The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- October 12, 1998

Division I -- WAC split leads to changes among Division I cabinets

The affected representatives are Chris Hill, director of athletics at the University of Utah and chair of the Championships/Competition Cabinet, and Barbara Lockhart, faculty athletics representative at Brigham Young University and a member of the Strategic Planning Cabinet.

Myron Terry of Colorado State University, a member of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, also will resign.

The conference will select replacements for the two resigning cabinet members and a new representative to the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee will be appointed through the Division I committee nomination process.

The action is part of a resolution reached by the WAC's board of directors after eight institutions announced their intention to form a new conference. One of the conditions of the resolution that would allow the eight departing presidents to resign their positions as conference board members but retain membership in the WAC was that committee members from the departing institutions would be required to relinquish their positions.

Attached to the resolution, however, was an appeal process that allowed members representing those institutions to seek to retain their positions. Appeals by the members of committees (other than the cabinets and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee) were granted by the conference.

The WAC, in accordance with NCAA bylaws, has the authority to replace cabinet representatives since they are appointed to represent the conference's interests. In contrast to the conference-representative structure legislated for the composition of the Board of Directors, Management Council, the four cabinets and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, the composition of other NCAA committees is not based upon specific conference representation.

Besides Hill and Lockhart, all other WAC representatives on the Management Council and cabinets are from institutions that will remain in the league and, therefore, are not required to resign. Carol C. Harter, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, already resigned her position with the Board of Directors in August.