(10-27-2020 07:41 PM)Florida tribe fan Wrote:  

(10-27-2020 08:42 AM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  It's a valid overall point for the school, albeit one I'm not sure I agree with. But if we're doing that, we should go D3 and cut athletic costs everywhere across the board. The worst possible thing we could do is take a middle ground approach that has both the downsides of elevated spending AND lack of success. There's no point in fielding D1 basketball and football teams if we're going to doom them to irrelevancy with barebones funding (largely what we did with our basketball program for decades until we got lucky with Shaver).

Mr. Roberts in his column did not argue for unilateral disarmament by Wm & Mary. He argued for strategic arms limitation talks among small enrollment schools that play FCS football and division 1 basketball. Shaping a competitive landscape where schools that value academics and athletics can thrive would make it possible to succeed without a futile arms race that bankrupts the participants and results in the elimination of non revenue sports.

This limited arms race conference comprised of like minded academic schools sounds great. It all seems so far fetched though. Who are these other bold schools looking to join these ranks? Are we trying to raid the Patriot league? Many attractive, geographically relevant candidates are one or the other. They seem to either have higher level aspirations in basketball or football and I'm not sure their is enough desire to sacrifice their ambitions.