Quote Originally Posted by DFW HOYA View Post
That's not grounded in reality.

I-AA/FCS was created to accommodate schools playing under the (then) 105 scholarship limit of major college football, from 0 to 63. Prior to 1978, the Ivy was the only non-scholarship group as the Patriot League variously played at D-II or in the case of Holy Cross, was a full scholarship I-A independent. The MAAC, NEC, and Pioneer schools were for the most part in Division III.
This is somewhat accurate and somewhat misconstrued. In 1978 IAA consisted of 6 conferences and 41 schools, all scholarship as some conferences like the SoCon, Big Sky and the Southland didn't actually start playing IAA until 1982. And still everyone in a conference was playing scholarship football. At that time there were some programs that entered the scene of independents that played partial or non scholarship.

The mass influx of whole conferences being partial or non-scholarship didn't really start to take off until the very late 80s, early 90s. If measures would have been in place then those schools taking advantage of the system to be DI would have had to have had other plans in place. Because that is exactly what non scholarship or partial scholarship football does. It takes advantage of the system to allow an unfair advantage. Now granted only a few know how to do it well. But not having to have 63 scholarships and a higher football budget also means you don't have to have the equivalent of 63 scholarships on the woman's side to appease Title IX. That is probably at least 5-7 million dollars you can allocate somewhere else on athletics. And that is the reason I think to be DI you have to fully fund football.