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Subject: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: An Observer [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 10:20:09 02/09/26 Mon Well, the road to an Ivy FCS national champion just got a little easier: Long-time behemoth North Dakota State is leaving our little sand box for the bright lights of Broadway. NDSU will become a football-only member of the FBS Mountain West Conference while the rest of its sports will remain in the Summit League. How expensive is it to make the jump to FBS? For starters, a $5 million fee to the NCAA and $12 million to join the Mountain West. Everybody seems to want into the FBS pool. I don't really get it. We already know that the bottom half of FBS loses money on football and it's not going to get easier in the new NIL era. Will overall FBS football revenue expand enough to grow the pie sufficient to lift all boats? How's that for a metaphor? It feels a little like the capital rush into artificial intelligence. The world will change profoundly for sure, but will most people make money after the change? [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> Subject: Wow Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 11:23:12 02/09/26 Mon Wasn't that long ago when NDSU insisted that they were happy staying in FCS and kicking everyone's ass. Funny how things change quickly...

[> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 11:50:23 02/09/26 Mon According to AI (ironically): "Total annual distributions for MW schools are typically in the $5 to $7 million range." So NDSU could recoup the entry costs fairly quickly. With the new MW conference makeup (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Utah State departing for the Pac-12, while Air Force, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, San Jose State, UNLV, Wyoming, Northern Illinois, and UTEP remain in MW) I would not be surprised if they are already a top half of conference team. Sadly, Harvard fans no longer will have an opportunuity to visit their bucket list destination of Fargo.

[> Subject: Here's a team that **should** move up Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 12:06:40 02/09/26 Mon https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/47868788/nyu-women-team-sets-div-iii-mark-82nd-straight-win Why is NYU Division III? They've got tons of students and money. There is no football team, so the Dayton Rule is irrelevant. Even if they didn't take sports seriously generations ago, they seem to be doing so now. Anyone know what's up?

[> [> Subject: Re: Here's a team that **should** move up Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 14:06:55 02/09/26 Mon The biggest missed opportunity in all of College Sports. They could go to the Big 12 and give that conference the REAL NYC market, with the brand name to match. Rutgers ain't a NYC school. Neither is Syracuse. St. John's is still a parochial commuter school in Queens. And the SEC pretends like NYC doesn't exist, so... NYU is not playing this right. Brett Yormark would be all ears if the violets had their heads on straight.

[> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: IvySportsJunkie [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:46:35 02/09/26 Mon GG and observer, you raise very interesting points that warrants further discussion. NYU does seem to be the university with the most upside potential among all of the D3 colleges to be able to move up into D1 athletics. While it would make more sense for them to be in the Patriot League than the B12 conference, NYU appears to have several attributes that would favor their potential to eventually move up to a D1 conference. First, as you pointed out, the NYC market is very favorable for recruitment and attracting game attendance. Second, NYU already has a massive student base that is much larger than each of the Patriot League schools. NYU has 61,890 enrolled students (29,760 undergraduate and 27,578 graduate students). Third, NYU has $6.7 billion endowment, which is much larger than any Patriot League school (nearly four times greater than Lehigh which has the largest endowment within the Patriot League). That said, NYU would have to dramatically change its emphasis on sports. Despite the above noted advantages, NYU currently does not dominate in D3 team sports as reflected by its records in its three largest team sports (15-5 in basketball, 20-17 in baseball and 4-9 in soccer). NYU has the resources, but it would struggle badly in the Patriot League unless there are a major change in direction in its Athletic Department.

[> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:57:13 02/09/26 Mon It's a lack of vision at the highest levels. Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt have all shown that private schools can do well in sports without abandoning academic mission. NYU is a potential giant, but it looks in the mirror and sees Hervé Villechaize. With the accent and all.

[> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: Zee Plane! Zee Plane! [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 17:44:14 02/12/26 Thu Aka Tattoo. Well played

[> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: joiseyfan [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 17:15:11 02/09/26 Mon Some of my NYU friends are still seething over the 1951 scandal that cost the school a huge chunk of its reputation, and most of its athletics respect. I don’t think there’s much appetite among either alums or faculty to go anywhere near division 1. I would think UChicago (ex-Big Ten, no scandals) would be a better candidate, and they have next to zero interest either. The greatness of US higher education is in its diversity (right, Linda McMahon?) and I don’t think either school is suffering in division 3.

[> [> Subject: No they are not suffering Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:31:27 02/09/26 Mon Indeed, they are dominating--at least WBB. St. Thomas was essentially kicked upstairs because their D-III competitors were tiring of losing to them every year. If NYU keeps this up, don't be surprised to see something similar happening.

[> Subject: Re: NYU probably is a good fit for UAA Author: IvySportsJunkie [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 11:45:52 02/10/26 Tue In light of your comments, I relooked at NYU’s athletic conference. While NYU has a massive study body in line with the size of the larger public universities, NYU appears to be a good fit for their D3 conference. NYU competes in the University Athletic Association (UAA). UAA is comprised of all elite academic universities in line with NYU. Each of the UAA universities have undergraduate enrollments over 6,000 and endowments of at least $2 billion. The only UAA conference exception is Brandeis, which has 3,600 undergraduate enrollment and $1 billion endowment. Of course, enrollment and endowment are not the best indicators of athletic prowess. The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) colleges have relatively small undergraduate enrollments, yet NESCAC is the dominant D3 athletic conference in the nation.

[> [> Subject: Re: NYU probably is a good fit for UAA Author: Quaker62 [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:30:08 02/11/26 Wed The UAA is a great league. As mentioned earlier, the eight schools in the league are high quality institutions. A look at their rosters, from my experience at a CMU-Wash U game a couple of weeks ago, shows that they recruit nationwide. I’m not so sure that the recruiting footprint of the NESAC is comparable. The UAA schools Wash U, Chicago, Case Western, CMU, Rochester, NYU, Brandeis and Emory are sufficiently distant that that makes is a “fly to away games” league. Like most D III leagues, I’m sure they schedule some bus trips against local competition, but for the most part, for important games and in-season tournaments, air travel is the norm for the UAA. Just like the big time…something not list on recruits.

[> [> Subject: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:48:14 02/12/26 Thu The UAA is a great league for those who like sports to be no more than extracurricular activities for enrolled students. It sucks in bringing national attention and applications/enrollment to the member schools. It's a terrible institutional marketing device, relative to the SEC and B1G. It doesn't help build campus unity and school spirit (and commensurate alumni giving) in the same way, nor does it necessarily inspire campus neighbors to look at the school in a positive light. The idea that college athletics only has value for the participants in the games themselves is antediluvean, and a clinging to 19th century model of college athletics is the kind of thinking that make Xerox and Kodak the wonderful brands they are today.

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: SpuytenDuyvil76 [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 05:44:10 02/13/26 Fri observer - I agree, especially if you want a university the football team can be proud of! The rest of the developed world does just fine (and increasingly maybe better) eschewing the support of semi-professional sports and gets on with the bigger job of providing higher education and scientific research. The vast majority of students participating in sports, all sports, will not go on to any professional career in the sport, so clearly they are participating for themselves. As it should be.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 07:33:05 02/13/26 Fri False premise. Which is a better school, Stanford or NYU? Duke or Haverford? Vanderbilt or Bard? The idea that strong athletics programs crowds out strong academic/research communities is patently false. Michigan is a top school across many endeavors, drawing excellent students from all over the USA, including private schools in Ivy territory. As is UCLA. Without Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, UCLA might still be a regional commuter school. Data shows that many kids from top prep schools are eschewing smaller traditional liberal arts schools for bigger public and private schools the sun belt because of weather AND campus culture (including school spirit). And the idea that the legacy schools in the Northeast have a hammerlock on academia, especially what qualifies as "academic" research these days, is also a bit of fart-sniffing. One can aspire to be more than what they have been. And the ad hominem attacks about the school envying the football team is bullshit. The Ohio State President who made that remark knew damn well that his academic community NEEDED the Buckeyes to be good, so that admission rates and yields would go up. Ask George Mason and Loyola Illinois if being D1 in men's basketball was worth admitting some students whose skill in basketball overshadowed their classroom study habits. They would make that trade every day until Sunday. The Flutie effect is real.

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 10:52:39 02/13/26 Fri If you wanted a big-time atmosphere, why did you choose Columbia?

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: SpuytenDuyvil76 [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 15:44:01 02/15/26 Sun Responding to observer and sparman. To observer: my point is that the U.S. model of supporting big time sports is unique. This anomaly exists nowhere else, so you don't need it to support higher education, as shown by the rest of the advanced world. That being said, I am a sucker for this very same system of a) building alumni support, and b) using sports as a prominent draw to keep alumni and prospective students' interest. I'm an unabashed Lion fan. I am sure to make donations directed to both sports and the college academic fund. As stated before, I'm also concerned about the increasing prevalence of international recruited athletes in pursuit of championships. While it speaks to the high regard in which the U.S. system is held by these obviously talented individuals, it takes away from both the incredibly precious few admissions slots for U.S. kids at the Ivy level elite institutions, and also spots for local kids at state schools (i.e., Michigan, UCLA, Berkley, Wisconsin, Texas, etc.) one of whose main missions is the education of students from their states. To sparman: not sure of the intent of the question, but when looking at schools way back when, I wasn't at all contemplating D1 athletics. That didn't enter into it. I was beguiled by the notion of the Core Curriculum and Humanities on offer, and Columbia College did not disappoint. Small classes, taught by full-time faculty, often full professors, world class acknowledged experts. For me, big time, indeed.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Welcome to the 21st Century Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:29:36 02/15/26 Sun was not directed to you. My default assumption is that people choose to attend ivies because they accept their "model" and want to be there. Apparently thay is not always accurate.

[> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: DFW HOYA [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 12:18:24 02/13/26 Fri Short answer for NYU: no facilities. Selling off the Bronxville campus in 1971 and dropping basketball were the death knells.

[> [> Subject: good point, though you meant university heights, bronx campus. Author: valmas (stoic) [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:37:49 02/22/26 Sun also, the gambling scandal that nearly destroyed collegiate basketball in the 1950s left a residual stain for all those connected with the violets' athletic program to need to continue to explain. several nyu players were seen as having colluded with organized crime figures to shave points of various games; in the aftermath, and though the team had gone to two final four events, the administration and significant nyu alums came to the belief that something more low key was in order, athletically speaking. the near bankruptcy of the school faced a decade later only ensured the notion of sports as a lesser priority there and so it has remained.

[> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: SpuytenDuyvil76 (NYU Bronx campus) [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 07:08:46 02/23/26 Mon Containing the American Hall of Fame... With 90% of those enshrined, people you've never heard of!

[> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive- NYU Author: Ghost [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 20:50:57 02/24/26 Tue NYU's emphasis on a more residential campus life, combined with the vibrancy of Greenwich Village, created huge academic growth in the early '80s. With the university now thriving, and a beautiful new Coles Sports Center up and running, President John Brademas and Chancellor L. Jay Oliva announced a return to college basketball for the Violets. The next day, Dave Gavitt visited the campus with an invitation to join the Big East. MSG Network announced it would start carrying NYU games. But the administration was only interested in a team representative of the student body, with no athletic scholarships. So, Division 3 it was. A couple of years later, watching NYU play at MSG, I sat with Billy Packer, who told me to tell the administration to put him in charge of the men's basketball program and they would return to Division 1. And if they did, he wouldn't take one dollar from the University, he only wanted the academic association. He would raise the necessary money for athletic scholarships, salaries, travel, etc., that all the local executives who were NYU grads would contribute the necessary funds. He said that NYU was the only school that could pack the Garden night after night, like it did in the '50s/'60s. But the administration, with the school thriving, wanted no part of the new Division 1.The Violets have done quite well in Division 3 since then.

[> [> [> [> Subject: NYU Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:06:23 02/25/26 Wed Maybe some others were already aware, but it's this kind of information that can make the Board a useful source.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive- NYU Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:17:33 02/25/26 Wed All good. What is NYU's academic reputation/US News ranking relative to Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Texas, Michigan and Northwestern? The argument never holds that D3 principles ensures a more "legitimate" academic institution than D1. NYU isn't considered on the level as the above schools. It's invisible to many people outside of the Northeast and NYC metro area. I wonder why?

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: I think this is it Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:39:07 02/25/26 Wed Not sure what kids think today. But I've always thought that NYU competes for students with Boston U, Tufts, Fordham, and other "urban" northeastern colleges not in the Ivy. My gut is that their yield to Columbia is not favorable. If they want to get a national reach, they have to do something different. Getting a more visible athletics program certainly seems like a feasible option.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: The Explanation for NYU's Enduring Appeal and Application Flow Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 13:18:32 02/25/26 Wed This is not exactly scientific research, but every year the college guide "Princeton Review" asks both students and their parents to name their dream college. The answers from the parents are invariably some combination of HYP and Stanford, usually topped by Harvard or Princeton. NYU is nowhere to be found on the parents' list. The answers from the students are invariably some combination of HYP and NYU, often with NYU on top. To me, this dichotomy summarizes the niche that NYU fills in the college rat race landscape. It's the choice of kids who want to get away from Mom, Dad and their vanilla whitebread suburban upbringing because they're cooler than all that. This is just me speaking here, but I couldn't imagine a worse place to go to college. Not Greenwich Village, but a campus full of kids who have fled Wellesley and Weston outside Boston or Darien and Westport in Fairfield County to play urban hipster. That's one of my main complaints about Columbia, too. I don't want to attend college with a bunch of 18-year-old suburban expatriates playing like they're a 25-year-old Carrie Bradshaw. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the downtown experience; it was a big part of my adult social life. But you've got your whole life to live in New York; why start when you can't even legally drink? The two greatest things that ever happened for NYU are -- and I say this with all seriousness -- (1) Rudy Giuliani because, although crime rates have been descending in all major American cities since the 1980's, Giuliani took credit for it in NYC and put a face to the fact that America's biggest city *WAS* getting a lot safer; and (2) the 1990's television hit "Friends," which told every kid in Wellesley and Darien, "You too can come to Greenwich Village and play Rachel Green and Monica Geller." Sidebar: I saw Courteney Cox on Jimmy Fallon last night. Time catches up with all of us and, if you don't handle it with grace and dignity, sometimes it's not pretty.

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive- NYU Author: joiseyfan [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 13:49:38 02/25/26 Wed observer — The following are included in the US News top 25 national universities: MIT Chicago Johns Hopkins Carnegie Mellon Caltech Emory WashU (St. Louis) By my count, 14 Big Ten schools are not. Do you have a point?

[> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive- NYU Author: observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 14:38:23 02/25/26 Wed Yes, there is no correlation between small-time sports and superior academics. Big-time sports does not necessarily obviate academic status. NYU is missing a market opportunity that could benefit its students, alumni and many other members of the campus community. WashU, Carnegie Mellon, Hopkins and MIT don't exactly have the same opportunity. St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Baltimore ain't exactly the island of Manhattan.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: NYU could do a two step process in D1 basketball Author: IvySportsJunkie [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 15:55:01 02/25/26 Wed As noted earlier, NYU could test the waters with a D1 sport, which would give it additional time to further upgrade its athletic facilities. I agree that basketball would be NYU's best opportunity for prime time D1 sports. However, this would require a two step process in basketball. First, NYU would need to play in a lower level D1 eastern conference, such as the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). Then, after NYU achieves success in a conference like the MAAC, it can move up to a higher level conference like the Atlantic 10 or the Big East. It would be highly unlikely for NYU to be invited into a conference that is above the mid-major basketball level straight from D3 athletics. I selected the above three conferences since the majority of schools in these conferences do not have a football program. The top FBS football conferences rarely invite schools without a football program into their conferences. A recent exception is Gonzaga, who was invited to join the recently rebuilt Pac-12 conference in the fall of 2026. Gonzaga has decades of success in March Madness.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Of course... Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 14:42:04 02/25/26 Wed Other than MIT (which is in its own league), the other schools don't have an Ivy a few miles away to deal with. And I never understood the recent rise of WashU. It was considered nothing special back in my day. For whatever reason, its popularity has greatly increased in recent years...

[> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive- NYU Author: Ghost [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 15:54:05 02/25/26 Wed NYU's undergraduate business school checks in at #5, with only Wharton among the Ivies ahead of them. Current acceptance rate among undergrads is 7.7% so I'd say whatever they're doing is working. They have a healthy, vibrant athletics program, with WBB playing to capacity crowds (2,000) and an 86 game winning streak. MBB made the NCAA Tourney last year. I would think the administration is quite pleased with the combination of great athletics, high level academics and a vibrant campus life in Greenwich Village. One of the other aspects in forming the UAA with other like institutions (Emory, WashU, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon) is that undergraduate student-athletes would get to travel to other UAA schools and compete, essentially a campus visit if you're thinking about graduate school.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: So what's NYU going to do to leapfrog Emory, WashU and CMU? Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 06:13:32 02/26/26 Thu I think leapfrogging U of Chicago is out of reach given that they (like CalTech and MIT) are in a league of their own. But there's no reason why NYU should be lagging behind WashU, Emory, or CMU. To me, NYU is in a similar position as Northwestern. Just as Columbia is always going to be top dog in NYC, so will U of Chicago in the Windy City. Yet Northwestern is widely considered an elite national university (indeed, #7 in USN&WR). As observer notes, Northwestern is doing something that NYU is not--playing in a high-profile athletic league. True, they haven't had tons of success. But they are getting their brand out there. If NYU is truly content to remain where it is, then fine. But if NYU wants to really make a leap to improve their visibility, they should consider doing something similar as Northwestern.

[> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: IvySportsJunkie [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 11:15:29 02/25/26 Wed While NYU currently is a good fit for the UAA conference in D3, I think the trends indicate that it will eventually move up to D1 in at least one sport. The NCAA Multidivision Classification rule allows D3 schools in compete in one D1 sport, such as Union in hockey and Johns Hopkins in lacrosse. Over the past 5 decades, NYU has achieved remarkable progress in evolving into one of the nation’s elite universities. To illustrate this point, let’s examine how it has progressed in the quality of its student enrollment in the past decade. In spring of 2015 for class of 2019, NYU received 60,030 applicants with an acceptance rate of 30.7%. In spring of 2025 for class of 2029, NYU received over 120,000 applicants with an acceptance rate of only 7.7%. This is the nation’s most significant improvement. While NYU's movement up to at least one D1 sport may not happen soon, it only is a matter of time before one of NYU’s billionaire alumni help the university further upgrade its athletic program in line with its rapid improvements in its academic standing.

[> [> Subject: Re: North Dakota State Going Big Time, and It's Expensive Author: Ghost [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:00:06 02/25/26 Wed Already there, in terms of competition, in Fencing, because there is no classification. But can't see the administration wanting to do that in any sport. That alum won't ever get to present his/her plan, he/she will be convinced that having a new residence hall named after them would be a better investment.