The Difference in NCAA Divisions
Photo by Emma Oertling
The NCAA stands for the National Collegiate Athletic Association and is responsible for regulating numerous different sports across thousands of colleges and universities. From fencing to football, the NCAA offers opportunities for 24 different sports to student-athletes. The main way the NCAA regulates competition between institutions is by separating them into three divisions. This is where the phrases D1, D2, and D3 come from, and they all have slightly different regulations that set them apart.
The division that most people are familiar with is D1; this includes many big-name state schools across the country that many are familiar with such as, LSU, UCLA, and many more. There are only a few distinctions between the three divisions. For a school to be considered D1 they need to offer seven different sports teams for both men and women. One thing that sets D1 athletics apart is the amount of money the institution puts into their athletics programs. D1 is largely considered to be the highest level of competition with the best athletes, but that is not to say all of the best athletes go division one there are many different reasons why an athlete may choose to go D1 or D2.
From 1959 to 2011, our very own Centenary College of Louisiana was an NCAA D1 school competing against some of the best programs in the country. This was when Centenary originally had a football program The most notable alumni to come out of the D1 era was basketball legend Robert Parish, who went on to win the NBA championship four times after graduating from Centenary. In 2012, Centenary made the decision to change their athletics to D3. All sports at Centenary are under D3 except our gymnastics team, which is D1 and competes against other D1 programs, and our men’s volleyball team, which is club; if the volleyball team became a full varsity sport on campus it would also be D3. For a college or university to be D3 similarly to D1, they need to offer five sports for both men and women. D3 schools are typically smaller, much like Centenary. Unlike D1 and D3, D3 schools cannot offer athletic scholarships to incoming student-athletes.
Between D1 and D3, there is D2, which also requires universities to offer 5 sports for men and women. According to NCAA.org, something that sets D2 apart from the others is that most D2 schools are made up of in-state student-athletes.
Along with the different divisions in the NCAA, schools are divided into conferences based on where they are located. Centenary is a part of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, more commonly referred to as the SCAC. The SCAC is made up of teams from Louisiana, Texas, and Colorado. For the reasons mentioned earlier, there are two sports teams here at Centenary that are not a part of the SCAC: gymnastics and men’s volleyball and aren’t in the conference. After last season, the men’s lacrosse team joined the Heartland Colligate Athletic Conference, or HCAC for short. Both the SCAC and the four schools who made up the SCAC decided to have their teams join the HCAC as well.
For more information about all things related to Centenary athletics visit gocentenary.com!
