(12-22-10) - The last couple of years has seen a real rush of schools looking to move into D2. D2 has also survived the loss of members to D1 when the NCAA placed a moratorium on new members and recently made it tougher for and more expensive to join D1. D2 has been looking for a new direction to go in solidifying it’s membership. Unfortunately now that things have improved, we see some issues that concern us.

The past several years it went from a few schools looking to join to now a “flood” of schools standing in line to join. The possibility in June 2011 could be anywhere from 20 to 30 schools applying to join. Just recently two D3 schools are looking to re-classify to D2. There is a lot of interest and majority of them are coming from the NAIA.

The process to join D2 is no longer sign on the line and send in the check, instead it is an intensive process and application to join and continues to get bigger with more requirements. The process is not cheap and if you don’t hire a qualified consultant bad things can happen, I was told recently that schools are told they should have a consultant. This is a time when a school’s athletic program makes a choice to make a move that will change the course of the school for a long time. It is a major commitment and not taken lightly.

Now here is my suggestion to the folks at D2. Don’t keep changing the guidelines and qualifications to get into D2 every couple of months. That seems to be the path the membership committee has been doing. I know that the qualifications needed to be “tightened” up, but the path now seems to be a way to control who comes in and who does not. I don’t have a problem with that, but it is starting to look way to much like what D1 has done over the past several years to keep out schools.

One thing that I feel D2 has done that might have saved the NAIA for the future and that is controlling the number of schools who are admitted during the application process. Had D2 said to schools…you apply and we will accept any school who meets the requirements. That in my mind would have opened the “flood-gates” for schools looking to join. The limit eliminated that disaster. Although the D2 committee is looking to lower the number of schools they accept in a process fro 10 to 8, another change.

I would like to suggest to D2 that an application be developed and used up to a five-year period before changes and requirements can be changed. A lot of schools applying for D2 start doing studies on what it will take to join D2 and find out a couple of months later that several new items have been added to the list of things to do. It also would lead you to believe that possibly members who were accepted earlier may have brought these issues to light by not conforming to them and might have been denied membership.

The recent cancellation of the December (2010) membership period also caused several schools some stress as they were looking to get a head start of making the change to D2. I know several who were waiting on December instead of the June (2011) period only to be surprised by the change. Now it could be a real log-jam this coming membership period. Very disappointing for some administrations.

The new conference proposals being considered are another “D1 thing” and another way to control the new members. Here is my suggestion, instead of putting the pressure on a new school to find a conference, after a school is accepted the D2 membership would assign a school to a conference. Also, if new conferences are needed D2 should encourage and work with them to handle the overflow. Our sources from many different groups tells us that up to 50 to 60 new D2 members will be accepted before the doors are closed. That number would also factor in any number of schools leaving for D1 after the moratorium is lifted. Those new schools will need a conference, making it a smooth transition makes more sense then schools fighting to get into a conference.

The limit on the number of new conferences is also a “D1” tactic, we love you joining us in D2, just don’t want you to share in the profits. This is all about the money. This proposal really shocked me the most about the future of D2 membership. The deal is if a new conference is formed and D2 has met that number, any conference after that would be following this format (being considered) -

The other new conference issue being considered (below) - this is really funny because they also want new members in the future to have an invitation from a conference before being accepted into D2 membership. This new consideration could be from apparent talks of a multiple group of current new members looking to form a new conference because current conferences don‘t want them.

If you don’t want to allow new conferences then don’t accept new members. D2 says they are a division that is different then D1, but with the recent issues I’ve seen happen they need to consider the above suggestions. I would also suggest that those who decide who gets in D2 and who don’t get in talk to the many consultants out there who are helping schools complete the process. These consultants have valuable insight into how the process is working and might have some good ideas on how to improve it in the future. A survey of these folks could be quite valuable, even bring them in to “pick their brains”.

I would also suggest that the D2 folks form a committee consisting of new member schools and allow them to give input on the process and what they are seeing as they make the change. Good input is always helpful. The new D2 members who are accepted have benefited from the athletic program studies and now know their programs weakness and strengths. Might even be a good time for current D2 members to at least do an in-house study, might be surprised that some of them might not get into D2 with the new standards.

Schools looking to D2 are looking for a quality association with quality leadership. I hope that current D2 members will remember that these new members are giving up a lot to join them. This is no time to be selfish with the future of D2. I encourage current members and leadership to focus on working with new members, not continuing to put up roadblock after roadblock. Is D2 really different then D1? 2011 could be the year we find out and it’s not to late to develop that process.