Division I Coaches: Why do some Division I schools not allow Non-DI schools to compete at their home meets?

Crappy teams are dumb and stubborn wrote:

The complexities of the logic of the rules are too complicated to explain here and too much for Non D1 guys to comprehend. To make a simple analogy, if we let every woman who can beat some of the guys, compete in the guys race, those guys getting beat should have the same right to compete in the women’s race. The NCAA established different divisions to create opportunities for leaders talented athletes to be able to compete. If you start breaking down thise barriers, you destroy the divisions and might as well eliminate them. I think there should be no crossing over for any sports.

I know you’re trolling*, but your analogy is not useful.

1. We’re talking about entire teams. There is no woman’s team that is outright better than a man’s team at the collegiate level (or at any level for that matter).

2. Part of the entire point that we are trying to make with this thread is that the majority of D1 schools aren’t actually ‘D1 material’.

*It’d be great if trolling was moderated in serious discussions online, but then it would limit free speech, wh

ich isn’t okay. I guess it’d just be nice if everyone was a little more mature. It’s amazing how brave people are when they have anonymity.

The word crappy means inferior. D1 is the better division. D3 and D2 are inferior Divisions to D1. It is not an insult anymore than saying that 13 minutes is faster than 14 minutes. You chose a crappy division, run in the crappy division. This is like the transgender debate, if you want to win the argument. Over time, the other division may cease to exist. They were created in order to provide more opportunities for students to compete. It is a positive thing but you keep turning it into a negative without realizing it.

Has the college sport changed that much in 25 years, or is this just a bunch of whining about something that's not a problem?

I went to D2, I ran in some D1 meets, I ran in some D3 meets.. I always felt our schedule gave ample opportunity to move up a couple times a year and mix it up with the big boys, as well as a chance to drop down and flex our muscles against the small schools. The majority of our meets were hosted by schools in our conference.

And of course Akron is going to let their own guys run in their home meet. Every single guy on our roster ran in our home meet every year. We even let the managers run the 400.

D3 is crappy wrote:

The word crappy means inferior. D1 is the better division. D3 and D2 are inferior Divisions to D1. It is not an insult anymore than saying that 13 minutes is faster than 14 minutes. You chose a crappy division, run in the crappy division. This is like the transgender debate, if you want to win the argument. Over time, the other division may cease to exist. They were created in order to provide more opportunities for students to compete. It is a positive thing but you keep turning it into a negative without realizing it.

No one is turning it into a negative. We're saying that if an athlete's/team's performances belong in a regular season meet, they shouldn't be kept from a regular season meet simply because they don't have the D1 classification.

The word 'crappy' is an inflammatory word and is poor diction in this case.

We're all aware that D1 is overall the strongest division (I'm a huge fan of D1 track). However, some of the best teams in D2 would also be among the best in D1. A lot of people act like there are only 20-30 Division 1 track teams, but there are 347 Division 1 schools (I'm not sure the exact number of track teams, but it's certainly in the hundreds). Division 1 itself means nothing. Qualifying for Division 1 Regionals and Nationals very much means something. Depending on the conference, doing well at conference definitely means something. But the classification of D1 (outside of championship meets) does not mean that you are a particularly good college runner and definitely doesn't mean you're inherently a better runner than runners in other divisions.

It's not crazy to posit that many D1 mid-distance/distance runners (outside of foreigners) are from wealthier families who simply had better opportunities and less stress (which provided them the opportunity to recover faster and the ability to focus on training in high school) than non-D1 runners. It could be argued that the collegiate athletic divisions are more structured based on life opportunities and not primarily based on innate athletic ability. However, that's tangential and for another thread.

If you're going to post a degrading response, then just don't post. Have some maturity and self-control. Feel free to weigh-in if you feel strongly and have a good argument, but please present your argument. Don't just attack the other participants of the discussion.

D2 Old guy wrote:

Has the college sport changed that much in 25 years, or is this just a bunch of whining about something that's not a problem?

I went to D2, I ran in some D1 meets, I ran in some D3 meets.. I always felt our schedule gave ample opportunity to move up a couple times a year and mix it up with the big boys, as well as a chance to drop down and flex our muscles against the small schools. The majority of our meets were hosted by schools in our conference.

And of course Akron is going to let their own guys run in their home meet. Every single guy on our roster ran in our home meet every year. We even let the managers run the 400.

Not whining. It's asking why runners who have run 46.x-47.xx for 400, 13:xx/low 14:xx for 5k, sub-21 200s, sub 3:50 for 1500 etc... can't participate in a reasonably big regular season meet because they do not go to a D1 school, but D1 runners who have run 50.xx for 400, 16:xx for 5k, 22..x for 200 and 4:1xx for 1500 can participate, simply because they do go to a D1 school.

We're not even saying it's necessarily wrong, we're just trying to understand what the logic is behind it. There have been many good answers.

As for addressing your question: Yes. It has changed. In fact, there was a time in XC when D1 and Non-D1s who were competing directly against each other were not scored against each other. There was separate scoring for D1 schools and Non-D1 schools, even though they ran against each other in the same race.

No way. Most of the kids who are running D3 are wealthy kids who have been catered to their whole life. They Run 16 minutes and think they are deserving of special attention. Most D1 state school runners are not wealthy. They are hard workers. You sound like one of Jose spoiled kids who doesn’t want to live with your decisions. Watch the video of the D3 NCAA XC meet and you will quickly realize why D1 coaches don’t allow D3 kids into the races. The fans were running around in the cold with their shirts off acting like small school high schoolers. There are many subtle differences. You aren’t going to get a clear answer here to your question because part of it is just that the D1 community doesn’t want to interact with the D3 community. You may not like the facts.

Jimjamesrunner wrote:

[quote]Crappy teams are dumb and stubborn wrote:

1. We’re talking about entire teams. There is no woman’s team that is outright better than a man’s team at the collegiate level (or at any level for that matter).

Very false. Not every d1 team could beat Colorado in XC, and that's a fact. There are some D1 teams that really suck.

So why does D2 uniformly have lower eligibility standards than D1?

He was talking about track but there are still probably a few exceptions.

Though this is a good point, there are too many posts that are addressing this as D1 vs. D3. It’s D1 vs. all Non-D1 schools.

I’m fine with the facts. I’m just trying to figure out what all of the facts are.

Good point. D3 has rich kids. D2 is where poor dumb kids go who can’t get into D3 or D1 schools.

Th NCAA rules mandate that to meet compliance as a sport, a DI team must compete in a minimum number of meets/contests, with a minimal number of student-athletes participating, with a minimum percentage of teams participating in the contest be DI.

I honestly cannot remember how many meets are the minimum but many early season "compliance" meets are scored as multiple duals to artificially inflate the number of meets to help teams with travel budget issues meet their number (i.e. travel to one site but be scored against every team individually rather than as an invitational). Some smaller (often less competitive) conferences have by-laws that require school to meet compliance numbers at their conference meet.

Minimal number of participating student-athletes is still 14 IIRC.

Minimal percentage of participating teams being DI is still 2/3 IIRC.

Rules is rules.

JimJames is not fast enough to run on a real D1 team but wants to compete against the fake D1 teams. That may be even worse then the kids who have a burning desire to go D1 regardless of how bad the team is.

PoisonIvy wrote:

Th NCAA rules mandate that to meet compliance as a sport, a DI team must compete in a minimum number of meets/contests, with a minimal number of student-athletes participating, with a minimum percentage of teams participating in the contest be DI.

I honestly cannot remember how many meets are the minimum but many early season "compliance" meets are scored as multiple duals to artificially inflate the number of meets to help teams with travel budget issues meet their number (i.e. travel to one site but be scored against every team individually rather than as an invitational). Some smaller (often less competitive) conferences have by-laws that require school to meet compliance numbers at their conference meet.

Minimal number of participating student-athletes is still 14 IIRC.

Minimal percentage of participating teams being DI is still 2/3 IIRC.

Rules is rules.

Awesome. Thank you for this response.