'The world of D1 has changed:' SFU athletics to move to D3, beginning in fall of 2026
Saint Francis Univerity has announced
wjactv.com
OT - St Francis moving to D3
- Thread starter King Of All Message Boards
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Wow, that's the 2nd St. Francis to drop out of D1 in the last few years. This is a really big surprise because they are competitive in the NEC. I dont think this is a portal issue. It's not like Chicago State and Mecryhurt are spending tons of money on hoops. I wonder if there are big financial problems there overall.
did any players from St Francis football team actually ever receive NIL money from a "real" football program?
I think it's more that they're not willing to play that game so they're moving somewhere that they won't have to.
No. School is in very good shape financially. They just go gutted after making a run to get into the tournament and aren't willing (or able) to play the NIL game. Takes a lot of resources to recruit at the D1 level and doing it constantly isn't something they want to do. NEC sucks as a conference anyway. I'm surprised but I'm not.
3 years ago I was up there and they told me back then this drop was going to be inevitable.
Just watch what happens in the next 3-5 years.
Football will start looking like it did in the 90's in terms of classifications.
There is no way some of these FCS teams will remain in FCS and vice versa for the FBS teams. "D1" football is about is bloated as it ever has been and it's not better for it.
Just watch what happens in the next 3-5 years.
Football will start looking like it did in the 90's in terms of classifications.
There is no way some of these FCS teams will remain in FCS and vice versa for the FBS teams. "D1" football is about is bloated as it ever has been and it's not better for it.
makes sense. Honestly, i cant believe most non P4 football teams arent doing the same. Im not talking FCS but actual D1-A programs not in one of the 4 major conferences..
Doesnt make sense why they'd stay in this game with the new 22m financial obligations..
I think you'll see more of this as schools start to face reality. I don't think every D1 will drop down to D3 but you might see schools look for safe harbor with similar schools in their region to save travel costs.
Everyone gets gutted. That's the reason? Tell them to stop crying and go raid the PSAC. NIL for those dudes would be like 100K total for the team.
it's going to make the top 5%, aka P4 programs even better and the mid major football programs, AKA the G5 schools, even less relevant..
It's already decimated mid majors in hoops, look no further than this year's tournament and the current sweet 16. same thing is going to happen in football. not sure how this effects pitt. we arent a Power program but we arent a G5 team either.
Pitt, along with many other schools, will have to consider where it wants to be in the hierarchy of college sports versus where it can exist and go from there. Will probably happen sometime around the point where the top of the B1G and SEC decide they don't want share with the rest anymore.
No idea why there are so many D1 basketball schools, but at least 200 of them need to branch off and do their own thing or drop to D2. Why would you even want to be in a division where you have literally no chance to win a championship? Like, the Pittsburgh Pirates have no chance, but here we are talking literally no chance. NIL picking off the best players, etc. It'd be a hard pass for me.
Also, can somebody please keep this news from Kade Bell? Holy Smokes, we'll end up with 12 of their guys if they become available.
Because they all have a chance to make the NCAAT and making the NCAAT is their National Championship. Its their Super Bowl. You get much more out of that than winning a D2 National Championship. How many RMU alums/fans would have watched or traveled to Cleveland for a D2 NC game vs Cal State-Dominguez Hills? 12? But people were pumped for the Bama game. That Prather missed 3 will go down for me like the Dixon turnover vs Nova up 4 with the ball. I was up in Cleveland and the roof was going to come off the place had that 3 gone down. If he makes it to put them up 4 with 5 left, RMU may have won. Great, great team for a mid-major.
Okay, and you can let the Altoona Curve compete in the MLB and call the MLB playoffs their Super Bowl. Maybe every 150 years they'll make a wildcard game, by some crazy series of events. Fans will show up and go nuts. Does that mean that's the proper level of competition for them?
And 75% of the people responsible for the roof almost coming off were Cleveland locals or fans of teams not named Robert Morris. Fans like upsets. Nothing new there.
2nd paragraph, true. But out of the 6 games I went too, RMU had the 2nd most fans behind Mich St. That shouldn't be a big surprise considering proximity but Marquette isn't terribly far and sells out a 20K seat arena on the regular.
As for the Curve, yes, if the fans want that shot at the MLB Wildcard game as their Super Bowl, yes, it's the right level. An example of this is the Riverhounds. I like soccer but I'm not a fan of the Riverhounds? Why? They are minor league. If they win USL, so what? Now, if they were in MLS or had some path to MLS like in other countries through promotion, I'd be a fan of theirs even though the best I could ever hope for is an early playoff loss.
Well it's not as if all the fans are going to unanimously agree. There have been differing opinions on this board in regards to whether or not people would want to be associated with the BIG and SEC after the gap becomes more seismic.
Honestly, I would have never gotten into Pitt football if you've have told me exactly how the next 33 or so seasons would play out when I became a fan. With most of these smaller basketball schools, I can tell you how they next 1,000 will play out when it comes to national relevance.
This is stupid reasoning.
How much does SFU spend on basketball coaching, assistants, admin, etc? My guess: 400K total. So how about they reduce that to 200K total or 300K and pay the players 100K-200K in total? Dropping down to D3 JUST because you don't want to pay the players is idiotic considering you can just offset that with lower coaching salaries.
This is just the beginning of smaller D1 schools especially in the G5 and the FCS schools that play D1 basketball. When these schools realize that the cost of operating a large budget athletic program is not sustainable for many reasons more are going to drop down to a lower division.
IMO these schools like Robert Morris and Duquesne for example should have their own basketball tournament. There’s already FCS championships in football etc. There’s no way these schools can come up NIL money let alone pay the players. Reality is settling in for a lot of schools and is coming a lot sooner than they realized.
St. Francis is the first of many schools that’s going to be affected by the new era of college sports. And many more are going to drop down or even eliminate certain sports teams. Don’t be surprised if some of these schools drop football altogether.
As the separation from the top Big and SEC schools happens due to the NIL and paying players there might be an upper division and lower division of the G4 schools and possibly 2 separate championship games. Nothing will surprise me in this day and age of college sports.
IMO these schools like Robert Morris and Duquesne for example should have their own basketball tournament. There’s already FCS championships in football etc. There’s no way these schools can come up NIL money let alone pay the players. Reality is settling in for a lot of schools and is coming a lot sooner than they realized.
St. Francis is the first of many schools that’s going to be affected by the new era of college sports. And many more are going to drop down or even eliminate certain sports teams. Don’t be surprised if some of these schools drop football altogether.
As the separation from the top Big and SEC schools happens due to the NIL and paying players there might be an upper division and lower division of the G4 schools and possibly 2 separate championship games. Nothing will surprise me in this day and age of college sports.
That’s probably the number one reason, however, that they have already secured membership in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference makes me think that this move has been in the works for awhile.
I think St Francis was devastated two years ago when two of its football players were accused of rape. I think that incident led to the school questioning what kind of institution it wanted to be.
The two football players being accused of rape jad zero to do with this decision, ZERO. It is 100% about money. CMU is leaving the PAC so this was perfect timing for St. Francis. This is just the beginning. Covid restrictions crushed many universities and colleges. Notre Dame.College in Ohio had great Division 2 sports programs , they completely closed the doors, they didn't just drop sports, they closed the college. The PSAC merged Clarion, Edinboro and Cal, they are now called PA West. It is just a matter of time before one or two of the campuses are closed. Over 40% of colleges and universities in the U ited States are losing money. When young adults end up $100,000 in debt after graduation, you are going to see a huge decline in secondary education and a huge jump in trade schools + military, which might be a good thing.
Pennsylvania Western University operates 3 separate sports programs at its 3 campuses. Though, I wonder if maybe this is an opportunity to merge the 3 D2 programs into 1 D1 program.
Football at Edinboro
Basketball at Cal
Wrestling at Clarion
Baseball at Clarion???
Unify under the PennWest Vulcans. I say Vulcans because it's a very unique nickname and the Basketball program in Cal's sparkling D1 arena would be the flagship as an NEC member. PennWest Football in the NEC at Edinboro could be a nice rivalry with Mercyhurst.
My guess is that these 3 programs will eventually be merged into 1 but this is an opportunity to do it at the D1 level.
There is some preference to this. When LIU and CW Post merged, some sports are played on the CW Post campus on Long Island and then basketball and others are played on the Brooklyn campus.
All three schools are bleeding money. They will drop sports before they try to move up. You have to remember, they are state schools, not private universities. They will close one or two of the PA West schools, just a matter of time. They will keep Cal open because of the location. The head football coach resigned at Edinboro to take a high school AD position. He seen the writing on the wall.
Yea, they'll probably close one. Clarion, being in the middle and the most remote seems most likely. However, some schools view D1 as a recruiting tool for regular students. And I'm not sure what the math is but having 1 D1 program may be cheaper than having 3 D2 programs. Lets not forget that Cal has what would be one of the nicest D1 mid-major arenas in the country and BY FAR the nicest in the NEC. Maybe this new PennWest D1 basketball program could win the NEC every year and become a staple in March Madness. That's good pub for a struggling university.
You don't understand money or how any of this works so it's not all that surprising that you think this is stupid. It's just a reality. Where does a small D1 get even $100k in NIL just for basketball? Pitt struggles for every $100k, and you think SFU is just going to whip that up in a month or so?
Scholarships aren't the issue. Most D3's provide a large portion of the enrollment costs with scholarship money but it's all tied to academics.
Uhhh, by decreasing what you pay the coaches. College coaching salaries are artificially inflated due to the fact that the players are paid $0. Its why P4 basketball and football coaches make as much or more than NFL and NBA coaches. That isn't because they generate more revenue than than the NFL and NBA. It's because the player expense is $0.
SFU can very easily pay their bball team $100K if it wanted to. They just have to pay coaches less.
Not sure if that gave them pause or not but they've never really committed to operating football like a D1. The visiting teams was still walking way up the hill to get to a locker room. I think they looked around and realized they weren't really drawing the support like other D1's and made the move.
Krimmel is already pretty far down on the coaching salary list at $170k. So he should make $70k and give the rest to the basketball team? All for 120 in paid attendance per game and a once a decade trip to the tournament? Got it.
Basically, yes. You tell him that you have to cut his salary or fire him because you can't afford to pay the players. Coaches will trip over themselves to go be the HC of SFU for 70K/year. They'd literally have 1000 applicants because any young coach knows that if they can win the NEC, they move up to a 300K-400K job and then potentially the P4. Coaches can't be making 2023 salaries in 2026. Those days have to be over.
Why would a coach bother coaching a D1 program when they are making what a D3 coach makes? Krimmel is making $170k. Who the heck is taking those hours and all of that stress when they can take an office job for that salary in Altoona?
Do I really have to answer that? 1000 coaches would apply to coach SFU for 70K/year, heck maybe even 20K-30K/year because the ultimate goal is somewhat reachable. Win the 8 team NEC, make the NCAAT and maybe you get a job making 250K at Towson and then if you win there, maybe you get a P4. Do you honestly think there wouldn't be any applicants for a D1 HC job making 70K/year? I mean there is such a thing as D2 and D3 coaches making far less than that.
70k lol... Most high school coaches wouldn't apply for a 70k gig like that.
Right because they are happy making that being a gym teacher and HS Bball coach. Every D2 and D3 coach in the nation would apply.
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