i Jeffrey L. Engbers Health Exercise and Sports Science This ...

Division III, nine men’s sports and nine women’s sports are included (National
Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, n.d.a). A study of Division III ADs in
the South revealed that the competitive success of the University’s athletic teams was
extremely important to some ADs but others considered other aspects as very important
(McGehee, 2010). Since the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings can be used to
compare institutions across a national level, this national comparison of Division III
institutions was used to discover if challenges are different among those institutions that
are competitive at the national level and those that are not competitive at the national
level.
Financial management at Division III institutions is different from other divisions.
Athletic budgets at the Division III level are included in the institutional budget, like
other programs on campus (Wesibrod, Asch & Balloou, 2008). This frees Division III
administrators from heavy fundraising demands or a “fill the arena mentality” (N. Meyer,
personal communication, June 2, 2010). Division I institutions tend to follow a corporate
model, perceiving revenue production and competitive success as more important than
such factors are to ADs in Division III (Patrick, Mahony, & Petrosko, 2008). In addition
to spending less money on athletics, Division III institutions distributed money more
evenly across all sports than Division I institutions (Patrick et. al., 2008).
Division IA schools spend almost ten times the amount on teams as Ivy League
schools do, and Ivy League schools spend three times as much per team as Division III
schools (Shulman & Bowen, 2001). Even though Division III institutions typically do not
include facilities and some other areas in the average amount of money spent on athletics,
which may be calculated in Division I budgets, the money spent at the Division III level
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