The NCAA News - News & Features

Stronger NAIA eases threat of excessive growth in Division III

BY SALLY HUGGINS
Staff Writer

Signs seem to be pointing to a stronger National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and to less movement from the NAIA to NCAA Division III.

Over the past decade, membership in the NAIA has dropped by about 100 institutions, for reasons ranging from championships opportunities to increased accreditation standards to athletics philosophy. But the membership now has stabilized and the prediction is for growth in the next few years.

"Our membership is stable," said Bill Patterson, NAIA executive vice-president. "We are at 365 members now, and we feel that is pretty close to what it is going to be for the next two or three years. We believe there may be some slight upward trend then."

And a strong NAIA is good for NCAA Division III, said Richard A. Rasmussen, executive director of the University Athletic Association and chair of the membership subcommittee of the Division III Task Force to Review the NCAA Membership Structure.

"A strong NAIA is a very healthy thing for the NCAA. It relieves the pressure on Division III of having to deal with excessive growth," Rasmussen said.

Excessive growth has ramifications in Division III relating to championships and planning for expansion of championship opportunities. Concern about rapid growth caused the NCAA to implement a moratorium on new membership that will continue until all restructuring legislation is in effect, which could be as early as August 1, 1997.

The rapid growth affects Division III planning and organization of the championships structure, Rasmussen said. But if the NAIA is strong, fewer institutions will opt for Division III membership.

Rumors harmful

While NAIA membership did decline for a time, Patterson said rumors about the organization's eminent demise were unfounded.

"The problems we are facing are the rumors, not the reality," he said. "We feel that the one problem we have is rumor control. Both the NAIA members and the NCAA members, as we express our concerns, are making a problem out of a nonproblem. The (NCAA) moratorium gives us some time to allay some fears."

NAIA members left the organization for many reasons, Patterson said, but one particular factor had to do with a 1987 decision to require NAIA schools to be accredited. Schools were given three years to comply.

Prefers nonscholarship programs

In other cases, the desire to move to the NCAA has been driven by philosophy.

One group that is in the queue for NCAA Division III membership are the members of the Northwest Conference of Independent Colleges, which are completing their first year of provisional membership. Members include George Fox College, Lewis and Clark College, Linfield College, Pacific University (Oregon), Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Puget Sound, Whitman College, Whitworth College and Willamette University.

Those institutions are retaining dual membership until NCAA membership is official, said Arleigh Dodson, NCIC commissioner.

A major reason the conference schools are joining the NCAA is because they are more comfortable with the Division III philosophy of nonscholarship athletics than with the limited-scholarship philosophy of the NAIA, Dodson said.

"If you go way back, the reason we were NAIA is that the NCAA didn't have a nonscholarship division. Division III didn't even exist in the West," he said. "If you look at the NCAA Division III philosophy, we fit perfectly."

Both Dodson and athletics director Mary Beth Kennedy of Nebraska Wesleyan University, which also holds dual membership, believe that the NAIA is needed in intercollegiate athletics.

While Nebraska Wesleyan finds NCAA Division III appealing, it is the only Division III institution in its state, and there are no Division III institutions in neighboring Kansas or South Dakota. Kennedy said teams must travel to Iowa to find the closest NCAA opponents.

The other members of Nebraska Wesleyan's conference, the Nebraska Collegiate Athletic Conference, all are NAIA members, and so Nebraska Wesleyan has remained in the NAIA.

"What our colleagues do will influence what we do," Kennedy said. "We are the only dual member in Nebraska and in the conference."

Nebraska Wesleyan prefers the opportunity to send individual athletes to compete in both associations' championships when schedules permit. In team sports, however, it must choose one or the other.

Complementary organizations

The NCIC's Dodson believes the NAIA and NCAA will co-exist as "complementary organizations."

"I think the NAIA is going to be a very healthy organization at about 400 to 600 institutions," he said. "It will serve the institutions that can afford only a few sports."

The NCIC always has been a conference of schools with broad-based athletics participation, Dodson said. Members schools must sponsor six varsity sports for men and six varsity sports for women. Many schools in the NAIA have only a few varsity programs, he said.

"The NAIA is serving the institutions that are unable to have broad-based programs but can be competitive in a few sports," Dodson said.

Other factors that pushed the NCIC toward the NCAA were cost of insurance for athletes, the cost of postseason competition, and the cost of developing emerging sports:

* Regarding insurance, the NCAA's catastrophic-injury insurance program protects student-athletes in competition or practice. Dodson said the NAIA is beginning to address that issue.

* As for championships, Dodson said a change in the NCIC's philosophy played a role in its desire to switch associations.

The conference historically had emphasized conference competition, choosing not to focus on national competition. The league still does not charge admission to its events, Dodson said, and it sponsors competition primarily for the enjoyment of its constituency -- students, the community and alumni. But it is now ready to permit its student-athletes to advance as far as they can in postseason competition. In that regard, they found the NCAA to be a better fit since the NAIA pays only part of the expense of championships participation, while the NCAA pays all of it.

But he said the NAIA is addressing the situation and now pays all costs for men's postseason basketball competition.

"The NAIA is making really dramatic steps to improve its postseason competition situation," he said.

* The opportunity to develop emerging sports also was an issue in the NCIC's decision to change. The NCAA has established a means for development of emerging sports, but sponsorship numbers have not been sufficient for nurturing such sports in the NAIA, Dodson said.

The NAIA is trying to solve that problem with regional competition in those sports.

Potential growth

Patterson said the NAIA's financial situation is the best that it has been in the organization's history. He said relocating the association's headquarters from Kansas City, Missouri, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, has helped.

"The move to Tulsa was a very good one," he said. "We have a lot of support here. We have community support. The sponsorship support is strong."

Dodson noted that NAIA members have been troubled for years with the cost of dues, which are substantially higher than those in NCAA Division III. But that also is changing.

"The NAIA is moving away from the phase of having to do so much with dues and moving to where they will do more with corporate sponsors. So dues will come down in time," he said.

The NAIA sees potential for growth from community colleges that are becoming four-year institutions, Patterson said. The NAIA has received inquiries from such schools.

Dodson said he sees potential for NAIA growth in Canada and what he called Caribbean schools -- those south of the United States.

Patterson said the NAIA already has some Canadian members and is receiving inquiries from more, but is not actively pursuing those schools.

"We have received interest from a few schools in Canada," Patterson said. "We already have members in British Columbia and that is where this interest is coming from. We are talking to those schools. We have some barriers such as the five-year eligibility (that is permitted in Canada)."

Dodson sees Canadian schools as a good match with the NAIA and believes the five years of eligibility allowed in Canadian colleges is not an insurmountable problem.

"They have Canadian members now and the athletes just pick the four years they will be eligible," he said.