USD Football Moves Up to Division I-AA : Football: Toreros to be in newly formed Pioneer League with Midwest teams.

Ending years of speculation, University of San Diego Athletic Director Tom Iannacone announced Tuesday the upgrading of the Torero football program to NCAA Division I-AA status beginning in 1993.

USD has been a Division III independent in football for 30 years--and will play one more season as such--but USD and other programs like it are being forced by the NCAA to align all sports in one division by 1993. USD is Division I in all other sports.

“You talk about falling into a pile of manure and coming up smelling like a rose, I think that’s kind of the way it turned out with us,” USD Coach Brian Fogarty said.

USD, which was nicknamed the Pioneers until the early 1960s, will become a member of the new non-scholarship Pioneer Football League in 1993. The Toreros will join Dayton, Butler, Valparaiso, Evansville and Drake, all Midwest universities that formed the conference in November.

“I’m ecstatic,” Kevin McGarry, USD’s defensive coordinator, said. “I’ve been here for 16 years as either a player or a coach, and this is the most exciting thing we’ve had happen.”

The mood was similar at at least one home in Indianapolis.

“We’re very excited about it,” Butler Athletic Director John Parry said. “Very thrilled at the prospect of coming to San Diego every other year. Butler’s biggest challenge, as I see it, will be picking a travel squad.

“We’ll treat the San Diego trip like a bowl game.”

Iannacone has tried to rally support for a non-scholarship Division I-AAA for four years, but his lobbying fell short and a proposal to create such a division was voted down twice at January’s NCAA Convention in Anaheim.

Another option for USD could have been to align with other West Coast schools in a Division I-AA cost-contained football conference, but Iannacone said: “(The West Coast schools) all had similar but different problems. As much as we tried, it was really difficult to find that common ground.”

Iannacone pointed out that USD and the other Pioneer pioneers were able to find that common ground, even if it was 2,000 miles apart.

“I believe that we’re compatible with all those institutions,” he said. “They are similar in size with us. They are all independent (universities). We have similar admission policies, financial aid policies and are similar in the manner we conduct our football program.”

Financially, because of the extra travel, continued expansion of the program and possibly adding a third full-time coach--Fogarty and McGarry are USD’s only full-time coaches--the Torero football budget will increase by about $200,000.

Though the move became official Tuesday, Iannacone said he met with the other Pioneer athletic directors during January’s NCAA Convention.

Based on that meeting, “I pretty much had it nailed down then, to be honest,” Iannacone said. “Concurrently, (Fogarty) was at the American Football Coaches Convention (in Dallas) looking for the other (Pioneer) coaches, and they were all looking for him. The coaches decided it in an instant, because they don’t have to fund it. (The athletic directors) still had some details to work out.”

Parry, Butler’s AD, gave this version: He said Iannacone was discussing scheduling a few nonconference games with the Pioneer schools and someone said, “ ‘Why don’t you just join the league?’ And he said, ‘OK. Are you serious?’ And we said yes.”

Done deal.

“The way we look at it,” Fogarty said, “the opportunities are unbelievable. We will be a unique program. We’ll do a lot of traveling. . . . We feel feel it will be very attractive to young men to be able to travel with a small college and play some outstanding schools. We hope we can continue an affiliation with some of the schools we’re playing right now for awhile, but that still remains to be seen.

“We couldn’t be happier with the way this has turned out.”

USD finished 7-3 last season and has had five consecutive winning seasons under Fogarty, the Toreros’ all-time winningest coach at 47-38-2 after nine seasons.

Valparaiso (Indiana) and Butler (Indianapolis) are phasing out scholarship programs, and Drake (Des Moines, Iowa) and Evansville (Indiana) had offered scholarships until a few years ago, according to Parry.

Dayton (Ohio) won two NCAA Division III championships in the 1980s and was the runner-up last season.

“We feel we’ll be at the middle of the pack to start with and hopefully move up from there,” said Fogarty, who added he plans to step up recruiting efforts.

“We had to make something happen,” Iannacone said. “We weren’t content to sit back and wait.”