STILL LOOKING FOR A CONFERENCE TO CALL HOME
By Dave Schmidt of THE SENIOR REPORTS – www.theseniorreports.com
Question and answers with Dick Kaiser, Director of Athletics at
What has been the biggest disappointment for you since
starting the D2 process? By far the biggest disappointment during the process of
transitioning into the NCAA D-II ranks has been the lack of a conference
affiliation. We have been making do with contests during the first two
candidacy years but we are really beginning to feel the effects of the lack of
a conference affiliation this year with scheduling (lack of home contests) and
next year looks considerably worse. According to the NCAA D-II championships
committee, we are the only Independent D-II member that is located between west
of the
Being an independent, how difficult has it been to schedule for all sports? Developing team sport schedules wasn’t too bad the first year of candidacy as we were still in the DAC plus picked up some D-II games. Our second year of candidacy was a bit more difficult and I would say we played maybe 60-65% of our team sport contests against NCAA D-II opponents. We were unbeaten in volleyball against D-II while the two basketball teams had mixed results and the football team had a difficult season and didn’t fare well at all. This year, our provisional year, we are about that same ratio of 60-65% NCAA D-II team sport contests but many are on the road or in some type of tournament. Our volleyball team will only have five contests at home this year while our basketball teams have about 40% of their games at home. Football wise we were lucky the MIAA had some openings and we were able to secure some home-home dates with three of the teams in the league so we are OK. Trying to get D-II contests is extremely hard because many of the conferences are going to ‘all conference scheduling’ or limit the amount of non-conference contests to only 20% of their schedule. Most of the time the D-II conferences play these non-conference games at the very beginning of the season, so potentially we could get several D-II contests at the front end of the sport season, but very few, if any, D-II contests after the first couple weeks when conferences start inner-conference play. That all said, it’s not like we haven’t tried. Trust me, we have stretched our economic expectations and time away from campus travel limits to the nth extreme. There are several D-II contests we have been able to pick-up along the way but it is difficult to get them to return the contest to our campus as “we need them, they don’t necessarily need us”. The first year that we could potentially qualify for NCAA D-II playoffs would be 2013-2014, provided we get moved to full membership next summer. Right now, we are struggling to get enough D-II contests (80%) for 2013-2014 should we be eligible and be lucky enough to qualify. Obviously this is a huge concern for us and especially for our student-athletes that have shown so much patience through this transition process. I really don’t want to wish anyone ill will, but I really hope there is a major shake-up in a couple of regional conferences so that we might be considered for membership.
Are you open to getting some of your sports in as associate members (while others remain independents)? I have discussed this issue with our President and he is absolutely open to having teams get affiliate or associate memberships. He totally gets the need for our teams to have a ‘conference home’ and has been completely supportive of my addressing the associate/affiliate memberships for our team sports throughout all our travel areas. We need a place for our team sports to call home, that is critical. If that means one team is within a conference in the northwest and another in the Rocky Mountains and another on the great plains of Texas, well then so be it. We are open to all possibilities and only hope that conferences will understand our dilemma and reach out to assist our student-athletes to have a quality collegiate experience.
Are you looking for the
"perfect fit" or are you willing to work with multiple conferences to
find homes for your teams? It would be politically incorrect for me not to say we
would love to have ‘the perfect fit’ as it relates to a potential conference
affiliation. However, reality says ‘it is what it is’ and we would love to just
be able to entertain interest from just about any conference in any location
for any sport. The reason D-II institutions even have intercollegiate athletics
has to be for the student-athlete experience. It surely isn’t the money because
none of us make enough gate or sell enough concessions
to totally support our programs. So we do this because it is a great addition
to a quality educational experience. We do this for the student-athletes and
that can’t be any more relevant than what occurs at
What conferences would be a
good fit for you? Right now, just about any and all conferences would be a
good fit for us. The travel logistics say the NSIC and the RMAC are the best
match as we could basically bus to every location plus we have played and
continue to attempt to schedule those teams in those conferences on a regular
basis. After those two conferences, everybody else stretches the travel and
missed class time distances but if we end up having to fly then we could go about
anywhere as there is a regional airport here in
What do you feel you bring to
the table as a future conference member? Dr. Wharton consistently talks about