pup":2i76yukp said:
There has been some discussion as to whether "state" schools should be in D3 at all. From a small, private college perspective, it is like your Lifegate Falcons taking on Throckmorton. Sure, you might win a few, but the enrollment numbers definitely favor the Whitewaters of D3. Not to mention the difference in tuition that limits many potential athletes from playing at a private school. Then there are the differences in facilities. There has also been some discussion on d3football.com about why Whitewater and Mount Union are so far above everyone else in D3. How the Mount does it year after year after year, is just amazing.
I'll agree that Whitewater (which I think has an undergrad enrollment around 9,000; it was at least 5-6,000 when I attended in the mid-70s) is a large D3 school; I'm certain there are full scholarship D1 schools with smaller enrollments. Texas Lutheran, which is here in Seguin and a D3 school has an undergrad enrollment of about 1,200. Its campus is miniscule compared to what I remember of Whitewater in the 1970's -- and I know (from frequent calls and newsletters from the alumni association, usually soliticing a donation) that much has changed since then.
Of the eight or nine schools in the WIAC, I think Whitewater is among the largest but not the biggest (Oshkosh is the largest, Eau Claire and LaCrosse are probably about the same size). By the way, Whitewater is located in the southeast corner of the state -- about 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee, 50 miles southeast of Madison, and maybe 75 miles from Chicago, so it has a pretty solid area to draw from.
When the Wisconsin State University Conference (now known as the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, or WIAC) was formed in 1913, the state legislature didn't want those schools (which at the time were teachers colleges and was a separate system from the flagship UW campus in Madison; the two systems merged around 1970) to compete with UW-Madison in athletics so they did not permit by law for those school to offer athletic scholarships. I think they were in NAIA when I was in college, but as you know, many former NAIA schools ditched it for NCAA D3 status over the years.
By the way, WIAC is probably among the most stable of the college conferences. Last change was in 1964 when UW-Milwaukee left the conference. UW-Milwaukee, UW-Green Bay and UW-Parkside (Kenosha) are the only other state colleges besides UW-Madison that offer athletic scholarships (and none of those play football). I think UW-Superior dropped football, but they do play in other sports. Most of the WIAC colleges are in the western half of the state, while the majority of the population is in the southeastern part of the state (basically from Green Bay to Madison and south). (website:
http://www.wiacsports.com/)
I could make a case that WIAC could be a solid NCAA D2 conference, but I doubt if there is any serious consideration of that going on right now. From what I hear in Wisconsin, outside of rooting for the Packers and drinking beer (Milwaukee was recently rated as the most drunk city in America, a well deserved honor, by the way), pretty well all that is going on is political fighting and recall elections.
While the jobs and graduates are leaving the state.
