UBC Thunderbird Baseball Fan Page

The University of British Columbia Thunderbirds should be competing in Division I of the NCAA. The size of the undergraduate student body is consistent with Division I, and with the current athletic budget, the Thunderbirds would be able to field competitive teams in every sport except football. UBC is also capable of providing the NCAA with a new TV market.

Unfortunately, this option isn't on the table. Division I has a freeze on new memberships until 2011, and the decision by the NCAA to allow Canadian schools to join applies only to Division II.

So, if you would like to see UBC's athletes competing against Gonzaga, Washington, Seattle U. et al, it says here that moving to Division II is the best way to get there.

What does this mean for UBC Athletics in the medium term? UBC Student Services has put out an NCAA Division II Consultation document, which contains a lot of useful information.

What I'm going to do here is address how Division II membership would affect individual sports.

Football

The two possible conference memberships addressed in the consultation document are the Pacific West Conference and the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC). This choice doesn't exist for football, because the Pac West doesn't have a football competition.

So, the football team would be competing in the GNAC, regardless of conference affiliations for any other sports. Since travel expenses should be a major consideration in whatever direction UBC takes, this is actually good news, because football is a high travel expense sport. The football team would be in the same league as nearby Western Washington and Central Washington. Simon Fraser intends to move into Division II, so the Clan would be an even closer road game. (If SFU does indeed join the NCAA, that “Clan” nickname will have to go.)

The other GNAC members with football teams are Western Oregon, Humboldt State, and Dixie State. Central Washington has clinched the conference championship for 2008.

Men's Ice Hockey

The NCAA does not have a Division II competition in men's ice hockey. Unless an option remains open for UBC to continue to be a member of Canada West after joining the NCAA, the men's ice hockey team would be competing in Division I.

The consultation document is incorrect in implying that UBC would have to compete as an independent in NCAA ice hockey, and would not be eligible to compete for the national championship. Actually, the NCAA has a different set of conferences for ice hockey. The Thunderbirds should be welcome to join either the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (which includes Alaska-Anchorage, North Dakota, U. of Denver, and Colorado College) or the Central College Hockey Association (which includes Alaska-Fairbanks; Alaska-Fairbanks and Alaska-Anchorage compete in Division II in sports other than ice hockey).

The principal issue around men's ice hockey is eligibility rules. The NCAA considers the Western Hockey League (as well as its sister leagues, the OHL and QMJHL) to be professional leagues, and any player who steps on the ice for a team in one of these leagues becomes ineligible to play in the NCAA. However, if UBC is competing on a probationary basis during its first season or two in the NCAA, it would seem reasonable to me for players on the roster in the season prior to the initial NCAA season to be “grandfathered”. This is currently under negotiation, as is conference affiliation and the possibility of remaining in Canada West.

Men's Volleyball

Like “grass hockey”, volleyball in the NCAA is primarily for women. There are 22 schools that field men's volleyball teams. Most of them are in Division I, but since there are so few teams, the NCAA doesn't bother with separate divisions for men's volleyball.

Like ice hockey, men's volleyball has its own conferences, and UBC would be in the Mountain Pacific Conference. The nearest teams in that conference are U. of the Pacific (Stockton, CA), Stanford, and Brigham Young.

Basketball and most other sports

As mentioned earlier, UBC has been given a choice between the Pac West and GNAC conferences. This boils down to a choice between flying to away games and long bus rides. (The long bus rides are something that UBC baseball players know all about.) For the Pac West, coaches would like to be able to tell potential recruits that they would be going to away games in Hawaii and southern California; this beats telling them that their road games will take them to Ellensburg, WA and Nampa, ID. (Again, the baseball players can tell you all about these two towns.) Another consideration in favour of the GNAC is that Simon Fraser intends to apply for membership in the GNAC for all sports.

Last season, Alaska-Anchorage of the GNAC went to the semi-finals of the men's basketball tournament, and was ranked #4 at the end of the season. The highest-ranked Pac West team was Chaminade, at #25. Neither conference had a team in the top 25 at the end of the 2006-2007 season. Seattle Pacific of the GNAC went to the semi-finals of the men's basketball tournament in 2005-2006.

Baseball

People who have been following the UBC baseball program since its inception will find the baseball-playing membership of the GNAC pretty familiar. It's Western Oregon, Central Washington, Northwest Nazarene, Saint Martin's, and Montana State-Billings. All of these schools except Montana State-Billings competed in the NAIA prior to the mass exodus of Northwest NAIA schools to the NCAA eight years ago.

Western Oregon is the only champion the GNAC has ever had; they have won every year from 2002 to 2008.

The baseball-playing members of the Pac West are Hawaii Pacific (Honolulu), Dixie State (Saint George, UT), Hawaii Hilo, and Grand Canyon (Phoenix). They apparently have a couple of potential new members in the San Francisco area. 2008 was the first year for baseball competition in the Pac West. They didn't crown a champion, and none of the teams made it to post-season play.

Weather is a factor in favour of the Pac West for baseball; the Birds would be able to travel to away games without much concern about rainouts.

The big pluses for Division II membership will be recruiting and out-of-conference scheduling. The NCAA has much better “brand recognition” than the NAIA does for potential recruits. For scheduling, when the Birds make those February trips to California, they should be able to schedule high-quality opponents such as Sonoma State, UC San Diego, and Chico State.

When?

If UBC files its application by the end of this academic year, they could be eligible to compete in Division II in the 2010-2011 academic year, but they wouldn't be eligible for post-season competition for that year.