How does a college/university become division 1,2,3?
Question by shoemanshoe: How does a college/university become division 1,2,3?
How is it that some schools (college or university) are designated as division 1, 2, 3? What is the process required for advancing a division? I always thought it went by number of students enrolled, but not true. Example: UW-Green Bay has about 8,000 students and is a division 1-A school, but UW-Oshkosh has 12,000 students and is a division 3 school. Please explain. Thank you in advance!
Best answer:
Answer by TheUrbanIntellectual
Depends on the size of the school. That's the first hurdle. Then when the school applies for 1-A status the team has to be competitive enough to compete with other 1-A schools. You can't give a bum squad 1-A status no matter what the size of the school.
Example: Duke University - Great basketball team but my little sister can beat the entire Football team by herself. You wouldn't give Duke's Football team 1-A status and have them compete with teams like Florida and Ohio state even though the student body would be large enough to qualify.
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First answer was good, but I need to add another point. I also has to do with seating capacity of the home stadium. I work at a college that cannot go division 1 at football because our home stadium only holds 12,000 and the township will not allow expansion. I forget what the minimun requirement is.
It’s based primarily on attendance and revenue that a team makes, as well as a little bit of competitiveness, but that is a smaller component than the attendance that a team draws. If a football team can’t draw huge crowds, then they won’t be put in D1-A. Bowl games want sellouts, and each team is responsable for selling about half of the tickets, and if some team can’t even draw a sellout for its home games, how can it get 20,000 people or so to travel to a neutral site to play a bowl game.