Lacrosse: Possible Future Div.1 Programs
Last one in my 3 part series...So now that we’ve analyzed new Division 1 lacrosse programs and former Division 1 lacrosse programs, let’s throw the doors open to wild speculation about the next school to follow Michigan's lead and add a Division 1 lacrosse program. As mentioned in previous posts, there are myriad factors preventing universities from officially adding the sport, the two most important being money and Title IX. It costs a lot to field a men’s lacrosse team and these universities have to spend the same amount on women’s athletic programs as they do on men’s - a tough bar to squeeze under when most schools have a big fat hairy football program taking up space.
I believe the ideal candidates for lacrosse expansion are schools fitting one of two profiles: the small school (Marquette) and the big school (Michigan).
Marquette-style
- FCS level football, or better yet no football
- Private school located in the northeast, southeast or midwest
- Money to spend/wealthy alums
- Reasonably strong academics
- Respectable athletic pedigree
- Proximity to recruiting hotbeds and/or other varsity programs
- A warm/mild spring climate (the least important but my favorite)
Michigan-style
-Profitable BCS football school with $ coming out of its ears
-In a state where the sport is growing. Powerful club program preferred
-Ready-made athletic facilities to easily accommodate a new team
-Its own university or conference television network a major plus
-Already having a women’s program may also help.
So, a school like, say, the University of Richmond would be the perfect candidate to add lacrosse. Well, hey look at that - they played their first season this year, nearly beat UVA and even made the NCAA tournament! But, schools like American and GW fit this profile perfectly- good schools smack dab in the middle of lacrosse country that already have tons of east coast kids. Plus, they don’t even have football. Additionally, dozens of teams are within a few hours drive.
Let’s look at a few others (there's no indication that any of these teams are considering it, but its just an analysis of certain factors):
Marquette-style teams:
Davidson
For some reason I keep thinking Davidson is the perfect school for a new lacrosse program. Dubbed the “Princeton of the South”, the school’s academics are excellent, so coaches could make an impressive pitch to northern recruits. Its a basketball school with a solid athletic reputation and only 63 FCS football scholarships. Located north of Charlotte, Davidson is just a few hours drive to Duke, UNC, UVA, Richmond, VMI, Mercer and Furman so the Wildcats wouldn’t have to travel far to find opponents . Plus, northern squads wouldn’t mind scheduling an opponent in a warmer climate in the spring time. There are probably a bunch of other Davidson/Furman/Mercer-type schools down South that I am not aware of that may also fit this profile.
Seton Hall
Seton Hall Prep has a solid lacrosse program, so its a wonder why the mother school never fielded a team. It’s a hoops and baseball school, but the Pirates don’t have football so adding lacrosse could be a good way of upping its athletic profile. They could recruit in their own backyard as well. Monmouth added a team this year and I think the Hall would be able to field a stronger team and eventually compete with the likes of Rutgers. Plus the added incentive of Big East membership. Not sure how much athletic money the Hall has, though.
Xavier
Xavier always strikes me as a possible candidate. Its a decent, football-less school in a growing area. Its a hoops school and has respectable athletics. Plus, like Seton Hall, the school’s prep academy has an excellent program. I would love to see the Musketeers add to the western expansion of the sport. Plus, they could join Marquette, St Johns, Providence, and G’town in the Big East. Regional opponents include Ohio, Bellarmine, ND, Michigan, Detroit.
James Madison, George Mason, VCU, Old Dominion, William & Mary
Virginia public schools with FCS football could make a good pitch to recruits - play a sport while getting a solid education for an incredibly cheap price (W&M ranks right behind U of M in national public college rankings). Opponents for these schools lie to the north,south, east and west so they won’t struggle to fill out a schedule. Fielding a team could also be a way to get applications and even some out-of-state tuition.
Columbia
Columbia’s athletic program is regarded as the Ivy League’s worst. The Lions are never good at anything so its unlikely they would add a new sport, just to suck at it. But, it does have a few things going for it: money, prestige and location. Plus, its the only Ivy without lacrosse. Urban campus could make facilities/space difficult however.
Michigan-style programs:
Texas
So there’s been lots of talk on the board about the Longhorns, fueled primarily by the fact UT put a ton of money into the lacrosse program’s facilities just a few years ago. Texas’s athletic program, aided by the Longhorn Network, has a higher GDP than a handful of small Asian countries. Plus, their new AD seems interested in trying new (even sometimes stupid) things. Word on the street is that if they’re gonna do it, theyre gonna do it Texas-style: big. The only drawback is geography. None of their regional rivals play lacrosse and Austin is far from the sport’s isolated pockets in the east and midwest. But, damn, Texas would be a huge domino to fall in the game’s manifest destiny.
Florida State/Georgia Tech
So, as a high school recruit over a decade ago I constantly heard coaches say Florida State and Georgia Tech were always on the verge of “going D-1”. Well that was 14 years ago now and the same rumors still persist. I dont know where they come from, but they were never true. And its always the same two - FSU and G-Tech. Maybe one day they will. They have the resources - they’re big ACC state schools with plenty of BCS football money.
Colorado/Colorado State:
While far from the sport’s traditional home, the state of Colorado has lacrosse fever these days. The sport is incredibly popular there and high schools are pumping out D-1 caliber talent. While a lot of the rumors these days are about the ACC and Texas, I think the next team will come from the Centennial State. The incredibly athletic Rams used to torment Michigan back in the club days. The Buffs were always tough and are still a top club team. Their cross-state rivalry is intense and always brings out tons of fans (holy shit they played at Mile High Stadium this year!). I would love for these guys to make the jump and the state will have its own lacrosse Beanpot: Denver, Air Force, Colorado and Colorado State. Keep in mind, CU is in the PAC-12 now so that could spur some of their conference foes to at least think about it...
Pac 12 Schools:
So, speaking of the Pac-12. A lot of the talk on the board was that a coalition of west coast schools may decide to go through with it. Supposedly, PAC-12 schools have been contemplating a lacrosse league. I think the biggest problem here is that the UC system has been in such horrible financial disarray the past several years. New sports are not on the agenda when tuition is skyrocketing. That precludes Cal and UCLA for now. A fledgling league of Arizona, Arizona St., Stanford, USC and Colorado would be great for the sport though.
Northwestern:
NW could be the next B1G team into the mix. A prestigious school with nationwide pull, NW shouldn’t have trouble recruiting and building a program. The Wildcats are sort of the effete nerds of the B1G managing to make a surprise Rose Bowl every decade or so but also never ever making the NCAA tournament, so their athletic program isn’t amazing. It would be interesting to see if they could pull off what Princeton did in the 90s and corner the market on a niche sport. NW added a women’s team a few years ago and they have transformed into a powerhouse. I wonder if the men could follow suit. The only problem is that if they had the money and intent to go D-1, I think they probably would have done it by now.
So that concludes my three part series on the growth of the sport (which, as you can tell, I’m obsessed with). But, I think its also an interesting lens with which to examine athletic department budgets and money in collegiate sports as a whole.
Enjoy the Final 4 this weekend. Go Terps! Go Pioneers!
I think the Marquette/Richmond/U of Detroit style teams are going to be much more common than the BCS style teams. There are many more of them, and in the economic reality of it, giving a partial scholarship to a student who wouldn't attend your university anyway is extremely cheap, and increases the university's profile. It really doesn't cost anything extra to put one extra student in a classroom.
For schools like Michigan, the reality is that they are turning students away, so there is a definite opportunity cost. Additionally, those types of schools don't go half in on something like this, or else it could actually hurt their "brand". They will be expected to build facilities, fully fund scholarships, etc.
I could see one of the Colorado schools adding it, and maybe we get lucky and a Texas or USC adds it, but I expect the majority of growth to come from those small schools.
Maybe it's not coming from super-credible sources, but I hear a lot of chatter out here about Pac-12 lacrosse coming soon. It's just so big in CA now, and like the OP says, quite big in CO as well. The ADs have been talking about pushing it, and trying to get at minimum 4 and ideally 6 Pac-12 schools to add programs all within a few years of each other. My guesses would be, in order, USC, Stanford, Colorado, one of ASU/Zona, Washington, Oregon.
lacrosse. Which makes NO sense to me. (1) They already have the facilities, (2) they can add both men's and women's for Title IX issues, (3) it would give Xavier more press in the Cincinnati market, nobody here follows college baseball so UC and Xavier are pretty "invisible" after March ends, (4) the sport is growing in Ohio (OHSAA began to sanction the sport a few years ago), (5) the only in-state school to compete with is in Columbus, and (6) they could slot right into a Big East Lacrosse Conference.
But the chatter is that if Xavier adds any one sport, it would be rifle (?!?). Unfortunate.
Dayton & Miami are other Ohio schools where it seems like it could work. But Miami doesn't even have men's soccer, which is pretty strange, and I don't think they're considering lacrosse either.
U Mass Lowell and New Jersey Tech in 2015. This doesn't really make us happy as it really will not help to spread the sport to the Midwest. Obviously maybe this wonderfully done 3 part series, ( thank you so much L'Carpetron Dookmarriot!) should be thought of as only talking about bringing D1 to non-tradional areas.
Travel costs seem to play much into the costs for the schools. In the southeast the small schools there make all there programs DII because to play in a DIII league they would have to travle much further and it is self promoting.
I do think the first type school profiled for bringing a D1 team to life is the far more likely. Recently announced was a new DII program at the University of Indianapolis. Who??? Right. Already working.
I do have a question about B1G Network. Does the entire B1G share in the revnue from Lacrosse broadcasts or only the Lacrosse schools? If it is only the Lacrosse schools, then perhaps once they revenue starts, (if it starts,) flowing will schools like NW, MSU, and the others jump on board?
Too bad its Duke-ND in the championship - not a very Michigan-friendly final!
Notre Dame's Sergio Perkovic is from Michigan. The DII and the DIII Champs had kids from Michigan on the roster. And he would have been the MOP if Notre Dame had won. The DII and the DIII Champs had kids from Michigan on the roster. So there is talent here.
I don't root for ND not so much because they are ND but their coach is not what I would want in a college coach. (Much prefer the Danowski type.) But ND is a sign that Lacrosse can flourish west of the Appalachia's. Almost was rooting for a Denver - ND final. That would have been a trip.
Usually - not always, but usually - new programs tend to be announced over the summer, so hopefully one or two will crop up in the next few months. The ACC has a two-year grace period before they lose their autobid again, and you'd really have to make the announcement this summer in order to be up and running in time for the autobid not to run out. Hopefully someone in the conference will take the plunge.
Losing the Terps means the ACC needs one more but the cynic in me says they will grab the only team without a home, Air Force. But what a crazy place for AFA.
But to be hopeful with you for a moment, maybe Boston College can be shamed by Boston U into creating a team and is already in the ACC. They would have no shortage of talent and probably be decent from the get-go ala BU. Great natural rivalry to go along with the hockey wars.
I would love to see Clemson go. That would almost be as big a deal as Michigan going. But Wake, Va Tech, or NC State would also be great adds. Besides the ACC schedule, they would have close teams to play in Furman, High Point, NC, Richmond, and VMI.
Does the ACC care about having an auto-bid? I mean, I'm sure they'd rather have one than not, but I don't think it would be all that important to them. Nearly every year, every team makes the tourney (or close to it) and I can't imagine a scenario where the winner of that league wouldn't get an at-large. The only way it would matter is if there was a year where one ACC team had a crappy year, but ended up winning the conference tourney. Considering the two teams they'd have to beat just to do that, they'd probably play themselves into an at-large anyway. It's like if they told the SEC they didn't get an auto-bid for BCS games.
"AQs are for those other teams....."
Well, I think the value of the autobid was proven this very season; Notre Dame's bid would've been seriously at risk if they hadn't won the whole damn thing. And then they went and made the championship game. Consider that if they had lost in the first round of the ACCT, they would then have been completely ineligible for an at-large bid with a loss to Army in their last game. (They didn't lose to Army, but still.) I think they probably would've made it without the autobid, but that's not 100% by any stretch.
To me, the question is whether there's anyone in the conference offices who has both the interest and the influence to push one of the nonparticipants to take the leap. Both BC and VT recently got rid of very stodgy and reticent ADs and replaced them with much more open-minded directors. VT just made a colossal investment in their basketball program by hiring Buzz Williams; some might suggest that sucks up all the resources but it says to me that they just might be interested in something besides football tunnel-vision. James Johnson was clearly a cheapo don't-give-a-damn hire by the previous administration. I think Buzz represents a culture shift there.
True, the ACC is a lacrosse powerhouse that doesn't need the autobid like most conferences do, but the lacrosse landscape is expanding and it's a zero-sum game; if the powerhouses don't make moves to fortify their position, the game will slowly pass them by. Here's a very crucial thing to remember: if you don't have an autobid, the tournament committee doesn't consider you a conference and will pit your teams against each other in the first round if that's what it feels like doing. Having the autobid forces the committee to separate the teams.
Your last point is the best one, and I didn't know that was the case. You'd think from a purely interest-driving standpoint they'd avoid pinning teams from the same conference against each other in the tourney.
As for your ND example above, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Like you said, they didn't lose to Army and they didn't lose in the opening round of the ACCT. As long as the ACCT exists, it won't matter is the winner "automatically" gets a bid because they're getting a bid anyway. It's like if the Big Ten hadn't had an autobid for basketball over the last decade, but even more so because every single ACC lax team is elite.
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