National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Guest editorial - Division II label comes of age
The time has now come to inform all three NCAA membership divisions that Division II’s identity crisis is over.
As you look around the college athletics landscape over the next few months, you will see everything from banners to T-shirts displaying our now-familiar phrase: “I Chose Division II!” Floor decals, screensavers and videos from coast to coast will be replete with our ubiquitous hexagon. Advertisements and publications will advance Division II’s shared attributes. All of this imagery will be employed as we purposefully build stronger relationships with the communities in which our institutions and conferences serve.
In fact, the collaborative efforts across the Division II membership have been exceptional, and playing a role in the development of this program will certainly be counted as one of my most rewarding experiences, sharing it along with the many others who are committed to the Division II experience.
Of course, Division II always has had much to offer. Somehow, though, our attributes became less visible as the nature of college athletics changed over the last decade. Many of you became familiar with hurtful catch-phrases such as “way station on the way to Division I,” “middle-child syndrome,” “ticker envy” and “second-class.” Those expressions, like all clichés, never contained much thought. But they did reflect our problem. Too few people knew what Division II stood for or appreciated its philosophical and financial position in the NCAA family.
We began to change two years ago when about 140 presidents and chancellors met in Orlando to discuss the future of Division II.
The message from that historic session was clear: We needed a collective understanding and acceptance of what it meant to be a Division II member, and we required a communication strategy (or new strategic position) to amplify our membership attributes and pride.
That led the Division II Presidents Council into a comprehensive research effort in which we queried every corner of our membership about their attitudes toward Division II. We wanted to know the good and the bad. When we were finished with the membership, we found out what the public thought of us.
The results of the research were liberating. We learned that our greatest supporters were our own student-athletes. More than 90 percent of them said they would recommend their Division II experience to somebody else. In fact, there was almost no bad news found in the research. Our biggest problem, clearly, was that few people on the outside knew what Division II was about.
Suddenly, we went from playing defense to playing offense. We didn’t have to waste any time changing negative perceptions. We didn’t have to somehow sell our student-athletes about the quality of their experience because they were already sold. Our task became wonderfully simple: to articulate the benefits of Division II membership — and then tell the world about them.
By the middle of 2006, we were basing all of our actions on a strategic-positioning platform that described the Division II student-athlete experience as “a comprehensive program of learning and development in a personal setting.” Our Division II identity was based on six attributes: learning, service, passion, sportsmanship, resourcefulness and balance.
Working with talented designers, we constructed the hexagon imagery to support the six attributes, and we developed a phrase — “I Chose Division II!” — to reinforce the fact that Division II makes academic, athletics and co-curricular sense for those who choose to affiliate with it. Each of the six attributes work interdependently with one another to provide the Division II student experience.
That brings us to the present. Working with the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators, we recently completed a highly successful Community-Engagement Workshop. At that time, we rolled out a Division II strategic-positioning activation toolkit for the 60-plus administrators who attended. By now, that toolkit — and a $1,000 allowance to purchase co-branded Division II signage and merchandise — has been made available to every Division II athletics director and conference commissioner. The workshop also included the activation of an Internet-based resource to enhance our membership’s ability to actively engage in building a stronger sense of utility and meaning to community relationships. Many of those relationships become available through the front door that is opened to our campuses through intercollegiate athletics.
The next stop in the journey will be our second Division II Chancellors and Presidents Summit, which will be conducted June 22-24 in San Diego. This time, we will be able to point to our strategic-positioning platform that clearly describes what it means to be a Division II member. We will be able to demonstrate philosophical and practical reasons that support Division II membership. We will remind those present of ever-increasing media exposure opportunities for Division II members, including a unique partnership with CSTV that provides for television and broadband coverage of nearly 100 regular-season football and basketball games. We will be able to point with pride to our highly innovative programs, such as the community-engagement effort and the National Championships Festival series.
In two short years, we have gone from being the division without identity to being the division with an “I Chose Division II” attitude.
Now we are ready for a new question: “What’s next?”
Charles M. Ambrose is president of Pfeiffer University and chair of the Division II Presidents Council.
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By Charles M. Ambrose
Pfeiffer University
Pfeiffer University
The time has now come to inform all three NCAA membership divisions that Division II’s identity crisis is over.As you look around the college athletics landscape over the next few months, you will see everything from banners to T-shirts displaying our now-familiar phrase: “I Chose Division II!” Floor decals, screensavers and videos from coast to coast will be replete with our ubiquitous hexagon. Advertisements and publications will advance Division II’s shared attributes. All of this imagery will be employed as we purposefully build stronger relationships with the communities in which our institutions and conferences serve.
In fact, the collaborative efforts across the Division II membership have been exceptional, and playing a role in the development of this program will certainly be counted as one of my most rewarding experiences, sharing it along with the many others who are committed to the Division II experience.
Of course, Division II always has had much to offer. Somehow, though, our attributes became less visible as the nature of college athletics changed over the last decade. Many of you became familiar with hurtful catch-phrases such as “way station on the way to Division I,” “middle-child syndrome,” “ticker envy” and “second-class.” Those expressions, like all clichés, never contained much thought. But they did reflect our problem. Too few people knew what Division II stood for or appreciated its philosophical and financial position in the NCAA family.
We began to change two years ago when about 140 presidents and chancellors met in Orlando to discuss the future of Division II.
The message from that historic session was clear: We needed a collective understanding and acceptance of what it meant to be a Division II member, and we required a communication strategy (or new strategic position) to amplify our membership attributes and pride.
That led the Division II Presidents Council into a comprehensive research effort in which we queried every corner of our membership about their attitudes toward Division II. We wanted to know the good and the bad. When we were finished with the membership, we found out what the public thought of us.
The results of the research were liberating. We learned that our greatest supporters were our own student-athletes. More than 90 percent of them said they would recommend their Division II experience to somebody else. In fact, there was almost no bad news found in the research. Our biggest problem, clearly, was that few people on the outside knew what Division II was about.
Suddenly, we went from playing defense to playing offense. We didn’t have to waste any time changing negative perceptions. We didn’t have to somehow sell our student-athletes about the quality of their experience because they were already sold. Our task became wonderfully simple: to articulate the benefits of Division II membership — and then tell the world about them.
By the middle of 2006, we were basing all of our actions on a strategic-positioning platform that described the Division II student-athlete experience as “a comprehensive program of learning and development in a personal setting.” Our Division II identity was based on six attributes: learning, service, passion, sportsmanship, resourcefulness and balance.
Working with talented designers, we constructed the hexagon imagery to support the six attributes, and we developed a phrase — “I Chose Division II!” — to reinforce the fact that Division II makes academic, athletics and co-curricular sense for those who choose to affiliate with it. Each of the six attributes work interdependently with one another to provide the Division II student experience.
That brings us to the present. Working with the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators, we recently completed a highly successful Community-Engagement Workshop. At that time, we rolled out a Division II strategic-positioning activation toolkit for the 60-plus administrators who attended. By now, that toolkit — and a $1,000 allowance to purchase co-branded Division II signage and merchandise — has been made available to every Division II athletics director and conference commissioner. The workshop also included the activation of an Internet-based resource to enhance our membership’s ability to actively engage in building a stronger sense of utility and meaning to community relationships. Many of those relationships become available through the front door that is opened to our campuses through intercollegiate athletics.
The next stop in the journey will be our second Division II Chancellors and Presidents Summit, which will be conducted June 22-24 in San Diego. This time, we will be able to point to our strategic-positioning platform that clearly describes what it means to be a Division II member. We will be able to demonstrate philosophical and practical reasons that support Division II membership. We will remind those present of ever-increasing media exposure opportunities for Division II members, including a unique partnership with CSTV that provides for television and broadband coverage of nearly 100 regular-season football and basketball games. We will be able to point with pride to our highly innovative programs, such as the community-engagement effort and the National Championships Festival series.
In two short years, we have gone from being the division without identity to being the division with an “I Chose Division II” attitude.
Now we are ready for a new question: “What’s next?”
Charles M. Ambrose is president of Pfeiffer University and chair of the Division II Presidents Council.
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