D1 or D3 sports wouldn’t make a difference to my kids so long as there is a good intramurals program. A D1 school like Cal, UCLA, or Stanford would be just fine for my son, though he would probably never attend spectator sports events. The emphasis on sports at a place like Alabama would probably bug him a lot. We are just not a spectator sports family, much to my MIL’s dismay.
Big time sports do bring in money from the alumni donor base, so I can see the advantages. The students who get in for sports at a D1 school are a totally different group of students. I never even saw the football players on the Texas A&M campus in class or walking around when I attended there. Wouldn’t have wanted to, since there was a big scandal where they severely beat up a pizza delivery guy during those years.
DH was a grad student at UCSB when they voted to get rid of their football team (“undefeated since 1992”). The NCAA was going to make the team go D1 because other sports were D1, and the students voted on whether to add a fee to support D1 football. According to DH, the grad student vote made the difference at UCSB, because many grad students voted no, while few undergrads voted at all. UCSB is about 10% grad students, similar to UCSC. However, UCSB’s vote was before online voting was possible, so perhaps the voter turnout will be higher.