The NCAA News - News and Features

December 15, 1997

Big Sky offers members training in enforcement process

The Big Sky Conference recently offered its members a rare in-depth look at the NCAA enforcement process through a training session that attracted observers from several other Division I conferences.

The Big Sky presented the one-day seminar November 3 to help member institutions prepare for involvement in enforcement proceedings.

"The purpose of this training was to present information to members of the Big Sky Conference about the intricacies of the enforcement process and the need for them to do some preplanning so that, in the event they are ever investigated, they will have a procedure in place to handle it," said Katherine E. Noble, Big Sky associate commissioner, who organized the session.

"As I talked to other conference folks and determined that many are not providing training opportunities in this way, I decided to invite Division I conference compliance coordinators."

Twelve representatives of other conferences were among the 68 participants in the session, which also attracted legal counsels, vice-presidents, athletics directors, senior woman administrators, faculty athletics representatives and compliance coordinators from the nine Big Sky member schools.

Representatives of the NCAA enforcement staff -- including S. David Berst, NCAA group executive director for enforcement and student-athlete reinstatement -- also attended to present information to registrants and participate in discussion.

The Big Sky gathering was the first session of its kind in which the NCAA enforcement staff has been invited to participate.

The training session began with a forum conducted from a case study.

"The forum was our attempt to show how complex a case becomes, with its twists and turns," Noble said. "It had elements of a couple of cases that have involved conference institutions, and presented several ethical dilemmas for people to sort out.

"Our purpose was to show (participants) how much there is to the process, and the value of developing a plan for their institutions now, before they need to implement it."

The session also featured two panel discussions.

One focused on how to determine self-imposed penalties and corrective actions in the enforcement process, institutional cooperation in the process, and how to process secondary violations during an investigation.

Berst participated in the discussion along with Richard R. Hilliard, NCAA director of enforcement, and Cynthia J. Gabel, NCAA enforcement representative II. Other panel participants were David Thompson, assistant commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and David Price, associate commissioner of the Pacific-10 Conference.

The second panel discussion featured representatives of three Big Sky institutions who discussed their schools' experiences in the enforcement process and offered advice for other schools in the league.

"The last panel was very candid and talked about the good and the bad in the process, and provided very good advice for their peers in the event they find themselves in the same situation," Noble said.

One conference school also shared a plan it has developed for use in the event of involvement in a major enforcement investigation.

The session was the third training event organized in the past two years for Big Sky institutions. Previous sessions focused on financial aid and on continuing and transfer eligibility.

The sessions, scheduled in conjunction with the Big Sky's fall meetings, are designed to offer training not otherwise available to member schools.

Noble, who serves on the Division I Infractions Appeals Committee, decided to offer training about the enforcement process after attending a 1996 NCAA compliance seminar that featured an enforcement session. She realized that schools in her conference needed assistance in preparing for involvement in enforcement proceedings.