The NCAA News - News & Features

Administrative Review Panel offers flexible approach

BY SALLY HUGGINS
Staff Writer

The creators of the NCAA Administrative Review Panel sought a means to provide flexibility in using what is often considered an inflexible document -- the more than 500 pages of rules and regulations in the NCAA Manual_.

The feeling was that special circumstances sometimes warrant special consideration and an exception to the rules.

If volume is any indication, the Administrative Review Panel is proving useful since panel members have reviewed more than 1,300 cases since its inception in 1993.

The Administrative Review Panel was approved at the 1993 NCAA Convention to provide the desired flexibility in the application of NCAA legislation.

Proposed by the NCAA Council as a result of recommendations by the Special Committee to Review NCAA Legislative Procedures, the panel was created to review appeals by member institutions of decisions made by an NCAA committee or the NCAA staff regarding application of legislation to a particular situation.

James Frank, commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, said he believes the panel he chairs accomplishes its objective. Frank has been a member of the panel since its inception and has seen it review a variety of waiver requests.

"It does provide a kind of sensitivity to the different, unusual circumstances that surround each student-athlete," he said.

The panel accepts waiver requests stemming from bylaws in the Manual that address such areas as determining when a student-athlete's five-year clock begins, transfer eligibility, financial aid, amateur status, satisfactory progress and recruiting.

Eligibility-restoration requests and infractions matters are not handled by the panel. NCAA legislation specifically excludes decisions of the NCAA Committee on Infractions and NCAA Eligibility Committee from the purview of the Administrative Review Panel.

In addition, the panel itself has taken the position that when an NCAA committee has expertise in a certain area, that committee should be allowed to make a decision without being overruled by the panel, said Carrie A. Doyle, NCAA director of eligibility and staff liaison to the panel. Under that philosophy, the panel does not consider waiver requests regarding decisions of the NCAA Academic Requirements Committee or the Council Subcommittee on Initial-Eligibility Waivers.

Contact staff

Member institutions desiring a waiver may contact the NCAA eligibility staff, which will send via fax an Administrative Review Panel waiver application and guidelines to the institution. A waiver request must be submitted on the appropriate form, with relevant documentation -- such as medical documents, educational transcripts or game schedules -- attached.

Once a waiver application is received at the national office, it is assigned to a legislative assistant who prepares a fact sheet concerning the waiver request. The fact sheet -- which is used by panel members in reviewing a case -- accompanies the application and pinpoints the NCAA bylaw in question, and includes a history of the student's educational-participation history, facts about the case, application of the legislation, comments from the applicant as to why the waiver should be granted, and a listing of precedents from similar waiver applications.

"Our staff doesn't make a recommendation, but it sets out the pertinent facts and lists any prior cases that may help the panel in its analysis of a particular case," Doyle said.

The panel's membership includes a former member of the Committee on Infractions, a former member of the Eligibility Committee, a past president of the Association (Frank) and two other members. Those individuals receive a package each week of five to 20 waiver applications.

After the panel members review the materials submitted for each appeal, the members make a determination individually and mail the individual votes to the Association, which compiles the results. The majority rules in each case. A telephone conference call occurs only at the request of the panel members.

The panel response form often includes brief comments from panel members explaining their decision, which helps the eligibility staff when it writes a letter to the applicant institution stating whether the application has been granted or denied.

In very limited situations, the panel will give the staff authority to make a decision without sending the application to the panel members, Doyle said. For example, the staff received several requests for a restricted-earnings coach to be allowed to recruit off campus during the July evaluation period because the head coach was involved with the Atlanta Olympics. The panel granted one of those requests and then authorized the staff to respond to subsequent requests, as long as they were substantially similar.

In reaching a decision, the panel considers the purpose and intent of the involved legislation, the welfare of the student-athlete, possible competitive or recruiting advantages and other factors it considers relevant. The panel strives for consistency in treating issues involving similar circumstances.

Early concerns

When the panel first was proposed, concern was expressed about the potential for inconsistent application of legislation. Other concerns included an increased potential for litigation and the possibility of large numbers of waiver requests.

In sponsoring the legislation, the Council acknowledged those concerns but noted that similar reservations were voiced when the initial-eligibility waiver process was contemplated. It said that those concerns proved unfounded.

Concerns about the large number of waiver requests, however, may yet prove to be well-founded.

In 1993 -- its first year of existence -- the panel reviewed 229 cases. In 1995, the panel considered 439 appeals.

Frank said the original estimate was that the panel would review about 10 cases a month. As member institutions have learned about the panel's existence and what it does, the waiver requests have increased tremendously, he said.

Even so, Frank does not find the responsibility of reviewing all the cases unduly burdensome. It can be problematic if a weekly packet of waiver requests arrives at his office while he is on the road, but his staff forwards the materials via express mail and he reviews the cases in his hotel room.

"The large number of cases keeps the panel quite busy," Frank said. "You have to fit it in around your other duties, but it is not burdensome.

"We do try to get decisions made as quickly as possible."

Doyle estimates that the turnaround time from the point a waiver request is received until a decision is made is two to three weeks.

It takes about a week for the legislative services staff to research a request and prepare the fact sheet. A packet of waiver requests with fact sheets generally are sent out each Tuesday, and it takes panel members about a week to review them and send decisions to the staff via fax.