The Bobcat Nation

How many NAIA teams are there in the country? What is the distinction between D-III and NAIA?

Division III is NCAA but does not allow scholarships for athletics. Only academic scholarships. NAIA allows scholarships but usually the scholarships are not full ride. Example: Dickinson State pays 1200 to freshman and sophomores, 1800-2500 for juniors and seniors.

According to this website: http://www.naiafootball.net/teams.php there are 94 NAIA football teams

Why would a school select NAIA over D-III or vice versa? Is it based on $?

I'm not speaking from hard knowledge, but more from impressions from talking to some people (my sister played bball at a Frontier school in MT and my brother did track and football in North Dakota at an NAIA for a year). It seems like NAIA is a lot less stringent than the NCAA, and I got the impression that schools had a fair amount of flexibility in how much money they gave in scholarships. It seems like the North Dakota NAIA schools give scholarships to anyone who is willing to come out and give sports a try (I was getting offers in high school sight unseen, and I wasn't that good). In D-III, like somebody mentioned, you can't give athletic scholarships at all.

I think there are also divisions within NAIA (maybe I, II, and III?), but I'm not sure what impact this has on anything.

So from my limited knowledge, it seems like NAIA schools have a lot more freedom to run their programs as they like as compared to the NCAA, which might explain why smaller schools would go that route (as sports is often more about just getting students to attend their school than it is about generating spectator revenue at that level). I think they can probably give out more scholarships and be more creative in their recruitment efforts than they could if they were under the authority of the oft-paranoid and heavy-handed NCAA.

In Montana, it's probably also a critical mass thing -- all of the other area schools (with the exception of Eastern, which apparently likes to paralyze its own programs by being the only D-II school in the state) are NAIA as well.

Bay Area Cat wrote:I'm not speaking from hard knowledge, but more from impressions from talking to some people (my sister played bball at a Frontier school in MT and my brother did track and football in North Dakota at an NAIA for a year). It seems like NAIA is a lot less stringent than the NCAA, and I got the impression that schools had a fair amount of flexibility in how much money they gave in scholarships. It seems like the North Dakota NAIA schools give scholarships to anyone who is willing to come out and give sports a try (I was getting offers in high school sight unseen, and I wasn't that good). In D-III, like somebody mentioned, you can't give athletic scholarships at all.

I think there are also divisions within NAIA (maybe I, II, and III?), but I'm not sure what impact this has on anything.

So from my limited knowledge, it seems like NAIA schools have a lot more freedom to run their programs as they like as compared to the NCAA, which might explain why smaller schools would go that route (as sports is often more about just getting students to attend their school than it is about generating spectator revenue at that level). I think they can probably give out more scholarships and be more creative in their recruitment efforts than they could if they were under the authority of the oft-paranoid and heavy-handed NCAA.

In Montana, it's probably also a critical mass thing -- all of the other area schools (with the exception of Eastern, which apparently likes to paralyze its own programs by being the only D-II school in the state) are NAIA as well.

It would seem then that NAIA schools would be more competitive than D-III programs because of the scholarships (albeit only partials) availble.

gtapp wrote:

Bay Area Cat wrote:I'm not speaking from hard knowledge, but more from impressions from talking to some people (my sister played bball at a Frontier school in MT and my brother did track and football in North Dakota at an NAIA for a year). It seems like NAIA is a lot less stringent than the NCAA, and I got the impression that schools had a fair amount of flexibility in how much money they gave in scholarships. It seems like the North Dakota NAIA schools give scholarships to anyone who is willing to come out and give sports a try (I was getting offers in high school sight unseen, and I wasn't that good). In D-III, like somebody mentioned, you can't give athletic scholarships at all.

I think there are also divisions within NAIA (maybe I, II, and III?), but I'm not sure what impact this has on anything.

So from my limited knowledge, it seems like NAIA schools have a lot more freedom to run their programs as they like as compared to the NCAA, which might explain why smaller schools would go that route (as sports is often more about just getting students to attend their school than it is about generating spectator revenue at that level). I think they can probably give out more scholarships and be more creative in their recruitment efforts than they could if they were under the authority of the oft-paranoid and heavy-handed NCAA.

In Montana, it's probably also a critical mass thing -- all of the other area schools (with the exception of Eastern, which apparently likes to paralyze its own programs by being the only D-II school in the state) are NAIA as well.

It would seem then that NAIA schools would be more competitive than D-III programs because of the scholarships (albeit only partials) availble.

That's the impression I get as well. I would guess that some NAIA schools do offer full ride scholarships as well. I think the main limiting factor is that they are often baiting students with partial scholarships to get them in the door so they can get more revenue from them. It's amazing the % of students on my NAIA campuses are on some level of athletic scholarships. Only the marquee athletes get the "full" scholarships, however.

I hope someone with better knowledge chimes in, though. I am talking out of my arse for the most part -- this is just stuff I have pieced together from other people, and I have never had a complete understanding of the whole NAIA thing. And when I asked people questions about it, nobody else really seemed to know much more.

I attended a D-III school for two years in the elusive attempt to prolong my athletic glory. Though D-3's offer no scholarships they do offer some pretty good financial aid. Frankly I don't know what the difference is between a pure athletic scholarship and "grant". I know top players got bigger grants and needed fewer student loans than the not-so-top players (me).

It seems to me most D-3 schools are private-and usually pretty expensive. That's the case with the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) with Concordia (Moorhead) St. Johns, Augsburg, Gustavas Adolphus, Bethel, Hamlin, St. Thomas...it was almost a miniature Ivy League or Patriot League.

There's a lot of private schools in NAIA too (Carroll and Rocky), but there's also a lot of small state schools-a lot more than in D-3. I wonder if the dues and other obligations for NAIA might be less than the NCAA?

Divisions also tend to be heavily regional. There are NAIA schools in Montana, the Dakotas, and the South, whereas schools in Washington tend to go the D-III route. Schools in Kansas and Oklahoma tend to be junior colleges, and compete at that level.

It's difficult to sort out the quality of D-II versus D-III versus NAIA football, as the strength from conference to conference varies heavily. Until recently, the Frontier and North Dakota conferences were very weak in NAIA, and now they dominate.