from parents as to how they can get an athletic scholarship to a Division III school.

But, if we really have money to spend, let’s spend it on making the national championship an actual national championship, not four regional championships that all happen to send their winners to Salem.

60 teams: That’s progress

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I know that there is some debate as to how many Pool B teams there should really be in this year’s NCAA Tournament and thankfully, we have some time for the NCAA to resolve that, in what seems to be an annual occurrence in every sport we cover.

But I, for one, was glad to see the tournament field expand, even by just a little.

This so-called incremental expansion has been skipped in previous years. Remember the 48 teams the men’s tournament was stuck at for a long time? That was based on one playoff spot for every 7.5 NCAA teams, the old ratio before expansion came a few years back. Except by the time the last 48-team tournament came around, we were actually getting shorted by the NCAA because more teams had joined Division III without new teams getting added to the postseason.

Sadly, one person close to the committee said they couldn’t figure out how to construct a 49-team field, as if it had to be seven brackets of seven teams. Not a high point!

So I was afraid that we would have to wait until we got all the way to 416 Division III men’s teams, a full 64-team field, before they bothered to expand it. We will probably get to 64 eventually, but the field isn’t likely to grow any larger, since ESPN has no interest in broadcasting a D-III play-in game.

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?