St Francis PA down to D-III

[bonarae]

https://sfuathletics.com/news/2025/3/25 ... etics.aspx

[Mvemjsunpx]

In just a few years, we'll be going from two St. Francises in Division I to zero (St. Francis NY/Brooklyn dropped athletics entirely).

[SuperHornet]

While I "get" the travel footprint thing (the FBS realignment in recent years is literally disgusting), the "elephant in the room" is likely the elimination of scholarships. While they could have done that by moving to the Pioneer, that conference, too, has a bloody big footprint. D-II regionalization could have been an option; I wonder why they didn't consider that. If you go to D-III, you might as well go all the way to NAIA or NCCAA, right? And there's a lot of cross-branding between NAIA and NCCAA, too; if you blow it in the NAIA playoffs, you can continue into the NCCAA playoffs, something that hasn't been done in the NCAA since the '50s (when two bowls in a season was possible, though one of them likely wasn't "recognized" by the NCAA).

[BDKJMU]

JMU played them a # of times back in I-AA/FCS. I don‘t get why not go Div II instead of dropping from Div I all the way to Div III. There‘s an entire Div II conference in PA, the PSAC, with 16 of 17 members in PA.

Under 2k students. If not the smallest Div I football school, has to be one of the smallest. Apparently 1/2 their students are involved in athletics. Sounds like the University did a piss poor job of handling this timing wise.
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/col ... 2503260051

[SuperHornet]

JMU played them a # of times back in I-AA/FCS. I don‘t get why not go Div II instead of dropping from Div I all the way to Div III. There‘s an entire Div II conference in PA, the PSAC, with 16 of 17 members in PA.

Under 2k students. If not the smallest Div I football school, has to be one of the smallest. Apparently 1/2 their students are involved in athletics. Sounds like the University did a piss poor job of handling this timing wise.
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/col ... 2503260051

I'm starting to think that it's normal for schools to completely mishandle division changes and getting out of sports entirely. When UOP dropped football after the '95 season, they didn't even bother to call the players in to tell them. The players were left to find out on the evening news about a week before Christmas after having just started winter workouts. Sac State has mismanaged the entire "do we or don't we" of this jump to FBS from the very beginning. The school president proclaims that it's essentially a done deal and it's only a matter of time, and then the target conference(s) move(s) in other directions.

Can anyone with knowledge of the St. Thomas situation describe how it was for students? Being not only kicked out of one's conference but out of the division for being "too good" couldn't feel all that good, I'm sure. But I'd like to hear that from them....