APU has announced the entire athletics department will be transitioning to Division III (but you won’t know because it’s the subtitle under adding football back).
The GCC will lose Concordia to the WWPA in 2025-26 and CBU will be moving to the Big West as well. So now it’s SDSU, LMU, Santa Clara, UOP, and Fresno State.
So now the GCC is in a sink or swim situation with five schools in the conference. If there were another WCC or (newly revived) Pac-12 team in this mix there could have been some salvaging the conference but who is to say?
Best option for all is SJSU - they’re 5-53 (8.6%) in conference play over the last 10 years (including this season). Will they get sick of fundraising just to fly to ASU and Indiana and instead choose to play all their conference games in CA? Makes sense that they’re the best suited to leave the gauntlet that is the MSPF.
The men figured it out and all left the Big-4, but Arizona State, Indiana, and San Jose State haven’t … I get ASU and IU as they have Big-4 football $$ and may not be welcome in another conference - but not SJSU.
We are clearly in a major transition phase with college sports. Seeing where D1 athletics is headed–increasingly to either 1-and-done or teams built on the transfer portal–I think D3 makes sense for a lot of schools. It makes athletics part of the college experience. More D3 schools on the West Coast might trigger similar growth in other parts of the country. Right now having a D3 water polo team is a pretty hard sell to administrators at non-CA schools–who the hell are we going play?
Hartwick used to be D1 in just Women’s water polo and like Men’s Soccer, and they were D2 in everything else - does anyone know if that’s still possible? For example, could a school be D1 just for basketball or Soccer and be D2 or D3 for everything else?
Lot of questions in the air right now:
Will UC Davis be allowed to stay in the Big West?
Will anyone leave to join the GCC?
This year, Mercyhurst left D2 to move to D1, will they reverse course? If so, the CWPA will have 5 schools
Will any other schools move down from D1? Looking at the MAAC there’s a lot of schools similar to APU / SFU (Iona, La Salle, LIU, Marist, MSM, Siena, Villanova, VMI, Wagner)
That used to be the case, but the NCAA disallowed that a couple of years ago. Schools that are D2/D3 but have some D1 sports (e.g. Colorado College) were grandfathered in.
Agreed - March madness is exciting because of the upsets - NIL has killed that and created an atmosphere where mid-majors can’t keep their talent.
By chasing March Madness $$ with NIL and conference realignments - they’ve killed the Madness aspect. I bet viewership declines as does the TV contracts.
The GCC just announced they’re adding San José State and UC Davis (they’re leaving Big West as an institution).
it’ll keep things sustainable, while also likely forcing the MPSF to take on another school like Michigan to join the conference as the last Power school not a member
I think Davis and SJSU moving are good for the sport, makes the GCC more competitive, gives more teams a chance to win their conference. Is the GCC the new #2 conference now?
Top: Hawaii - Irvine - LB vs. Fresno - LMU - Davis