Style question: I-AA

You're right, it's actually the Football Bowl Subdivision.


See, I'm wrong enough by accident.

 

One Double A.

 

I used to cover I-AA, so I can appreciate how folks at those schools would be sensitive to people who called it 1-AA or Double-A football or Division 2, for crying out loud. I also thought it was irresponsible of reporters who would use "Division I school" in a story as a distinction between I-A and I-AA schools. Both groups are Division I schools.

So truth be told, a lot of reporters couldn't even get it right the old way. Still, it's going to be wrong and confusing and a pain in the ass this way too.

 

So in a story it might say..."Texas produced 361 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision recruits in the class of 2007."

Correct?

 

This sounds like a change made so the I-AA players won't feel like they're not special enough to play I-A.

 

Clumsy, isn't it. But it is what it is.


Edit: For fat, "clumbsy" fingers.

 

Idea was in part to stop us (the sports media) from referring to it as Division II and I-A schools as Division I.

 

Correctamundo, Appgrad05.

Wait, can I get a style ruling on correctamundo?

 

I-AA only affected football, correct? Wouldn't it have been better to do targeted education to the small percentage of media outlets that cover I-AA football programs?

 

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but sports writers don't respond well to targeted education, Cadet. For example, I once attended a seminar on Title IX with some of them. Oh, my ...



Also, most of the errors of style occurred in stories written by I-A writers. The I-AA writers generally knew their stuff on the issue, I found.

 

It also was becuase football is the only sport where there was distintion in Division I, so they wanted to get football in the name. A I-AA football school can still send a men's basketball team to the same postseason tournament as Duke and Kentucky, and people were thinking the distinction applied to all sports.

 

It would probablu be better to lump them together and say "Texas produced 385 Division I recruits ..."