ESPN College Sports

What does it take to be successful at the Division II and III levels? In this four-part series, ESPN.com looks at the role of money, recruiting and fan sites at the lower levels.

There are few guarantees in life. Death. Taxes. Twinkies. "Seinfeld" reruns. Paris Hilton (inexplicably) being in the news.

And Stanford winning the U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup for Division I. That's another stone cold lock. In 2006-07 the Cardinal collected their 13th consecutive Directors' Cup trophy, which is awarded annually to the best overall athletic program in each of the three NCAA divisions by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

Over the years, the Cardinal have collected 95 men's and women's NCAA team titles and an NCAA-best 395 individual championships.

Stanford has produced the likes of John Elway, Julie Foudy, John McEnroe, Mike Mussina, Jim Plunkett, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods, to name a few. Forty-two athletes and coaches represented Stanford at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, earning a combined 17 medals. With 35 varsity sports, 300 athletic scholarships, state-of-the-art facilities and approximately $75 million in its annual athletic budget, it's no wonder Stanford is king of the college athletics landscape.

Or at least the Division I landscape. At the Division II level, Grand Valley State University (Mich.) is the dominant force. Williams College (Mass.) is the Stanford of Division III. Grand Valley State has won four consecutive Division II Directors' Cups; Williams has claimed a Cardinal-esque 11 of the last 12 in Division III. In some ways, those accomplishments are even more impressive than Stanford's.

Unlike their Division I contemporaries, schools like Grand Valley State, Williams, University of California at San Diego (runner-up in last year's Division II Directors' Cup standings) and Middlebury (Vt.) College (Division III runner-up in '06-07) must sustain excellence out of the public eye. There are no multibillion dollar television contracts in Divisions II and III, and most athletes at those levels of competition will not make it to the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball or the Olympics. There is no Big House, Rose Bowl or Dean Dome, and there is no event as commercialized or as popular as March Madness or the College World Series. If Division II and Division III schools wish to stay on top, they truly have to earn it.

"In Division I, if you have the money, you can budget to have broad-based athletic success," Williams athletic director and former men's basketball coach Harry Sheehy said. "Our budgets aren't built that way. It's more about the institution itself. Fortunately, we have a quality place to go to school. When I was recruiting, I used to tell kids, 'Only come here if it's the place you'd choose to go to school if you blew out your knee on the first day of practice.'"

That's especially important at a Division III school, where there are no athletic scholarships and student-athletes must, for the most part, pay their own way. Unable to offer recruits a free ride, successful D-III programs must instead rely on superb facilities, a beautiful campus and aggressive, low-turnover coaching staffs to attract a certain caliber athlete year in and year out.

"There's not necessarily a magic formula," Middlebury athletic director Eric Quinn explains. "For starters, we have an attractive school, and that's helped our athletic programs get better. Plus, our physical location attracts the active, outdoorsy student, so you don't have to change the student body to attract a certain kind of student-athlete. You don't have to make some sort of compromise.

"There are not a lot of financial resources [in our athletic department]. It's more human resources. It's also our history, having had strong athletic programs going back a long time. Our student body is loyal to athletics. We have outstanding facilities, so students see our commitment [to athletics]. It's an all-things-being-equal kind of thing. [Facilities don't] trump other factors, but if a student is already predisposed to liking your college and they come up and see it and are really blown away, that can be a tipping point."

Also, more Division III students participate in multiple sports as opposed to the Division I athletes who usually focus on -- and are given a scholarship for -- just one sport. So if a supremely athletic kid chooses to come to Middlebury or Williams, it can often benefit more than just one team.

Division II schools are perhaps more similar to D-I schools than they are to D-IIIs. They do offer scholarships, many do have significant athletic budgets, and some even have enrollments of up to 20,000 or 30,000 students. But the number of scholarships they can offer are limited: Division II schools can't exceed 36 football scholarships; Division I football programs are allowed 85. And again -- you won't see many Division II highlights on "SportsCenter."

"The only difference between maintaining success at the D-II level [as opposed to] D-I is that there is less money involved in D-II," said Tim Selgo, who is in his 12th year as Grand Valley State's athletic director. "All else remains the same."

UC San Diego athletic director Earl Edwards can speak better than most about the differences between achieving success at Division II versus Division III: He oversaw UCSD's transition from D-II to D-III shortly after becoming the school's AD. Having consistently finished near the top of the Division III Directors' Cup standings, UCSD immediately began a string of top-five finishes upon joining Division II in 2000.

"It was very significant for us," Edwards said. "We were an independent program in Division III, and most of our competition was fairly local. In D-II we joined the California Collegiate Athletic Association, where we play teams from San Diego almost to Oregon. It changed our travel costs [the sports programs must fly frequently now; buses were almost always the school's mode of transportation in Division III]. We went from local to regional. And we were able to recruit better athletes."

But while the D-III to D-II upgrade allows schools like UC San Diego to increase their athletic budgets, improving athletic facilities and adding staff like extra trainers, a full-time travel coordinator and a full-time strength and conditioning coordinator, it still is a far cry from the glitz and "College GameDay" glamour of Division I. No matter how many Directors' Cups it wins, Grand Valley State will remain well off the average American sports fan's radar.

That doesn't seem to bother Selgo: "We believe it is an honor when someone refers to Grand Valley as the 'Stanford of D-II'!"

It's likely Sheehy would say the same thing about Williams' status in Division III.

Chris Preston is a staff writer for the Shelburne News and a frequent contributor to Varsity Magazine. He can be reached at ChrisPreston@shelburnenews.com.