National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- April 12, 1999

Court ruling prompts Councils to review eligibility standards

The bombshell legal decision that struck down Proposition 16 may have been directed at Division I, but the impact has been close enough to be felt in Division II.

The result is that both the Division II Management Council and Presidents Council will devote substantial segments of their April meetings to reviewing Division II initial-eligibility standards and their effects on student-athletes.

The Management Council will meet April 12-13 in Newport Beach, California, while the Presidents Council will meet April 20 in Washington, D.C.

Division II initial-eligibility standards are different from those in Division I in a number of ways, although both do involve the use of core courses, grade-point averages and standardized test scores. However, Division II does not use the "sliding scale" employed by Division I. Instead, to be a qualifier in Division II, a prospective student-athlete must have a cumulative grade-point average of 2.000 in 13 core courses and an SAT score of 820 or an ACT sum score of 68.

On March 8, U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter ruled that Proposition 16 has an illegal disparate impact on African-Americans and ruled that the current use of standardized test scores in Division I is illegal.

To date, most research about NCAA initial-eligibility standards has focused on Division I's Proposition 16. At their April meetings, the Division II Management and Presidents Councils will be provided with fresh research that examines how Division II standards affect different subsets of the student-athlete population.

Both groups also will be provided with a review of how Division II initial-eligibility standards have evolved.

Other business

The Management and Presidents Councils also are expected to take their first look at the 1999-00 Division II budget in a report from the Division II Budget and Finance Committee. That group met April 2, at which time it also examined the division's unallocated surplus and continued its review of the implementation of the new distribution plan for the Division II enhancement fund.

Another major topic to be addressed at the April governance meetings will be the division's latest efforts involving legislative deregulation.

The deregulation plan for the next Convention focuses on Bylaws 11 (personnel) and 13 (recruiting).

The Division II Legislation Committee, which is overseeing the deregulation effort, met April 8-9. If the Management Council accepts the deregulation proposals from the Legislation Committee, it could forward a legislative package to the Presidents Council for sponsorship at the 2000 NCAA Convention.

Both the Management and Presidents Councils also will review the 1999 Convention.

Part of that review will include assessing the membership's responses to a survey that examined the Convention from Association-wide (honors dinner, keynote address, state of the Association address) and Division II (issues forum, chief executive officer forum, business session discussions) perspectives.

The results will be analyzed further by the Convention Planning Project Team, which is charged with enhancing the value of the annual Convention.

Other topics for the April governance meetings include a review of how often Division II committees are meeting and a first look at the Association's diversity audit.