A Sea Of Red

That clears out when of our primary competitors in the upper echelon of ACHA. But also reinvigorates the discussion of whether we should be moving up either our mens or womens team.

Lindenwood has taken an unconventional path in athletics to say the least. D2 in most sports, they are already D1 in women's hockey and gymnastics as well as men's volleyball. Once men's hockey makes the transition, they will have 4 D1 teams. All of them are club sports at Liberty. They also have managed to keep their wrestling and men's lacrosse teams as well as men's swimming and diving while having a D2 football team (36 scholarships max). Hard to see how they can do it and keep Title IX compliant.

Title IX has always been the reason that promoting the ladies is our most likely option for NCAA Division I. Theoretically raising them both up offsets the opportunities and scholies. But football will forever be the beast.

With the money we have, we can definitely move the mens and women's teams up and add women's golf to offset the Title IX requirements.

But like you said Sly, football is the king.

Liberty has definitely taken the SEC approach to it's athletic department vs the Big Ten approach. They try to focus on being great at the minimum number of sports instead of good at the maximum number of sports

Ill flame wrote: ↑February 9th, 2021, 11:06 pm Liberty has definitely taken the SEC approach to it's athletic department vs the Big Ten approach. They try to focus on being great at the minimum number of sports instead of good at the maximum number of sports

I hadn't thought of the conference trends, but I believe you are correct. Lindenwood has 27 sports compared to Liberty's 18. Their non-conventional choices as to the sports they have elevated to D1 status is also interesting. I assume it was based on success. What a lot of Liberty fans don't know is that Liberty's baseball program, under Al Worthington, was able to move up to D1 years ahead of the rest of the department based on success and scheduling.

olldflame wrote: ↑February 10th, 2021, 7:36 am Their non-conventional choices as to the sports they have elevated to D1 status is also interesting. I assume it was based on success.

I think they are just playing D1 in the sports that D2 doesn’t have and D2 schools naturally play in D1 (like women’s hockey, men’s volleyball - men’s hockey is another one if this goes through)