The NCAA News - News & Features

III Council steering committee amends transfer proposal

The NCAA Academic Requirements Committee had asked the steering committee to consider implications of transfer legislation proposed for the 1997 Convention by the steering committee and the NCAA Presidents Commission.

After reviewing the proposal during the Council's August 12-14 meeting, the steering committee clarified the proposed legislation to require that a student-athlete who transfers to a Division III institution shall be both academically and athletically eligible for competition at the previous institution in order to compete immediately at the Division III school.

The proposed legislation also was amended to include a student who has been declared ineligible at his or her previous institution for disciplinary reasons. If a student transferring to any NCAA institution is disqualified or suspended from the previous institution for disciplinary reasons, he or she would be required to complete one year of residence at the certifying institution before being eligible for intercollegiate athletics competition.

The legislation is not sport-specific but instead applies across the board. For example, if a student-athlete is ineligible in men's basketball, he would be ineligible to participate in intercollegiate athletics in any sport at the institution to which he is transferring until he fulfills an academic year in residence.

Circumstances that would make a student ineligible at his or her previous institution could include exhaustion of the final season of competition available in that division, failure to meet continuing-eligibility requirements in that division (such as for satisfactory progress), or disciplinary reasons.

In reviewing other proposed legislation, the steering committee:

* Amended a proposal regarding the structure for Division III sports committees with championships administration responsibilities. The revision alters the definition of athletics administrators to exclude coaches in that sport.

The steering committee also recommends that the percentage of positions on each committee to be filled by athletics administrators be increased to 50 percent for team sports committees and left at 25 percent in individual sports.

The Division III Task Force to Review the NCAA Membership Structure had recommended that 50 percent of positions on all sports committees be allocated for athletics administrators.

The task force wanted a greater number of athletics administrators who are not coaches in that sport to serve on championships committees. By changing the definition of athletics administrators, that objective would be reached.

* Opposed a recommendation by the NCAA Legislative Review Committee to eliminate the terms "traditional" and "nontraditional" from Bylaw 17 as part of the bylaw simplification process.

The Legislative Review Committee recommended eliminating references to traditional and nontraditional segments to simplify playing-and-practice-season legislation in each sport. The Divisions I and II Steering Committees supported the recommendation but the Division III Steering Committee is recommending that the terms be retained for Division III.

* Declined for the second time to support legislation to permit a student who wants to attend a graduate school at an institution different from the one he or she attended as an undergraduate to compete if the student has eligibility remaining. Divisions I and II approved similar legislation at the 1996 Convention.

The steering committee expressed a desire to keep the focus in Division III on competition at the undergraduate level and to avoid the recruitment of graduate students.

* Agreed to sponsor legislation proposed by the the Division III Task Force to Review the NCAA Membership Structure to increase sports-sponsorship requirements for Division III institutions and conferences from four men's and four women's sports to five each, and to increase team-sports-sponsorship requirements from two men's and two women's team sports to three each.

* Endorsed legislation proposed by the NCAA Special Committee on Agents and Amateurism and the NCAA Communications Committee to ease restrictions on student-athletes regarding activities related to radio, television, film and stage, and writing projects.

The steering committee went beyond the recommendations in Divisions I and II to state that students should be permitted to engage in such activities any time, not just in the off-season, and should be permitted to receive payment commensurate with the going rate for such activities. The steering committee also said the legislation should allow the student's name to be used in conjunction with the activities, provided the student's status as a student-athlete is not used for promotional purposes.