Nebraska-Omaha: Div. II wrestling champs tonight, program gone tomorrow

[Bubbler]

The Mavericks are planning to move up to Division I (and are already there for hockey), but cannot afford to take its football and wrestling programs with it.

The wrestling program? It won the Division II national championship on Saturday and will be eliminated tomorrow. Wow.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110313/NEWS01/703139891/-1

Hockey is UNO's biggest sport, so that's part of this, and the Summit League doesn't have wrestling, but still, that's some cold-blooded ****.

 

[slappy4428]

Trev Alberts?

 

[TrooperBari]

Unbelievable. I'm just sick about this. I spent a lot of time in UNO's athletic offices and you couldn't ask for two better guys to work with than Mike Denney and Pat Behrns.

Going Division I has been talked about at UNO since Northern Colorado and North Dakota State left the NCC in the mid-2000s, but I don't recall anyone mentioning dropping football. What do guarantee games in basketball run these days? UNO football would've had its pick of regional teams (Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa State, etc.) within a bus ride willing to shell out good money for a I-AA team that didn't need much in travel costs. Instead, UNO will just be Creighton with icing on top. Gah!

 

[HanSenSE]

Not only dropping wrestling the day after winning the title, but calling the football coach at 10 p.m. Saturday the day before the newser? Textbook "how not to handle things."

 

[TrooperBari]

Trev Alberts?

Yes, that Trev Alberts.
http://www.omavs.com/staff.aspx?staff=172

Ham-handed as this all seems, Alberts, Christensen and co. are a marked improvement on their predecessors.

 

[LongTimeListener]

If this isn't about gay porn, anal assault or herpes, it really isn't wrestling.

 

[D-3 Fan]

What is interesting is that for as big of a football guy Alberts is, he's willing to drop football.

Besides that, this is a punch in the gut. It would have been a better solution by letting football go to I-AA, but that means little now.

Come to think of it, can anyone explain to me how hockey schools can pull off playing in Division I-A (WCHA, ECHL, etc) and yet retain their statuses in Division II and III respectively? Is there a clause that can allow that?

 

[Stitch]

Typical geniuses commenting on the story at the Omaha World-Herald. I assume second-grade arithmetic was too hard to comprehend for some of them, especially when the story points out FCS teams still lose a ton of dough with "money" games figured in.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110313/NEWS01/703139891#uno-takes-aim-at-division-i

 

[wicked]

What is interesting is that for as big of a football guy Alberts is, he's willing to drop football.

Besides that, this is a punch in the gut. It would have been a better solution by letting football go to I-AA, but that means little now.

Come to think of it, can anyone explain to me how hockey schools can pull off playing in Division I-A (WCHA, ECHL, etc) and yet retain their statuses in Division II and III respectively? Is there a clause that can allow that?

I'm guessing UNO got a waiver somewhere along the line. Some older schools (most notably Johns Hopkins in lax) were grandfathered in.

 

[wicked]

What this decision also confirms is that it's always about money. It's not about providing your students the most competitive, non-lopsided outlet to pursue athletics. Wait, what was I thinking ...

 

[Stitch]

What is interesting is that for as big of a football guy Alberts is, he's willing to drop football.

Besides that, this is a punch in the gut. It would have been a better solution by letting football go to I-AA, but that means little now.

Come to think of it, can anyone explain to me how hockey schools can pull off playing in Division I-A (WCHA, ECHL, etc) and yet retain their statuses in Division II and III respectively? Is there a clause that can allow that?

I'm guessing UNO got a waiver somewhere along the line. Some older schools (most notably Johns Hopkins in lax) were grandfathered in.

Proposal 65-1 only covered Division III schools that have one men's and women's sport in Division I.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

What is interesting is that for as big of a football guy Alberts is, he's willing to drop football.

Besides that, this is a punch in the gut. It would have been a better solution by letting football go to I-AA, but that means little now.

Come to think of it, can anyone explain to me how hockey schools can pull off playing in Division I-A (WCHA, ECHL, etc) and yet retain their statuses in Division II and III respectively? Is there a clause that can allow that?

I'm guessing UNO got a waiver somewhere along the line. Some older schools (most notably Johns Hopkins in lax) were grandfathered in.

UMass-Lowell and Merrimack are Division I in hockey and II in everything else.
Is there a Division 1A in hockey, as well? I always thought it was just Division I.

 

[Armchair_QB]

When the NCAA changed the rules and began prohibiting schools from competing at different levels in different sports it grandfathered in all the schools that were already doing it.

Also hockey is not sponsored as an NCAA sport at the Division II level so schools like Mass.-Lowell, Minnesota-Duluth, St. Cloud, Lake Superior St., etc. can compete at the DI level even though the rest of their school's sports are DII.

 

[apeman33]

This ought to seriously **** off the MIAA, the Division II conference UNO is in. It just got through expanding to 16 schools and created a football schedule for the next four years based on UNO's participation. Now they'll have to go looking for another 16th team. Football is mandatory for membership, so Rockhurst, which wants in badly, has a chance if it's willing to start a football program.

The MIAA had to grant a waiver to UNO originally because member schools aren't allowed to field a sport the conference doesn't sponsor. Fort Hays State was given a similar waiver because it has wrestling.

Each football team was going to have one geographic rival they'd play every season, regardless of the rotation of the rest of the schedule. UNO and Central Missouri were paired up (The MIAA decided to pair up Northwest Missouri and Missouri Western instead of going with NMSU-UNO and MWSU-UCM). Now UCM has no annual rival.

 

[lone star scribe]

It seems really strange to me that hockey is a better fit at a Nebraska university than football or wrestling.

 

[Armchair_QB]

It seems really strange to me that hockey is a better fit at a Nebraska university than football or wrestling.

Hockey was already DI

 

[Jake_Taylor]

It seems really strange to me that hockey is a better fit at a Nebraska university than football or wrestling.

I'm guessing there are a decent number of people in Nebraska who are fans of UNO hockey, but wear Husker red for everything else. There's only room for one D-I football team in that state.

 

[John]

UNC Greensboro, which won the Southern Conference title a year ago, ****canned its wrestling program today.

http://goo.gl/Re3xh

 

[D-3 Fan]

When the NCAA changed the rules and began prohibiting schools from competing at different levels in different sports it grandfathered in all the schools that were already doing it.

Also hockey is not sponsored as an NCAA sport at the Division II level so schools like Mass.-Lowell, Minnesota-Duluth, St. Cloud, Lake Superior St., etc. can compete at the DI level even though the rest of their school's sports are DII.

Thanks Armchair. After I read your post, I read up on how it's done.

John, Dan Gable will not be happy hearing that Greenboro has jettisoned the wrestling program.

 

[TrooperBari]

It seems really strange to me that hockey is a better fit at a Nebraska university than football or wrestling.

I'm guessing there are a decent number of people in Nebraska who are fans of UNO hockey, but wear Husker red for everything else. There's only room for one D-I football team in that state.

And the board of regents will do everything in its power to keep it that way.

I recommend this show to anyone who wants to hear more about UNO:
http://1620thezone.com/pages/727732.php