Play to Win, or Just to Play? N.C.A.A.'s Lowest Rung Split

By BILL PENNINGTON

CORTLAND, N.Y. - The lacrosse game was played beneath arc lighting perched atop a towering grandstand in a new stadium worthy of a major university power. Gordon College, a small Christian institution of 1,700 students in Massachusetts, was the guest and archetypal sacrificial lamb.

The final score, 19-2, fit the script, with host Cortland State, a large campus in the State University of New York system, thumping plucky Gordon in a first-round match of the 2003 N.C.A.A. Division III men's lacrosse tournament. Afterward, the teams lined up to shake hands - all 19 of Gordon's players and all 39 of Cortland's.

"It's kind of like baseball where the Yankees have the money and the mission," Gordon defenseman Andrew Beach said after the game on May 10, gesturing toward the palatial Cortland State athletic complex and stadium. "It's just the way it is. And it shows."

Division III athletics, comprising 425 colleges and universities nationwide, is often portrayed as an idyllic bastion of pure amateurism, where students untarnished by athletic scholarships compete in an atmosphere that pits colleges of similar size, philosophy and measured athletic expectations. That was, at least, the goal when the National Collegiate Athletic Association created Division III 30 years ago.

Today, Division III encompasses institutions with enrollments ranging from 400 to 40,000. The membership has nearly doubled since inception, making the division by far the N.C.A.A.'s largest. As evidenced in the Gordon-Cortland State game, in Division III there is now little uniformity to the mission, approach or aims of many institutions, and this rampant diversity has created a smoldering schism that may lead to radical change.

There is even the chance that some like-minded colleges will desert the N.C.A.A. to create an athletic alliance.

In a recent survey of the membership, more than a third of those responding - 120 institutions - expressed some support for a splintering of Division III that would create either a subdivision or something like a separate Division IV.

The split would most likely divide universities and colleges that are comfortable with the status quo, a group that tends to include larger enrollment schools, state universities and newer members of the division, from those that believe Division III has strayed from its original mission, a group that tends to be made up of smaller, private liberal arts colleges who were founding members.

A new division would most likely de-emphasize the pursuit of national championships and establish more restrictive rules on the length of seasons, recruiting, eligibility and perhaps abolish protracted off-season practices, a surprisingly prevalent custom in Division III.

"We can create a way station for 60 or 80 schools that share a sense that athletics is meant to be an extracurricular activity," said Thomas Tritton, president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, a Division III member of the Centennial Conference whose leaders have discussed an alliance with two other influential conferences.

"It's not anti-athletics, but the Division III philosophy was to value participation in sports," Tritton said. "Now the value is placed on winning a national championship. I feel the pressure on our athletes and coaches to move with that crowd. I want changes before that becomes irresistible."

Some Holding Out Hope

John McCardell Jr., president of Middlebury College in Vermont and the chairman of the Division III Presidents Council, believes the tent is still big enough to hold all its members. His institution is a reigning national powerhouse in several sports, but Dr. McCardell conceded: "There is a preoccupation with playing games until we can identify and declare a single winner. That is probably not the best way to think of athletics in Division III."

Dr. McCardell expressed pride in Middlebury's 17 national championships since 1995, but he said they came with a price.

"For the last few years, we have not had our seniors on the lacrosse team here for their graduation ceremonies, because they have been off competing in the national championship," he said. "They would say they made the right choice. I hope in 25 years they still think so. I hope the institution looks back and believes it made the right decision."

Not everyone, of course, thinks Division III needs to be reworked. According to the N.C.A.A. survey, a majority of the membership opposed change, from increased controls on practice schedules to creating a subdivision.

"Things seem to be going extremely well," said Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, a national research institution whose sports teams have won 11 national championships. "We certainly aren't obsessing with winning national championships. Our athletes are good students studying a wide variety of majors. I don't see a great deal of basis for controversy or change."

But at least three conferences have discussed an alliance in which they might institute strict rules to distance themselves from the trend toward national athletic goals in Division III. If the colleges can agree on a set of regulations over the next few months, they are likely to take the proposals for a vote by the entire Division III membership at a national convention next January.

It is a movement in its infancy, but its leaders seemed dedicated to a makeover of Division III, initially from within but not inconceivably as a renegade force.

Support for Change Builds

The North Coast Athletic Conference, representing 10 institutions in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, the Centennial, whose 11 members are in the Mid-Atlantic states, and the 11-member New England Small College Athletic Conference have had informal discussions about banding together.

"We feel there are another six conferences out there who feel as we do as well," said Richard Cook, president of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, a member of the North Coast Conference. "We feel like we can provide some leadership and bring proposals for change before the entire membership."

That has happened before, particularly at a national convention in 1997, and the proponents of change were turned away. This time, they may not go away quietly.

"It's getting a little ahead of things," Mr. Cook said, "but the most extreme case would be going off on our own."

The complexities of Division III stem from its size and its wide variety of institutions. The autonomy of each college or university is so valued that the creators of the division insisted on only one overriding rule: no athletic scholarships, even partial ones (colleges in Division I and II are permitted to award athletic scholarships). But within Division III there is a wide path on how else to approach the collegiate athletic experience.

This autonomy appealed to institutions. But Division III has become so popular it has bred immense disparities. While many colleges sponsor 20 or more sports and try to spend their resources equally on each, others sponsor only the minimum number of mandated sports (10) and tend to gear up on a select few sports.

This creates Division III superpowers. Mount Union College in Ohio has won six of the last seven national championships in football and has lost once since 1996, a span of 97 games. Mount Union has a football roster of 160 and a male student body of 940, which means that roughly one of every six men on campus plays football.

Some institutions, though small, are nonetheless Division III athletic giants in many sports, none more notable than Williams College in Massachusetts. For the last four years, Williams, with about 2,000 students, has won the Directors' Cup, presented annually to the Division III institution gauged to have the best overall athletic program.

Size Equals Success

Generally in Division III athletics, however, bigger is better, or at least bigger means more victories on the national stage, something reflected in the top 25 colleges in the most recent Directors' Cup standings. The average enrollment of the top 25 institutions was nearly 5,300 students, while the average enrollment for all Division III institutions is 2,100.

"There has never been a competitive sports group like Division III - even the Olympics has only 192 countries," said Dennis Collins, the commissioner of the North Coast Athletic Conference. "How can anybody expect 425 schools - and soon it will be 450 schools - to each approach things the same way?"

At the N.C.A.A., the view is that the membership has plenty of leeway to make changes and that the Division III model is still working.

"It goes too far to say that Division III is broken," said Dan Dutcher, the N.C.A.A.'s chief of staff for Division III. "We have significant issues to address, but even if some like-minded institutions decide to establish their own rules, I don't see anything wrong with that. Of course, competitive balance being what it is, it's sometimes difficult for institutions to go down that road."

In other words, eliminate practices out of the normal season - five weeks of spring football practice is allowed in Division III, for example - and your program risks its competitive edge.

Sometimes, it is just a matter of sheer numbers.

Bigger Division III institutions tend to have more money for better athletic facilities and they draw their athletes from a larger pool of applicants, both geographically and academically.

"If a school of 10,000 students lets in 75 more athletes for its teams, it's not going to raise any eyebrows," said Steve Allrich, the Centennial Conference's top administrator. "That's 3 percent of the freshman class. If a school of 2,000 does the same thing, it's a big issue because that's 15 percent of the freshman class."

Many people think that the majority in Division III will continue to hold the discontented minority captive, voting down most proposed changes.

"What I hope it does not turn into is class warfare," said Dr. McCardell, the president of Middlebury. "I don't believe it is the more or less selective institutions against each other or public versus private. That is oversimplifying the evidence. But if the predominant majority becomes a tyrannical one, then perhaps subdivision is the right and expected course."

In the meantime, the Gordon Colleges will continue to slug it out with the heavyweights of Division III. On the same weekend that the Gordon men's lacrosse team was humbled by Cortland State, the Gordon women's lacrosse team was in Ewing, N.J., losing to another powerhouse, The College of New Jersey, winners of nine women's lacrosse championships in Division III.

"There is a big difference from school to school, but I'd still rather keep it the way it is," said Mr. Beach, the Gordon College defenseman. "If you look around, it might seem one-sided. But we had an opportunity to test ourselves. I'd rather play against the best even if it means losing against the best."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company