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One week ago, the men’s basketball team at St. Francis University of Pennsylvania played in the NCAA March Madness tournament. The #16 seed Red Flash lost to Alabama State 70-68 last Tuesday March 18 in Dayton, Ohio.
Seven days later, St. Francis University announced that the school is leaving the NCAA’s Division I athletics stage over the next year.
The school’s Board of Trustees announced the decision on Tuesday, March 25.
“The governance associated with intercollegiate athletics has always been complicated and is only growing in complexity based on realities like the transfer portal, pay-for-play, and other shifts that move athletics away from the love of the game,” said Committee Chairman and the Very Reverend Dr. Joseph Lehman.
He added, “Based on the changes in athletics nationally, it would be a disservice to our student-athletes and athletic department not to review and assess how we can best provide the resources necessary for them to be competitive”.
SwampSwami’s translation
Unofficially of course, I believe St. Francis University was really saying, “We don’t have the financial resources nor the desire to continue playing in the current Division I group any longer. However, we want our sports teams to be competitive and play schools within our own geographic region. We cannot do that and remain in D-1 sports. It is also very important that our athletes should be contributing students at our university – for more than just one semester. Adios, D-1. We are outta here!”
A little over one year from now, St. Francis of Pennsylvania (located in Loretto – about halfway between Pittsburgh and State College) will exit the Northeast Conference and enter NCAA’s Division III as a new member of the Presidents’ Athletics Conference in the fall of 2026.
Bigger isn’t necessarily better
St. Francis University has an enrollment of about 2,100 students.
As a current member of NCAA Division I basketball, St. Francis is smaller than nearly every school in the upper division. Those schools generally have a larger enrollment, more alumni and alumni support, and a larger annual athletics budget to work with.
According to Tuesday’s press release, the Red Flash will shrink its travel budget significantly by making the move to its new Division III conference.
St. Francis University was one of the founding members of the Division I Northeast Conference in 1981.
Playing at other Northeast Conference member schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey has caused the Red Flash and its fans to travel six or more hours (each way) for D-1 athletic events.
By affiliating in the D-III Presidents’ Athletics Conference, St. Francis will play similar sized schools located primarily within the state of Pennsylvania. Most athletic events will require less than two hours of travel time for the sports teams and fans.
What happens to those with athletic scholarships at St. Francis?
Colleges participating in NCAA Division III are not permitted to provide athletic scholarships. All students desiring to compete in sports must also compete with the general school population for academic financial aid and need-based assistance.
The school addressed the subject in its “Frequently Asked Questions” section.
Even though the NCAA Division III doesn’t allow schools to offer athletic scholarships, St. Francis will be permitted to honor its currently awarded athletic scholarships through the academic year 2027-2028. After that, the student must qualify for general academic scholarships and need-based assistance at the school.
Expect most of the “serious” athletes to transfer from St. Francis University over the next year. The school will begin play in its new Division III conference beginning in the fall of 2026.
It will be interesting to see how St. Francis University fields its sports teams next fall and spring during its final year at the Division 1 level.
Current D-1 Northeast Conference competitors will likely feast on St. Francis sports teams next season as the Red Flash should lose some scholarship athletes prior to its last year in Division I.
Has the NCAA Transfer Portal become a clever way obscure sub-par academic performance?
One of the primary reasons that St. Francis is stepping out of the chaos of today’s NCAA Division I category is that the student portion of the phrase “student-athlete” is being obliterated in the past few years.
On Monday, March 24, the NCAA’s infamous new transfer portal opened for business for college basketball players.
Yes, while the college basketball season is still underway!.
From now through Tuesday, April 22, college basketball players can enter the transfer portal and allow their agents to negotiate a Name, Image, and Likeness cash offer from another school.
Believe it or not, every player participating in this week’s men’s and women’s Sweet 16 competition has the ability to place their own name into the NCAA transfer portal – right now – and request permission to leave their current program before late April.
Can you imagine how well that would go over at a men’s basketball top seed such as Auburn or Duke right now?
Better yet, how do you think LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey would react to learn that one of her players just filed to transfer – before this Friday night’s game?
It might be fun to see if that first guy off the bench (who has just asked to transfer) will receive an opportunity to play during the next two weeks of the March Madness basketball tournament!
One of my growing concerns about the NCAA transfer portal has to do with verifying the academic progress of the increasing numbers of transfer athlete-students.
The NCAA (feel free to chuckle, laugh, or guffaw here) certainly hasn’t proven itself capable of enforcing this process or any of its other rules over the past few decades.
It would not surprise me that the majority of transferring athletes are lagging in their current academic performance.
Does anyone know how many of these transferring athletes are simply withdrawing from spring classes RIGHT NOW prior to having their final grades posted? Are the transferring players required to maintain a full-time student class load and status?
Today’s major college athletics departments and school administrators likely have a number of clever academic amnesty programs tailored to assist a low-achieving student-athlete gain admission into his or her latest school.
At least for their first year at the new school, of course.
Then, it’s transfer time again, right?
The “little guys” of major college D-1 sports are quickly fading away
Take a look at the conference affiliations for the remaining teams in this weekend’s Sweet 16 competition in the men’s and women’s NCAA March Madness basketball tournaments.
Men – SEC (7), Big Ten (4), Big 12 (4), and ACC (1)
Women – SEC (6), ACC (4), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (2), and Big East (1)
In the men’s bracket, you won’t find a mid-major team like 2024’s Gonzaga or San Diego State.
Remember Princeton and Florida Atlantic in 2023? March Madness 2022 brought us the Saint Peter’s Peacocks into the Sweet 16 to make it your brackets more interesting.
And who can forget then-98 year old Sister Jean and her Loyola-Chicago Ramblers team which found its way into the 2018 March Madness Sweet 16?
Sister Jean is now 105 years old, but her Loyola-Chicago team is nowhere to be found this weekend.
Today’s wealthiest schools are pilfering the top players from smaller D-1 schools by dangling hundreds of thousands of NIL dollars as an incentive to transfer.
This weekend, you will see some terrific former small program players who bolted for big bucks.
Auburn’s Johni Broome (Morehead State), Alabama’s Mark Sears (Ohio U), and Florida’s Walter Clayton, Jr. (Iona) were snagged after successful fishing expeditions utilizing the NCAA’s transfer portal and the NIL money machine.
Athletes at mid-major schools and smaller D-1 programs such as St. Francis of PA are being heavily scouted by the wealthiest athletics programs.
Those bigger programs are more than willing to pay the most talented college athletes to transfer into their schools.
In 2025, why waste money recruiting emotionally fragile and often fickle 5-star high school athletes?
For high school athletes being overlooked by the major schools, he or she should consider finding a smaller program willing to provide more playing time in the first two years of college.
The biggest schools (along with some hungry sports agents) know every player’s whereabouts.
They will be happy to confirm the proper time to enter the NCAA transfer portal and grab some of that big pile of NIL cash.
Expect the trend of schools exiting NCAA Division I into Division III to increase
An athletic program’s exit from Division I down to Division III comes with some significant downside financial effects.
For smaller D-1 programs, one or more “cash” visits to wealthy football schools such as LSU or Texas A&M means the loss of very significant revenue.
Those sacrificial trips to receive your annual beating often net $1 million or more for the visiting school’s athletics budget.
By changing your identity down to D-III, those bigger programs will not schedule teams at that level because it works against their cherished national rankings.
Even early season road trips to wealthy basketball schools (like Kansas or North Carolina) add important bonus bucks to the visiting team’s bank account, too.
All of the financial aspects (including student enrollment implications) must be carefully evaluated.
On the other hand, decades of watching your college athletics team getting trounced at the NCAA D-1 level hasn’t helped home attendance.
Will changing to D-III and winning more against lesser competition add fan interest for the athletics program? That’s a tough call to make.
For St. Francis University, the school claims to have studied this issue for quite some time prior to announcing its decision to drop from NCAA’s Division I to D-III.
That decision worked best for their school.
Right now, you better believe that dozens of other colleges and universities are likely considering doing the same thing soon. St. Francis’ bold step might help other schools to make a similar decision.
Meanwhile, the NCAA’s Division I is becoming the home to watch semi-professional athletics being conducted on major college campuses around the country.
With more than 430 colleges and universities now competing in NCAA’s Division III, their member schools will compete for the athletic championships in every major sport – just like the D-1 schools.
The operating costs in NCAA Division III are definitely lower. But not playing the top sports schools anymore may cause a decrease in interest in the school’s athletics programs after it moves into the non-athletic scholarship NCAA Division III level.
Winning (even at a lower level of competition) can help everything.