Eastern Washington opts against sabotaging its own athletics department

[Coach Andy Mac]

Colleges and universities contemplate moving down the athletics totem pole all the time. Division I athletics aren't for everybody, especially when you're not cashing multi-million TV checks each year. Heck, even Jim Delany, the longtime Big Ten commissioner, threatened to take his entire behemoth of a conference to Division III if players ever started getting paid. (We all know how that bluff ended.) 

But it's not everyday a successful Division I program considers dropping down to D3.

Such was the case at Eastern Washington, where the school openly considered dropping down to Division II or III, or remaining a Division I institution -- but with no football program.

The same Eastern Washington that's in the FCS playoffs almost every year, that played for the national championship as recently as 2018, and that won the FCS title in 2010. The same Eastern Washington that was the only program in 2020-21 to reach the FCS playoffs and March Madness -- and not only that, the Eagles beat mighty Kansas in the first round. 

That same EWU could've soon found itself in D2 or D3 but, after a 10-month back-and-forth, the Eastern Washington board has voted 8-1 to remain in FCS. That vote followed the recommendation of EWU president David May.

read more:  https://footballscoop.com/news/eastern-washington-remain-fcs-will-not-drop-football-division-iii