Look up the story of Birmingham-Southern College back in like 2003 or so. Jumped from NAIA to D1. They had been beating D1 schools around the southeast in hoops and baseball for years, and won NAIA national championships in each. They moved into the Big South Conference and won the league in basketball in their first year, but couldn't go dancing because of the NCAA "transitional period". There were stories on ESPN and such about how the NIT ought to give them a bid just to prove a point (though they didn't because the NIT is only about who brings money and eyeballs). The baseball team (and possibly other sports) made the postseason tournament, because only basketball had the transition period, and at the NCAA basketball coaches meeting that year, they decided to change the rules, in part because of how BSC got screwed by being good. Sadly, like two years later, the school got a new president who dropped them to D3 with no warning (and inexplicably ADDED football). All the scholarship athletes transferred and the coaches all left for other schools or retired. They lost so many athletes that they had to take a year off from playing until they could refill rosters with new recruits.
The UAA is a haphazard conference with schools scattered across the country. The “Ivy League of D3” is the NESCAC: Academically superior regional conference in which football doesn’t participate in postseason play.
Look up the story of Birmingham-Southern College back in like 2003 or so. Jumped from NAIA to D1. They had been beating D1 schools around the southeast in hoops and baseball for years, and won NAIA national championships in each. They moved into the Big South Conference and won the league in basketball in their first year, but couldn't go dancing because of the NCAA "transitional period". There were stories on ESPN and such about how the NIT ought to give them a bid just to prove a point (though they didn't because the NIT is only about who brings money and eyeballs). The baseball team (and possibly other sports) made the postseason tournament, because only basketball had the transition period, and at the NCAA basketball coaches meeting that year, they decided to change the rules, in part because of how BSC got screwed by being good. Sadly, like two years later, the school got a new president who dropped them to D3 with no warning (and inexplicably ADDED football). All the scholarship athletes transferred and the coaches all left for other schools or retired. They lost so many athletes that they had to take a year off from playing until they could refill rosters with new recruits.
The UAA is a haphazard conference with schools scattered across the country. The “Ivy League of D3” is the NESCAC: Academically superior regional conference in which football doesn’t participate in postseason play.
The sentence they were kicked out for kicking too much ass is laughable....they were second to St Johns in almost every major sport.
UAA is University Athletic Association
Best newsletter yet. Mildly surprised that you didn’t mention Mount Union or UW-Whitewater as potential jump-ups. Thank you for the D3 love.