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Message: [QUOTE="KnightBridgeAZ, post: 3165424, member: 591"] As you and others correctly point out, there is a philosophical difference between St. Thomas and the other schools, that is perhaps made worse because they are larger than the other schools, but most likely because they see a benefit to athletics above and beyond something for students to participate in to be well rounded. The article I read stressed this is a DIII wide problem, where schools range from 400 to 40000 students and have athletic programs ranging from glorified intra-murals to programs that are being operated - within DIII constraints - on a higher division model. The problem for St. Thomas is, by the end of the next 2 years (they are staying for 2 years) they need to find somewhere to go. Moving up in division is expensive, they could move to NAIA which allows scholarships but there is no reason to think they want to give athletic scholarships, or they could find another DIII conference, which is unlikely to be easy since geography (travel budgets) is a major concern. This kind of stinks for them, since (as the conference stressed) they did nothing wrong. [/QUOTE]