OMAHA Neb.

The strength of NCAA Division II is that it strikes the right balance of academics and athletics in college life, and the 296 member institutions should be proud of that identity, the chairman of the Division II President's Council says.

Pfeiffer University president Chuck Ambrose said he and other Division II leaders, concerned about schools leaving for Division I, have spent the past two years working to get the word out about the positives of Division II membership.

The goal, Ambrose said, is to find strategies that will draw schools into, rather than away from, Division II.

"Division II was feeling defensive," Ambrose said. "We were defining ourselves as a division and membership in terms of what we're not. We're not Division I, but we offer a high level of academic and athletic competition. It's not 'A' position to be in when you're defining yourself by what you're not."

Division II presidents this year crafted a strategic positioning platform. The theme: Division II allows for the participation in high-level athletic competition without an overemphasis of sports in student life.

The focus, Ambrose said, should be on the college experience of the student-athlete. Too often in Division I, he said, student-athletes are looked upon as a means to an end that being greater revenue to continue feeding the monster of big-time athletics.

Ambrose said student-athletes not recruited by a Division I program were knocked for not being good enough.

"We were somewhat defined by the middle-child syndrome," Ambrose said. "Division I was defined by the biggest of the big and the most selective and the elite of the elite. Division III was the purist model participation and opportunity in the least professional environment.

"In the grand spectrum, most institutions fall somewhere between those two ends."

Still, since 2003, the allure of Division I has captured the imaginations of 22 former Division II schools.