Quote Originally Posted by IndyBison View Post
@kan1one...that is common of many D3 schools in the Midwest especially. In the conference i officiate in it's not uncommon to have 60-70 freshmen on the football roster of 120 students. They pay a JV schedule to keep as many engaged as possible. They use athletics in general to recruit students to the university knowing many of them will not stick with their sport due to numbers. But once they are on campus for a year and make friends they are not committed to the school even if they do their sport. I've generally heard 40-60% of freshmen at most of these D3 schools are athletes. It's not a bad strategy.

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Can D3 offer athletic scholarships or only academic? UJ as an NAIA can do both. Whereas Concordia MN only gives academic. Concordia dropped tuition $15k, but also cut back on financial aid/scholarships, so at the end of the day, the cost was the same. Whereas UJ with the lower cost starting point than Concordia, St. Thomas, St. Johns, (Augustana and U Sioux Falls were about same starting point 32K as UJ). The scholarship UJ offers makes the starting point similar to NDSU. .

So in the case the NAIA school has an advantage of the D3 and to some extent the D2 schools.