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Three schools were approved for provisional membership in Division III this upcoming season, according to a news release from one of the schools. (The NCAA doesn’t appear to have said anything on the subject yet.)

Covenant College, in Lookout Mountain, Ga., and Berry College, in Mount Berry, Ga., join Division III, chipping into the NAIA’s dominance of the Southeast, as does Penn State-Abington.

“Both academically and athletically, NCAA Division III is a good fit for Berry,” said Steve Briggs, Berry’s president. “We have always placed a high priority on academic achievement and the overall quality of the educational experience for our student-athletes, and affiliation with Division III allows us to be true to these fundamental values while also growing our athletic program in new and exciting ways.”

Berry’s release mentions something else that doesn’t get a lot of discussion around here: the shorter seasons in Division III. NAIA starts basketball competition, for example, weeks before Division III schools do, resulting in increased class time missed. Covenant references Division III’s lower dues, reduced travel time and expenses, and costs of postseason play which are picked up.

Berry is adding men’s and women’s swimming and diving and softball for the upcoming school year, as well as women’s lacrosse in the spring of 2011, as Division III requires sponsorship of more sports than the NAIA does.

Covenant has 13 sports already, while Abington has 12. Neither will need to add sports to make the Division III minimum.

Obviously the entire future of the Great South Athletic Conference is up in the air, with talks continuing that they may end up merging with the USA South. But if the GSAC remains an independent unit, Covenant and Berry would be an ideal geographic fit.

With all respect to Rochester Institute of Technology, I think the decision to admit Bard to the Liberty League is the most intriguing part of the transaction that we broke the news about last week and was formally announced today.

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It’s the case of Bard continuing to climb the conference-level ladder over the past few years despite not becoming more competitive. Yes, the soccer teams were around .500 last year, the cross country teams did well in the Skyline meet and there were some bright spots, but .500 in the Skyline does not equal .500 in the Liberty League. Bard lost to Vassar, a team around the .500 mark, 5-0 in men’s soccer and 6-0 in women’s soccer. And it’s an even longer way from the NEAC, where Bard was until two years ago, to the Liberty League.

In men’s basketball, Bard went 1-24 this past season and did not play a Liberty League team. The women were 5-20. Until the past two seasons, Bard women’s basketball did not even play a full 25-game schedule.

Bard is getting into a league with a lot of schools with similar academic goals and the like. But it’s not at all on the same playing field athletically. Bard reported to the U.S. Department of Education that it spent $556,802 on athletics in the last reported year. I won’t compare them to the schools in the LL with Division I hockey, but compared to the $2.28 million that Vassar spent that year, it’s clear Bard is not in the ballpark.

One can only hope that the school made the conference some assurances that it would cut into that gap and take athletics a little more seriously.

The Mid-Atlantic Shuffle continues this offseason, as the NEAC shores up its automatic bid by admitting Gallaudet for the 2010-11 season.

Now, neither Division III school in the nation’s capital will be a member of the Capital Athletic Conference. Catholic left for the Landmark Conference early in the shuffle.

When we last left the NEAC, they were dipping into Texas in hopes of maintaining their tenuous automatic bid. With no details, we were left to wonder whether they were going to incorporate the University of Dallas into their round-robin schedule or base their entire automatic bid on a three-game conference tournament.

They chose the latter.

With two members who are still in the provisional membership stage of joining Division III, the league needed a D-III member to tide them over. Gallaudet will fill that hole and allow the league to cut ties with Dallas if it chooses.

Although Gallaudet was on probation with the Capital Athletic Conference, they were not booted from the conference, rather, they left of their own accord. And in the NEAC, they will spend a lot more money on travel, but they should be somewhat competitive in some sports.

Even I am beginning to get lost with the shuffling. D’Youville is out of the NEAC for next year, shuffling to the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. The AMCC seems like it will lose Frostburg State, which was just offered membership in the Capital Athletic Conference for 2010-11. With Stevenson’s football program all but a done deal, perhaps for 2011, that would give the CAC four football programs: Frostburg State, Salisbury, Stevenson and Wesley.

The NEAC 2009-10 lineup looks like this: Cazenovia, Keuka, Penn State-Abington (provisional D-III), Penn State-Berks, Penn State-Harrisburg (provisional D-III), St. Elizabeth (no men’s basketball), SUNY-Cobleskill (provisional D-III), SUNY-Morrisville (provisional D-III), SUNYIT, University of Dallas, Wells (no women’s basketball) and Wilson (no men’s basketball).

With the CAC in a position to potentially sponsor football in 2011, more pieces will fall. Stay tuned.

In an era where the price of a barrel of oil has gone through the roof, where air travel has become slower, more expensive and less convenient and where conferences as big as the WAC have talked about making changes to their schedules to save money, the North Eastern Athletic Conference has expanded into that bastion of the Northeast: Dallas, Texas.

I almost don’t have to say anything more, do I?

This is what pursuit of the automatic bid can do to you. We don’t know how the conference will schedule itself this season or how it will actually determine who gets the AQ (remember, that’s the conference’s decision, not the NCAA’s), but at some point, someone will be getting on a plane from New York or Pennsylvania to Dallas and seemingly vice versa.

I’m not sure this is what Division III is all about. I can’t imagine what the Division IV crowd would think of such a thing. I also can’t imagine what these schools are thinking: It’s not like these are the University of Chicagos, NYUs and Case Western Reserves of the world, large research institutions with endowments to match. The NEAC is made up of athletic departments so small that one coach told me a couple years ago their program could only schedule 22 games because that was all they could afford, not the Division III standard 25.

I feel for the University of Dallas, which has lived the lonely life of an independent ever since leaving the American Southwest Conference early this decade in hopes of gaining admission to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. And I feel for the NEAC, which has seen its membership change faster than the Law & Order cast,  but I can’t see spending all this money in pursuit of an automatic bid. And if the conference doesn’t play a full round-robin in order to save money, then why bother? You’d only be crowing an illegitimate champ.

Championship access is all well and good, but at what cost?

The DeSales offense is built on quick cuts, accurate outside shooting and mobile post players and it is a treat to watch when it’s working well. Every orchestra needs a conductor and the Bulldogs have one in senior point guard Eddie Ohlson.

Ohlson has more than 600 assists in his career and is on track to become the school’s all-time leader in that category. He talked with D3hoops.com’s Gordon Mann about how he breaks down an opposing defense and what the Bulldogs need to do to finally get over the hump and into the NCAA tournament. Use the player below to listen.

With five weeks remaining in the regular season, most teams are in the thick of their conference schedule. But not Elizabethtown who doesn’t begin MAC Commonwealth play until its Tuesday trip to Lycoming. It’s just another effect of the conference realignment that shook the Mid-Atlantic region this year. Elizabethtown coach Bob Schlosser talks about the Blue Jays place in the new look MACC and whether he likes the changes. He also talks about the team’s impressive turnaround from 9-15 last year to 13-1 to date.

 

 D3hoops Interview: Elizabethtown coach Bob Schlosser [10:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 D3hoops Interview: DeSales point guard Eddie Olhson [7:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download