National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - News and Features

April 13, 1998

Agendas for spring meetings set for Management Councils

Division I

Division I considers cabinet reports, budget

The Division I Management Council will address a light legislative agenda during its April 14-15 meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The Management Council will hear reports from each of the four cabinets, all of which have met since the last Management Council meeting. It also will conduct a preliminary examination of budget issues.

With regard to the cabinets, the Championships/Competition Cabinet has forwarded to the Management Council a proposal to expand brackets in several sports. Championships that would be affected if the recommendations are approved are baseball (from 48 teams to 64), women's volleyball (from 56 teams to 64), women's soccer (from 32 teams to 48), women's softball (from 32 teams to 48), and men's and women's cross country (from fields of 184 to 255 in each championship).

Because the expansions have significant budget ramifications, the Division I Business/Finance Cabinet reported that it supported in concept the principle of bracket expansion but agreed to defer any recommendations until its summer meeting, when it will be easier to determine how much funding (if any) is available for championship expansion and enhancement. Those recommendations, along with proposals for format changes in several championships, likely will be considered again at the Management Council's summer meetings.

Among the proposals submitted by conferences for initial approval is one from the Pacific-10 Conference, No. 98-33, that would delete the requirement (Bylaw 4.8.1) that no subdivision of Division I shall have more than 50 percent representation on any committee.

The 50 percent rule was established by Proposal No. 32 at the 1997 NCAA Convention. It states that apart from the Division I Board of Directors, the Management Council, any of the four cabinets or football-related committees, no subdivision is to have more than half of the representatives on any Division I committee.

The bylaw states that exceptions can be granted only by approval of 85 percent of the Board of Directors (or the Management Council, if it is granted such authority by the Board). However, the bylaw itself can be amended by a simple majority of the Management Council and the Board through the Division I legislative process.

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference has proposed an amendment to Bylaw 22.2.1 (Proposal No. 98-39) that would permit simultaneous telecasting or cablecasting of regular-season Division I-AA intercollegiate football games on Friday nights.

Also, the Midwestern Collegiate Conference has submitted a proposal (No. 98-41) that would permit an institution to provide the value of a full grant to a foreign student-athlete and, in addition, to pay the foreign student's withholding tax to the federal government.

A major nonlegislative item to be considered is the review of results from a survey of the Division I membership about the annual NCAA Convention.

A total of 494 individuals responded to the survey, which was designed to aid with planning the Division I program for future Conventions and to determine the effects of the new governance structure on attendance at the next Convention.

The survey results were inconclusive about attendance at the 1999 Convention, with 44.8 percent of those responding saying they had not determined whether they would attend.

Division II

Division II looks at championships policy revisions

Proposed revisions of Division II championships policies -- including a recommendation to eliminate the geographic-proximity policy -- are among agenda items that will be considered by the Division II Management Council during its April 14-15 meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The Division II Championships Committee, responding to a "straw vote" at the 1998 Convention, is recommending that the geographic-proximity policy be eliminated effective with 1999-2000 championships. That action would permit a No. 1-seeded team that meets other criteria to serve as a championship host regardless of the location of its campus.

Division II sports committees currently are required to select sites that are in closest proximity to participating institutions, regardless of the participants' rankings. The only exceptions occur in football, in which first-round pairings are based on seeding, and men's and women's basketball, in which committees can select either a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed as a regional host.

The Championships Committee prefers to wait until 1999-2000 to change the policy in order to make budgetary adjustments to support the action and to give sports committees time to establish criteria that ensure championships sites will continue to have adequate, available facilities and sufficient revenue potential.

The committee estimates that elimination of the policy will result in additional annual championship costs of between $33,000 and $86,000, based on amounts saved during the past five years as a result of the policy.

Other proposed revisions of championships policies include elimination of Bylaw 31.3.3.4, which requires Division II sports committees to select the official conference representative determined through regular-season competition or a conference tournament for a championship before it selects any other team from that conference, and adoption of a requirement that at-large selections for a championship have at least a .500 won-lost record in regular-season competition.

The Management Council also will consider the following in Orlando:

  • Recommendations by the Division II Membership Committee to assess a $2,500 application fee for provisional membership and establish a June 15 application deadline date for institutions seeking provisional membership during the coming academic year.

    The Membership Committee also is asking the Management Council to support proposed legislation requiring new active members to wait three years before receiving distributions from the Division II enhancement fund (in addition to the four-year provisional-membership period).

  • The question of whether to propose legislation to require Division II institutions to appoint a senior woman administrator.

  • A request by the Division II Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement for clarification of issues to be addressed in a review of the amateur status of Division II student-athletes (particularly international student-athletes).

  • Recommendations by the Division II Legislation Committee to support proposed legislation that would (1) permit student-athletes to receive a permissible outside educational award directly from the awarding agency before initial enrollment at an institution; (2) permit complimentary admissions for a student-athletes' two guests and spouse to an annual awards banquet; and (3) permit the provision of "reasonable" refreshments once per year at educational events involving the parents of student-athletes.

  • A recommendation by the Division II Committee on Infractions that the Division II Presidents Council's liaison to the committee serve in an advisory role and observe hearings, but not participate in infractions case deliberations or decisions.

    The Management Council also will receive reports from various other Association-wide and Division II committees, including the Division II Academic Requirements, Budget and Finance, Nominating, and Student-Athlete Advisory Committees, and from Divi-sion II project teams reviewing diversity and student-athlete involvement in Division II governance.

    Division III

    Division III considers larger football championship

    Among the many issues to be reviewed by the Division III Management Council at its April 14-15 meeting are the expansion of the division's football championship, the provisional-membership application process and the graduate student one-time transfer exception.

    The Division III Management Council is expected to review a recommendation from the Division III Championships Committee to expand the number of teams participating in postseason football contests from 16 to 24, effective with the 1998 championship.

    The Championships Committee has recommended this expansion in which 16 teams would continue to play in a national championship, and eight teams would participate in four bowl games. The recommendation is for the 1998 and 1999 championships only, and the committee would continue to examine the future possibility of a 24-team, five-week national championship.

    The Management Council is expected to review several other recommendations by the Championships Committee, including proposed revisions to the Division III national-championships selection principles and the requirements for conference automatic qualification.

    The Management Council is expected to review recommendations from the Division III Membership Committee regarding the provisional-membership application process as well as the final draft of the revised Institutional Self-Study Guide (ISSG). The Management Council also is expected to approve a provisional-membership application fee of $2,500.

    The Management Council also will review the Division III strategic plan, specifically examining how committees have identified their individual timelines and priorities for their work over the next two years. The Management Council also will consider a recommendation by the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee that a statement referring to minority equity and diversity be included in the mission statement section of the Division III strategic plan.

    The Management Council is expected to review a recommendation from the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) regarding the graduate student one-time transfer exception. The SAAC has recommended that the Management Council sponsor legislation to permit Division III graduate student-athletes to use the one-time transfer exceptions in limited circumstances (for example, medical reasons, financial hardship, earning of a baccalaureate degree in less than four years, never having competed in intercollegiate athletics) to complete graduate work and compete athletically at a Division III institution.

    It also is anticipated that the Management Council will review recommendations from the Division III Interpretations and Legislation Committee regarding deregulation efforts for Division III.