(07-15-2017 08:37 AM)bluesox Wrote:  Never heard of a lot of these schools. I would go d3 over d2 or naia. In d3 there are no scholarships to worry about and the academic standing of schools is better. Guess it depends on conference affiliations

In theory. In practice, there's a whole lot of pressure to offer scholarships in order to be competitive, and the practice is widespread.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016...ast-decade

There was also a report on ncaa.org a few years ago that said that over 50% of D3 schools had been reported - "accused" - of violating the principal. Surely not all 50% were actually guilty, but that number is still pretty big.

The reality is that D3 DOES allow scholarships to athletes, they just can't be packaged as "athletic" scholarships. And schools are definitely allowed to consider athletic ability in admittance rules. Those two concepts are glued together with what is commonly called a "leadership" scholarship. There is no rule against this. The relevant rule that comes into play is that there cannot be more scholarships awarded to athletes than are awarded to the student population in general at that school.

So for example, if there were a very wealthy school that was able to offer all students full scholarships if they met certain academic requirements (say, a certain ACT score), and the general student population was granted 90% on this basis, the school could recruit less academically qualified athletes and give them "leadership" scholarships instead. So for a 15 member basketball team, 13 of them could be on full scholarship. That's an extreme example but I've been told this scenario actually exists at a few schools (conceding that these athletes still have to smart enough to pass their classes in a school where 90% of the population is intellectually gifted). More realistically, by the rules, each sport is going to have a few "leadership" scholarship players on the team, and they are probably athletes that would otherwise get a genuine athletic scholarship at an NAIA or NCAA D2 school. I saw a guy play for D3 Mississippi College a few years ago that should have been playing NCAA D1 ball.

So it comes down to a mathematical analysis that a school gambles will not be performed by someone who cares.

Basically, D3 being "non-scholarship" is a myth. It's an ideal, and one that the presidents love to promote, but it's not real.