The NCAA News - News and Features

January 13, 1997

Agents committee prepares final report to guide successor group

The NCAA Special Committee on Agents and Amateurism met for the last time December 17 to review legislation before the 1997 NCAA Convention and to discuss its final report to the NCAA Council, which created the committee last year.

Committee chair William E. Kirwan, president of the University of Maryland, College Park, said the special committee's work is not completed but rather is being reassigned.

"We have only scratched the surface of a whole lot of outstanding issues," Kirwan said. "This is a very complex, complicated issue, but we feel we have pointed the group that takes over in the right direction."

The special committee's report for the Council will include recommendations for the group that assumes its responsibilities.

With the change in the NCAA governance structure, special committees such as the agents-and-amateurism committee are being phased out and their work assigned to existing bodies within the governance structure, such as the Division I cabinets.

Formed last year

The special committee was created by the Council last January to study sports-agent issues and met for the first time in March 1996. The 22-member committee was composed of university presidents, athletics directors, faculty athletics representatives, coaches and legal counsel.

Topics under consideration by the special committee probably will come under the purview of the new Division I Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet.

Kirwan said the special committee's report will provide direction for activity by NCAA members and staff regarding future steps to take, including continuing the study of establishing trust funds for players who want to be considered for professional drafts and loans to student-athletes to enable them to remain in school.

"These are issues we considered but reached no final conclusion on," he said. "There is a lot to be carried over."

Kirwan said the special committee is recommending an aggressive effort to establish uniform state laws regulating sports agents.

In addition to the examination of agent-related issues, it is anticipated that a review of amateurism also will begin in the new governance structure.

Proposed legislation

In its review of legislation proposed for the 1997 Convention, the special committee decided that Proposal No. 62 -- which it developed -- is flawed. The committee is recommending that the Council withdraw its support of the proposal and instead support Proposal No. 63.

Proposal No. 62 would permit Division I student-athletes to earn legitimate on- and off-campus employment income during semester or term time, provided such income in combination with other financial aid included in the student-athlete's individual limit does not exceed the student's cost of attendance.

The special committee determined that the proposal is flawed because is does not exempt an institution's sport limitations.

Proposal No. 63, developed by Big East Conference schools, exempts employment earnings from counting in a student-athlete's individual full grant-in-aid limitations and the institution's sport limitations under specified conditions.