First, we’d need to build entirely new venues. Other than the hockey arena I don’t think any would be considered worthy of Div I. Replacing T-Bird stadium and WAR would cost an enormous sum of money.

Secondly, if our athletic budget is small in comparison to Div II, you can imagine what it is like when compared to Div I schools. The University of Washington’s athletic budget is USD$50M. At Stanford it’s USD$75M. There is no way the athletic program at UBC could sustain that funding level every year.

To sustain that amount of cash flow, you need community support, which is absent here. It’s an entirely different culture. You’ll never have a situation where 50,000 people are coming out to watch UBC play football. You wouldn’t even get 15,000, which is the minimum average football attendance required to have a top level Div I football team. (No minimums in Div II) The Shrum Bowl this year got ~2,500 and that is considered the “big game”.

Div I schools pour a lot of money into their players and coaches. While that graph is pretty extreme with only football coaches, I’m pretty sure most people at UBC would not find it acceptable that sports coaches get paid more than professors and that students on athletic scholarships are funded to a far greater degree than students on academic scholarships. That is generally the case in large Div I institutions.

The ethos of Div I isn’t the same as Div II in terms of prioritizing education. Div I is in many ways practically a professional league. Faculty at UBC might revolt if such a large focus was put on athletic achievement, rather than on academic achievement. Again, it’s just not UBC’s culture for us to be a sports-mad campus.

I haven’t looked all that deeply into Div I because I have been focused on Div II, but it is clear Division I would not be a good fit for UBC.