The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- November 9, 1998

Automatic-qualification proposal approved in I-AA football

The Division I-AA Football Governance Committee approved a proposal pertaining to automatic qualification to the Division I-AA Football Championship during its October 18 meeting in Indianapolis.

The committee approved and forwarded to the Division I Board of Directors Proposal No. 98-84, which specifies that in order to be eligible for automatic qualification, a Division I-AA football conference that subdivides into five or more teams must conduct a single round-robin competition with each subdivision and develop a formula to determine its conference champion. The proposal does not require a postseason conference championship game to be conducted.

The committee also agreed to support Proposal No. 98-91 regarding individual skill-related instruction and weekly hour limitations in Divisions I-A and I-AA football. The commit-tee's support was contingent upon support from Division I-A, which subsequently was gained at the Division I Management Council's October 19-20 meeting.

In other actions regarding proposed legislation, the committee declined to give second approval to Proposal No. 98-39, which would have permitted simultaneous telecasting of regular-season Division I-AA football games on Friday nights.

The committee also tabled until January Proposal No. 98-90, which would eliminate preseason exempted football games after the 2002 playing season and would, beginning with the 2002 season, permit a 12th regular-season game in years in which there are 14 Saturdays from the first permissible playing date through the last playing date in November. That proposal subsequently was given initial approval by the Division I-A members of the Management Council.

In other communication issues, members of the I-AA governance group and members of the Division I-AA Football Committee will meet at the 1999 NCAA Convention to discuss the I-AA championship and the roles of both groups.