Scranton and Division III Athletics

Our mission is to create a digital history project detailing how the NCAA functions, with an emphasis on Division III athletics and the University of the Scranton. Our questions is... "Is it advantageous for the University of Scranton to be Division III?"

The NCAA started in 1906 as a small informal rules making body, since then it has expanded to astronomical heights. In the 2011-12 fiscal year (most recent data available) the NCAA brought in $871.6 million in earnings. In 2015, the revenue of the 231 Division I schools totaled to $9.15 billion. College sports is big business, and we want to find out how a Division III school like Scranton fits in. To achieve this, we will use a combination of primary, secondary and tertiary sources to explain the story of the NCAA and how the university fits in the picture, with a goal of finding out if the university should continue to be Division III. By using a public website, we hope to educate as many people as possible about this story. Too often, history is stereotyped as being filled with boring deep, dark and heavy academic papers, our project will reflect the lighter, fun side of history. If we can accomplish these goals, the public will be more informed about the inevitable controversies and ever-shifting state of affairs surrounding the NCAA.

We are three college freshman enrolled at the University of Scranton. All of us are in the same Digital Humanities class and we each have a keen interest in sports. This website is our final project, meaning we didn't receive any funding for this undertaking. But, we did receive lots of great help and had access to the universities resources. We would like to give special thanks to the University of Scranton Athletic Department, particularly the Athletic Director, Dave Martin, for generously giving up his time for an interview. We would also like to thank our instructor, Dr. Aiala Levy, for helping us on this journey, especially with those pesky digital tools.