Division II has done so much so fast with championships that it faces an interesting — and in some ways challenging — question:

What’s next?

Only 10 years ago, the Division II Softball Championship included 24 teams. Two bracket expansions later, 64 teams now compete annually in the event. The men’s and women’s basketball championships both have grown to 64 teams. Women’s soccer included 12 teams as recently as 1996; today, it features 32. In 2007, 48 teams will participate.

While improvements in quantity have been evident, so have improvements in quality. The first Division II National Championships Festival in spring 2004 was an unquestioned success. Championships in men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s lacrosse and softball were conducted over a one-week period in Orlando, Florida. The same approach will be replicated this fall when a festival of fall sports — field hockey, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s soccer — is conducted in Pensacola, Florida. The Championships Committee also recently committed to exploring development of a winter festival so that multi-championship events may be conducted three of every four years starting later this decade.

But if success begets success, it also begets elevated expectations. As the NCAA’s bundled-rights agreement approaches its midway point, Division II must make a careful determination about whether to push the championships accelerator even more, tap on the brakes or simply use the steering wheel.

Jill Willson, the new Division II Management Council chair and the immediate past chair of the Championships Committee, says the division should avoid the first option, use the second one only if necessary and embrace the last one.

“I don’t think we can accommodate any more bracket expansion,” said Willson, athletics director at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. “We’re just about tapped out as far as that goes. But I do think it’s important to try to make regionals into more of a championships atmosphere so that it’s not just the few athletes who get to the Elite Eight who get the NCAA experience.

“Can we do a better job of providing mementos? Can we have the championship trophies there so that both the team that wins the championship and the team that goes home from there get some sort of reward? What can we do to make the regionals more of a championships atmosphere?”

Although Division II regionals traditionally have been played on the campuses of competing teams, Willson said the division should at least consider predetermined sites in marquee sports such as basketball. “Right now, you can’t get television coverage because you don’t know until the Tuesday before where you’re going to be in some of these sports,” she said. “So that’s something that the Championships Committee needs to consider as it plans long term.”

And long-term planning is definitely in order.

While the number of Division II members has not changed much in recent years, the overall membership issue remains volatile as schools consider moves into and out of the division. The Division II strategic plan calls for an ideal membership of about 290 institutions. At the moment, Division II is essentially right at that number with 282 active members and eight provisional members.

“Championships access is one of the reasons that our membership thought that 290 was such a good number,” said Division II Vice President Mike Racy. “Our membership feels like our budget and our number of members provide for championships access that rewards regular-season accomplishment without being overly exclusive.”

But while Division II can exercise control over new membership, it cannot control its revenue. Division II annually gets 4.37 percent from the NCAA’s 11-year, $6.2 billion bundled-rights agreement with CBS and ESPN, which runs through 2012-13. Nobody knows whether the future rights agreement will be more or less. If it is less, Willson does not want the division to be pulling back on championships access if it’s at all possible to avoid such an outcome. This, she said, is a time to be careful.

“Championships has done a great job of putting money into a reserve and trying not to increase per diem or bracket sizes beyond what we can afford,” she said. “I do think the looming issue of the end of the CBS contract leads us to make sure that we can afford what we put out there.”

New Championships Committee Chair Mike Covone said that the committee has not begun a formal examination of how the championships program might be affected by a new contract. Instead, he said the committee continues to solicit recommendations from sports committees on how championships can be enhanced. That enhancement can be complicated when it involves assembling puzzle pieces that involve regionalization, postseason football, commitment to the sports festival concept and ongoing desires to expand brackets.

Division II football illustrates the challenge. It currently is stuck in a difficult examination about finances, access and competitive equity. Most people seem comfortable about where the Division II Football Task Force is headed, which is to propose two playoffs with participants determined by the number of financial aid equivalencies they offer. The potential problem comes with how the 24 existing playoff spots would be divided.

If additional playoff opportunities were created, it would be a simple matter to create two fields with sufficient access to make everybody happy. But football’s bracket size increased by 50 percent two years ago, and every additional football expansion requires commensurate growth on the women’s side so that postseason opportunities between genders are kept about equal.

However, Sunshine State Conference Commissioner Mike Marcil sees that dilemma as an opportunity to take a fresh look at bracket sizes for all sports, going so far as to suggest a 1:2 ratio of playoff berths to sponsoring institutions for all team sports.

“I’ve always felt like we could get to 128 (for the brackets that now have 64 teams),” he said. “Of course, that sounds, on the face of it, preposterous. But it would be one more round at home sites.”

He acknowledges that such a change would present a major fiscal challenge, but he said it would be supported by Division II’s philosophy. “At the Division II level, what we want is the opportunity to participate,” he said. Disputes over championships access — now at the core of questions involving postseason football and regionalization — would greatly diminish or disappear under his plan, he said. Conference championships could be contested for their own sake, generally without the burden of NCAA berths riding on the outcomes.

Willson doesn’t buy the concept, either philosophically or financially.

“Getting to a championship needs to mean something,” she said. “I never have agreed with the idea that Division II should have an all-comers meet. I know that there are teams out there that are .500 that are just as good as teams that are 17-1. But you have to earn the access to the championships.

“We want championships to determine the true champion. You don’t want it to be something where somebody on a good day upset somebody because they had an opportunity to be there when maybe throughout the year they didn’t play like a champion.”

Rather than expanding brackets, Willson wants to invest in elevating quality, perhaps breaking some traditions along the way.

“The sports-festival concept has been incredible for us, and we’ve even been trying to figure out what we can do with men’s and women’s basketball in the near future to incorporate them into that kind of atmosphere. That would be great.”

The two Elite Eights currently are played at different sites, but Willson senses promotional synergy that could result from marrying the two events.

“This is a sport that draws a lot of attention, even in Division II,” she said. “We get pretty good crowds for these championships, and they’re televising them now. But what could we do to get the Hoop Cities attracted to them, like in Division I? What could we do to make that more of a festival-type atmosphere? I think that’s something we also would like to look at for baseball.”

Bringing about such changes would present a challenge, but the moment seems opportune to discuss change — at a moment when finances are good and the number of members is stable.

“I think others in the membership might agree that Division II has the right idea when it comes to championships,” Willson said. “We have the right bracket sizes. We don’t have odd numbers. We’ve been able to stick with the 48s and 64s. We don’t have a play-in.

“We want Division II student-athletes to have the very best championships experience they can have, and we need to make sure that we stay within a (fiscal) range where we can ensure that that happens. And I think we’re to that point right now.”