Each March, our country’s attention turns to intercollegiate athletics. Conversations everywhere are focused on the Division I basketball tournaments. Stories about “March Madness” appear prominently in places that normally do not pay much attention to college sports.

Many of these stories and discussions inevitably refer to the revenue that the tournaments generate for our Association, and for our broadcast and corporate partners. 

In reality, though, March is a glamorous, high-profile time for a limited number of student-athletes and college campuses. While we all love to be spectators for this coverage, as the president of a Division III school, I find it also is a time to reflect on the unique nature of both Division III and our Association.

The Division III philosophy describes a model for athletics that is fundamentally different from the focus of March Madness. In our division, the primary focus of athletics is on the participants — the student-athletes — and the campus community. While the entertainment interests of spectators and the general public are a wonderful diversion for the nation, they simply are not a priority for our Division III colleges and universities. At Ferrum College, for example, athletics programs are financed, staffed and controlled like any other program and department on campus.

These tenets describe a revenue and administrative model quite unlike that in Division I. 

Athletics programs in our division almost never generate significant revenue. Further, the resources that are allocated are comparatively small (an average of about $1.2 million of a $20.6 million budget during 2005 for a college like Ferrum that sponsors football and 13 additional intercollegiate sports). The athletics department must vie for allocations with every other campus department. In the final analysis, programs are conducted and resources allocated based on the inherent educational value they provide to our students.

The Division III philosophy statement calls for schools to offer a “broad-based” program that maximizes opportunities for students to participate in intercollegiate athletics. In fact, the division recently adopted legislation to increase sports-sponsorship minimums for schools with enrollments of more than 1,000 students. While our schools conduct athletics programs primarily because of their inherent educational value, the affinity that students have for those programs cannot be ignored.

It is important to note the different relationship that exists among athletics, enrollment and revenue in Division III. At many schools in our division, athletics serve as a key recruiting and enrollment tool. Many prospective students care deeply about what sports the college offers and the condition of the athletics and recreational facilities. On average, about 16 percent of all Division III students participate in intercollegiate athletics. Participation is significantly higher at many member schools, including Ferrum, where it exceeds 30 percent.

Using the revenue generated by the enrollment of student-athletes to support the school’s overall educational mission isn’t all that far removed from the revenue-and-expense model that plays out each March. In his State of the Association speech, NCAA President Myles Brand emphasized that the generation of revenue in athletics is not inherently at odds with a college’s basic educational mission, provided the money generated is spent to further the college’s educational purposes. It’s not the money, he pointed out, but what you do with it that matters.

Using athletics to help attract, enroll, educate and retain students is wholly consistent with the core mission of member schools in all divisions. We just apply the revenue model a bit differently in Division III. In that way, Division III athletics programs are linked to the programs that exist in the Association’s other divisions.

The revenue generated by March Madness affects Division III in other ways. Most directly, the revenue supports the division’s championships programs and strategic initiatives. The NCAA constitution guarantees the division will receive 3.18 percent of the Association’s annual revenue. In this budget year, that amounted to about $16.5 million. Most of that money comes from the Association’s broadcast agreements related to March Madness.

At the same time, March Madness can create an unfortunate and quite unfounded assumption that all NCAA schools and conferences are the same. NCAA members are assumed to have similar missions, values, priorities and challenges. Rightly or wrongly, the media and public can paint with a broad brush. Perhaps even worse, schools and conferences that are not members of Division I often are ignored. For hundreds of thousands of Division III alumni, this neglect is difficult to understand and justify.

It remains our collective challenge as an Association to support and convey the unique mission and philosophy of each of our divisions while affirming that portion of our Association’s mission calling for us “to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.” There is no better time to do this than in March, when we have the attention that seems to elude us during the other 11 months of the year. That is our opportunity to benefit from the limelight shining on our Division I colleges and universities, and to raise awareness about the many other facets of the NCAA.

Jennifer L. Braaten is president of Ferrum College.