<p>IJ Reilly got it right. In revenue sports such as football and basketball, a really good DIII school won’t compete well against a really bad DI school. In football, probably for safety reasons, they won’t even play each other. In basketball bad DI teams will play DIII teams in non-conference early games to tune up for their conference games. The results of these games demonstrate that there is a large talent gap between between DI and DIII teams. That doesn’t mean that an individual talented player sometimes doesn’t slip to DIII. However, it would be a mistake to believe that just because a DIII basketball team looks good against other DIII teams, that it would be competitive in a DI conference. A division III team may try to recruit some of the same basketball and football players as the Ivy League, but given the product on the field or court that each end up with, it is pretty clear that not many athletes that can play at that level opt out from playing DIAA.</p>