onpoint wrote: The other point of contetion is this: What's the real motiviation to move to varsity? I know it's hindsight, but I would not trade my years at CSU for any time on a mediocre DI team's roster. And frankly, the vast majority of teams that do go DI will be mediocre at best for a long time. People always talk about location and how FSU (for example) would draw recruits very well, but the bottom line is that the best players in the country are still going to go to the same four or five DI schools that they always have. Syracuse, Princeton, Johns Hopkins etc. are THE destination for a top notch DI prospect.
Maybe, maybe not Alex. Based on that logic Army would have played Yale in the Orange Bowl last month. Things evolve and the sport changes, for better or worse.
If major Southern & Western 1-A schools added full-funded varsity programs, I guarantee they wouldn't have any trouble recruiting away talented players from relatively "no-name" Division 1, 2, or 3 programs. Syracuse & Princeton might not have any recruiting problems. But schools like UMBC, Loyola, Sacred Heart, Albany, Hartford, & Butler will have problems going up against varsity programs at places like Florida State, Texas, Michigan, UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, etc.