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3 weeks between any posts. Sorry I have nothing to contribute to this discussion.

reugenev wrote: April 25th, 2025, 5:42 pm Rumor has it that SFU is adding men’s swimming, men’s/women’s wrestling and possibly baseball. Unfortunately, SF has lost its identity as the smallest college to offer DI sports. PSU Altoona already offers all of those sports. Why would a kid go to SFU to play a DIII sport with NO scholarship money and pay private school tuition when they can attend a public school for half the money? Seriously, without DI athletics, how is St. Francis drawing students? Did they do a feasibility study? Obviously, it’s expensive to have those athletic programs, but is there a plan for how to go on without them?

Have you ever heard of Juniata, or Waynesburg, or St. Vincent, or Westminster, or Grove City? Lots of kids go to small DIII schools. And lots of kids play sports at those schools. DIII and the PAC are a no-brainer for St. Francis. The NIL/transfer portal mess just made it an easier decision.

NIL is an issue for FBS schools. Its a pretty level playing field on the FCS level, IMO. Sure maybe NDSU or Villanova has a small NIL budget but for the most part FCS talent is still going to be FCS talent. Most of those rosters are playing without any NIL money. If Saint Francis found a hidden gem in 10 years ago that was a FBS talent, they would more than likely transfer to the FBS level if that interested them. I don't see how that changes at all with NIL.

Being D1 absolutely helped the brand recognition of St Francis. I live outside of Baltimore, MD. The hotbed of lacrosse. Every lacrosse fan I know down here knows of St Francis...why, you might ask? Well because they had a D1 women's lacrosse team. Everyone that follows lacrosse knows someone that played against St Francis, played for St Francis, or was recruited by St Francis. I personally know 2 local girls that went to St. Francis to play D1 lacrosse. Not to mention their lacrosse program is decent. They currently sit around .500 and clinched a spot in the conference tournament to fight for a NCAA tournament bid.

The grass isn't always greener. St. Francis needed to invest some money to compete and they decided not to. Was it because they didn't have the resources or was it because they didn't want to allocate the resources, I do not know. It was a decision and I'm sure they had more data than I do to make that decision. They were unique position as the only D1 school in all of central PA. The closest D1 program I believe was Duquesne. This is going to hurt them in some areas and brand recognition is definitely one of them. If nobody outside of central PA knows of your school, that's fine. Just be prepared to have a new challenge when trying to get your applicants up.

Since I am not familiar with SFU sports outside basketball, I'll only comment on that one. Have you heard of names like Maurice Stokes, Norm Van Lier, Kevin Porter? Maybe a few others over the years that could have gone elsewhere but chose not to. And it wasn't done with any NIL BS or $$$. It may mean beating the proverbial bushes more for assistant coaches, to find decent talent, but it can and has been done.

I could be way off on this, but this just seems like an easy decision. The NEC is a revolving door of schools located all over the place. It might not even survive. And they have no real rivals. The PAC offers some stability with potentially regional rivalries.

Yes they will lose a lot of the kids that are there now, but that might not be a bad thing. Under the current system, they recruit kids, give them scholarships and those kids leave after a year or two and never look back. These small schools need kids that will stay, graduate, donate back to the school, hire other graduates, etc...

Yes some sports like lacrosse and field hockey could suffer, but that is probably why they are talking about adding swimming, wrestling, and baseball, sports that are more popular around here. But maybe not. Look at the football roster for Waynesburg. They have kids from about 10 different states. Kids want to play sports in college and aren't afraid to travel or pay a lot of money to do it.

Again, I could be way wrong on this, but when I saw the announcement, my first thought was 'yeah, that makes sense.'

Once again, I am not saying they made the wrong decision. Only they know the true benefits and challenges they were facing at the DI level and the benefits and challenges they will now face at the DIII level.

How important is conference stability? NEC has 9 members across the majority of sports. I honestly think that was beneficial because it makes competing for a conference title much more attainable than a mega conference.

Also how many kids across their D1 sports are truly talented enough to leave for a better program with NIL money? My guess is just a couple per a year. How is that going to be any different at the DIII level? If a kid comes in and has a great freshman/sophomore season, why wouldn't they want to move up to the DII or lower level DI ranks (where there is better competition and scholarship opportunities) that are having their rosters raided by the FBS level. NIL and transferring is still going to trickle down through all levels of college athletics. It won't even stop at the DIII level, this will trickle through the NAIA and the JUCO levels. You are still going to have to compete to give athletes a great experience at all levels of your program (academic value, facilities, sports medicine, student life, cost of tuition, available of scholarships, etc.) to compete at any level. The problem now is they lost their very unique position as the only D1 option in about a 2 hour radius. They will now have to compete in every single one of those categories against about 20 local DIII schools. Maybe they are well positioned to compete, but they will definitely now have to compete for athletes at the DIII level as compared to before being able to get a lot of kids because they might have been their only few DI offers.

reugenev wrote: April 25th, 2025, 5:42 pm Rumor has it that SFU is adding men’s swimming, men’s/women’s wrestling and possibly baseball. Unfortunately, SF has lost its identity as the smallest college to offer DI sports. PSU Altoona already offers all of those sports. Why would a kid go to SFU to play a DIII sport with NO scholarship money and pay private school tuition when they can attend a public school for half the money? Seriously, without DI athletics, how is St. Francis drawing students? Did they do a feasibility study? Obviously, it’s expensive to have those athletic programs, but is there a plan for how to go on without them?

Carnegie Mellon has 42 men swimmers on its roster. Don't those kids know they could go to IUP or Penn State Behrend?

Many valid points presented. I agree with the one post, I saw the news and thought "This makes sense". I agree with the cost savings of travel to NEC locations vs. PAC locations. The school is a small rural central PA Catholic University. Father Malachi expressed the opportunity to join the PAC whose membership contains schools of similar size and values was very important. I am not a SFU alumnus, and I did not play DI athletics. These are the people most affected and hurt by the decision. In the end it was a business decision, this school offers great academic programs and many of the students (and hopefully local District 6 and District 5 Athletes) will see this DIII school as an option to continue participating in a varsity sport in college.
* Most student attending this school for academics rely on federal/state/institutional financial aid- qualifying due to need or merit. DIII = no athletic scholarships (According to some data that I found: $8.5 million was attributed to athletic awards- I doubt SFU made this much revenue from viewership of basketball and football, and certainly not lacrosse and field hockey). DI athletics with scholarships, travel, and keeping up with coaching is a money drain for a school this size. NIL and Revenue sharing with athletes further complicates the matter. This current scholarship money can likely go into the pool for all students, but specifically student athletes to increase their aid to attend and play a sport at SFU.

Financial Facts for SFU:
Aid Awarded "Need-based "Non-need-based
Scholarships/Grants
Federal $2,931,631 $0
State $2,139,488 $12,000
Institutional Aid $4,771,842 $27,527,053
(endowments)
Athletic Awards $0 $8,552,589

In the end, my opinion it was a difficult decision. Current athletes and coaches will have decisions to make about their futures, but SFU will be fine and probably thrive in this new DIII-PAC environment.

Ironically and interestingly, Carnegie Mellon University is a member of the UAA conference. They were a football only member in the President's Athletic Conference. They left for the Centennial Conference, so they could travel more and increase competitiveness of football schedule. As most football schools in PAC were less than 2 hours away, and they wanted to give their football athletes similar experiences that the other varsity sports receive. CMU departure made room for SFU.
https://www.tiktok.com/@theth3rddivisio ... 2547905823

abpk2903 wrote: April 30th, 2025, 1:50 pm Once again, I am not saying they made the wrong decision. Only they know the true benefits and challenges they were facing at the DI level and the benefits and challenges they will now face at the DIII level.

How important is conference stability? NEC has 9 members across the majority of sports. I honestly think that was beneficial because it makes competing for a conference title much more attainable than a mega conference.

Also how many kids across their D1 sports are truly talented enough to leave for a better program with NIL money? My guess is just a couple per a year. How is that going to be any different at the DIII level? If a kid comes in and has a great freshman/sophomore season, why wouldn't they want to move up to the DII or lower level DI ranks (where there is better competition and scholarship opportunities) that are having their rosters raided by the FBS level. NIL and transferring is still going to trickle down through all levels of college athletics. It won't even stop at the DIII level, this will trickle through the NAIA and the JUCO levels. You are still going to have to compete to give athletes a great experience at all levels of your program (academic value, facilities, sports medicine, student life, cost of tuition, available of scholarships, etc.) to compete at any level. The problem now is they lost their very unique position as the only D1 option in about a 2 hour radius. They will now have to compete in every single one of those categories against about 20 local DIII schools. Maybe they are well positioned to compete, but they will definitely now have to compete for athletes at the DIII level as compared to before being able to get a lot of kids because they might have been their only few DI offers.

As for how many kids are good enough to move on, around 30 football players entered the portal in the fall. This was before the decision to move to DIII. And more than 50% of the basketball rosters have left annually since the open transfer rule started. Of course not all are moving up and there has always been some attrition. But it is a lot more than a few kids a year. Recruiting a new roster every year just isn't sustainable for small schools.

And as far as the 2-hour radius, there are A LOT more DIII kids than DI kids in it. And the roster limits that are being proposed for DI are going to push even more kids that want to play down.

Fair and valid points. I'm a niche guy. I always found personally and professionally the more you could differentiate yourself or become a specialist than those around you the better results you would see. I guess that is why I had the opposite reaction of you when I got the news...my reaction was more in the line of "good luck" but I guess I didn't account for the lack of D1 caliber athletes in their recruiting region that you brought up.

To once again counterpoint you on the concept of having to having to recruit a new roster every year at D1 level, studies show that DIII football has (by far) the highest rate of attrition of their roster of any sport at any level of NCAA athletics. To be fair, I think this study was done prior to the basketball NIL/transfer portal era $hit$how we are in now. But the point is, I don't think this move helps them retain athletes.

Once again, lot of good points on both sides of things here. It was nice to see when a local athlete could get his/her shot at the D1 level and now this is one less opportunity for that.