Has women's crew been varsity that whole time? Or was it just building the women's crewhouse that enabled them to put the (substandard) men's soccer field into the budget?
Yes, varsity that whole time. Whoa, and what a boat house they built! They could have built one fine soccer field for the cost of this puppy. http://mgoblue.com/campusinfo/belleville-lake.html
The "growth" in Division I comes from lower division schools that change status ... schools like Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and Elon University.
It's really hard to get a handle on the growth because there's so much movement between conferences. High Point, Elon, Stoney Brook... Oregon State also created a new men's and women's D1 program in the early 90s. They dropped track and field to do it.
I'm pretty sure that Oregon State started in 1989. They got the go-ahead before the Brown University decision. Since then, it's been incredibly difficult to start a new men's program anywhere.
I hold an official-unofficial Tech scoring record! Who needs NCAA soccer when your club side is National Champs! At Texas Tech, where I went 96-98...our club soccer team was bad ass! We had several old Dallas Sidekick players and dudes from Mexico, Argentina and Chile. You mix that with all the native Texans and Texicans that were ballers that didn't land the coveted SMU scholarship offers and we could easily outplay SMU, TCU UCLA or Virginia on a given day...our club side won the 1997 Men's College Open Cup in Athens GA by beating U. of Texas (who are equally loaded with talent and no NCAA team to show for it) 4-1 in the Final. Too bad we were all drunken monkies and had problems with law suits over kegs falling out of our Tech University vans on road trips. The rec chief didn't like that one ha ha ha! We used to ask the AD at Tech if they were going to add Men's scholarship soccer now that we have a National Club Title and they would always reply with..."that's the next men's sport for the Big XII, so maybe in a few years." Well that was 1997 and here it is two World Cups later and I think they are content to win trophies without any bullsh!t Title IX complications to molest their gridiron utopia.