Nobody said the idea is bad. I like the idea but it doesn't work. Most of what you posted is incorrect.
Yes, I know it’s “doesn’t work” that was the point of the thread… I wanted to figure out how to make it work?
The first step would have to be changing the NCAA rule which allows schools to choose which division they want to compete in. That's never going to happen. But if that rule was changed there are just too many issues to resolve in a single off season. And as someone else asked, why would this happen? If you don't want to see a football game between Nevada Reno and Boise State just don't watch it.
soccer's european fanboy sect is the worst. let's pretend europe does everything great. reality is european soccer often consists of the same handful of high spending teams fighting each other. joined occasionally by a team with new owners with deeper pockets. everyone else just fighting to stay up. what fanboys are usually blissfully unaware of is the list of "rangers" or "gretna" type teams who go out of existence, or the teams like portsmouth that detonate and drop several divisions.
if you actually know how pro-rel works in practice, the english do "parachute payments" to the relegated. otherwise the practice would be even more destructive.
the fanboys tend to ignore the financial risk and the role it plays in how teams act. some teams at risk deliberately restrain spending in case they go back down. others take risks but then some blow up.
we both know this wouldn't make "georgia" or "NAU" or whatnot "better," it just punishes the bad teams. right wingers love it because it's an excuse to victim shame. reality is some set of teams are going down no matter how well or badly they play. some years the relegation fighter teams are roughly similar and it's harsh one goes down and not the other. some years teams absolutely stink. the fanboys tend to treat the two the same under their ideology and victim-shame.
last, as someone was saying with the different levels in NCAA, not unlike US sports in general, teams and their universities have signed up for the spending level and distraction from academics they want. i am sure the good ones at a level could be serviceable up some levels. do they really want to move up?
last last, but is this all sports or just sport by sport? we couldn't do individual sports without the "colorado college" problem of a school with scholarship kids and then teams in D3. and if it's all sports, what if they are good at football and track in D3 but horrible at soccer and hoops within even D3? you send the whole program to D1 and they have some sports that don't even belong there. barely belonged D3.
Euro soccer/football has relegation, should this be a thing in d1…. There are schools that are consistently are at the very bottom on the list in basketball (like win a few games out of 30 each year) and never have more than a win or two in football… should they stay in d1?
It would be cool if conferences demoted garbage teams, this seems like the most reasonable plan… like Uni of Nev Reno football that has around 12k spectators at each game should not even play Boise and ruin their strength of schedule… it would be cool if each year conferences played a “winners division” and an “open division”… What are peoples thoughts?
Wcc use to do this where garbage teams like Pacific and Pepperdine would only play the good teams once per year in hoops, not twice. I like that idea.
despite the clueless people here saying it's a bad idea, it's actually going to be happening soon in several ways.
There have been discussions at the NCAA to REQUIRE colleges to fund ALL sports a certain scholarship level in order to remain Division 1. That means teams would have to give their men's track teams a certain number of scholarships, for example, or be demoted to D2.
Additionally, you can already see the power 5 programs realigning. The power 5 schools are likely going to separate out and make their own Division with their own championship. You can see they've already consolidated into a power 4 now that the Pac 10 is gone.
As if the NCAA doesn't have enough antitrust problems already. Having previously represented a large class of former NCAA football and basketball players against the NCAA for using NIL rights without permission or compensation, I would love to have a piece of the antitrust pie that would arise out of an attempt by the NCAA to require some particular allocation of athletic scholarships to "ALL sports" for a school to remain in Division I. The NCAA is hanging by its toenails already.
By the way, the so-called "Power 5" conferences are (or, perhaps more accurately now, were) merely a sub-subclass of DI football conferences -- essentially, about 65 of the most revenue-generating (and also most costly) football programs within the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I. The NCAA refers to the so-called "Power Five" conferences as the "autonomy conferences," because they get to set some of their own rules rather than be bound by rules that apply to other Division I football programs. The term has little meaning outside of NCAA Division I football.
side point but i think this whole "power 5" obsession has been horrible for college sports. i want who is best decided on the field a la march madness after a fairly generous playoff. if Fl St is a paper tiger or GA is hard done by, have it exposed in a generous postseason.
i get what you're saying on required scholarship use. i agree with your antitrust concern but i also think, as i said in my post, that pro-rel in practice often results in varied responses, which should then be allowed. in plain english, some promoted soccer teams push a bunch of chips on the table and spend like a team in their new division. "i want to stay here." other teams emphasize risk control and restrain spending at the risk of being relegated easier. "i want to stay solvent no matter what happens." the teams with the worst consequences are spenders who don't achieve, who now owe money but have been relegated and will be back operating on lower division economics to pay it back. i agree with you schools in that scenario should be able to make their own decision how to run their program on spending and risk. to perhaps be non scholarship D1s. i see requiring scholarships as a good way to throw smart risk assessment out the window and watch some programs implode. why? because some darwin obsessive thinks we should have pro-rel and everyone should have to try completely? sounds like the folks whining about who princeton runs at a regular season XC meet. princeton that finished 11th in the country as a team......
last, i think the OP is so obsessed with the "deion sanders" darwin of it all he's ignoring "school sports" and rewarding loyalty. what does he think happens to a roster when a team gets promoted? do you really think an above average D3 just scales up to D1 like nothing? they would be a lousy D1 unless they recruited a new set of athletes a la deion. in which case your thanks for getting the team promoted is they replace you with scholarship players. this is what often happens in soccer to teams that take risks upon promotion. they replace a chunk of the team with new players. it is a mixed bag for the athletes involved. but to people like the OP these are abstractions and they want to see Williams play D1. even if it's not the same kids or quality students as represented the school in D3.
i mean off my old college soccer team (D3) maybe a half dozen of us could have been serviceable D1. similar handful of conference-competitive D3 XC/TF types, one guy to nationals, who would mostly be average to below average D1. unless dropped into the right lousy D1 conference we'd have gotten destroyed. i know this because our dumb TF coach scheduled a bunch of D1 type meets.