Division II

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The logo for the 2005 Division II National Championship game.

This article is about the NCAA division. For the Swedish football league, see Division 2.

Division II (or DII) is an intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It offers an alternative to both the highly competitive (and highly expensive) level of intercollegiate sports offered in NCAA Division I and the non-scholarship, less competitive level of competition offered in Division III.

ESPN nationally televises the football finals in the division, and the championship in men's basketball is broadcast on CBS.

1 Membership
2 Interaction with other divisions
3 Pressure to move to Division I or III
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Membership

Division II schools tend to be smaller public universities and many private institutions. Athletic scholarships are offered in most sponsored sports at most institutions, but with more stringent limits as to the numbers offered in any one sport than at the Division I level. For example, Division II schools may give up to 36 football scholarships (where as Division I-A, the highest level, is allowed 85 football scholarships), although some Division II conferences limit the number of scholarships to a lower level. Division II scholarship programs are frequently the recipients of student-athletes transferring from Division I schools; a transfer student does not have to sit out a year before resuming sports participation as would be the case in the event of transferring from one Division I institution to another (with the exception of football players transferring from a Division I-A school to a I-AA school, who also do not have to sit out a year).

Conferences competing in Division II

[edit] Interaction with other divisions

The NCAA does not strictly prevent its member institutions from playing outside of their own division, or indeed playing against schools that are not members of the NCAA. Division II schools often compete against Division I, Division III or even the NAIA

[edit] NAIA

Many Division II schools frequently schedule matches against members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which is something of a rival collegiate sports sanctioning authority to the NCAA which specializes primarily in smaller institutions.

[edit] Division I

Division II schools also frequently schedule "money games", usually men's basketball games, against Division I schools, particularly lesser-known ones, early in the season in which they are almost invariably the visiting team and are invited to play with the almost-certain knowledge that they will be defeated but will receive a substantial (at least by Division II standards) monetary reward which will help to finance much of the rest of the season and perhaps other sports as well.

[edit] Non-revenue sports competition

Matches between the three divisions in non-revenue sports are often quite competitive; the difference in the level of competition between the two divisions is often considerably less in these sports than it is in football and men's basketball. Indeed, in some sports, among them ice hockey and men's volleyball, there is no Division II competition; in those sports, many schools whose athletic programs are otherwise Division II compete in Division I or Division III.

[edit] Pressure to move to Division I or III

The viability of Division II as an ongoing operation in the medium-to-long term is frequently called into question; it is noted that these institutions' athletics programs share many of the major expenses of their Division I counterparts with regard especially to scholarships, facilities upkeep, and travel while receiving for the most part far smaller gate receipts and almost no television revenue. An increasing number of Division II schools are under pressure from administrators, boosters, and other interested parties either to "step up" to Division I or down to Division III; as a result, the NCAA has adopted rules which tend to make it harder for new institutions to join Division I, such as minimum attendance requirements for football and a long waiting period (now eight years) before a new Division I institution can participate in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament ("March Madness") or share in its considerable revenues.