The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- July 19, 1999

Championships looks for consistency in enhancements

The Division II Championships Committee has recommended that funding be provided for the development of a mementos program for Division II championships.

The committee, which met June 30-July 3 in Traverse City, Michigan, believes that the provision of mementos to Division II championships participants has varied too much from locale to locale. While some hosts have provided appropriate and meaningful mementoes, others have provided nothing at all.

Further, participants in the men's and women's basketball championships receive watches as part of the NCAA awards program, a benefit that is not available to participants in other sports.

For those reasons, the Championships Committee concluded that a mementos program should be created to bring more equity to the championship experience for all Division II student-athletes.

The committee estimates that the program will cost $176,000 to implement in 2000-01. A proposal will be forwarded to the Division II Management Council for consideration at its July meeting.

The Championships Committee based its actions at the recent meeting on a draft of the Division II strategic plan. Although that plan will not be formally adopted until later this year, the committee believed that the tentative goals were clear enough that they provided a basis for action.

Most of the committee's recommendations related to three parts of the strategic plan: enhancing student-athlete welfare, greater access to championships and fiscal responsibility.

The recommendation about championships mementos was the primary item relating to student-athlete welfare. The committee also recommended that representatives of the Division II Championships Committee meet with the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to identify other ways in which the Division II championships experience could be enhanced. In a related recommendation, the committee recommended development of a post-championship survey that would give championships participants an opportunity to evaluate their experience.

Fiscal responsibility

The committee also made several recommendations relating to fiscal responsibility.

Perhaps most notably, the committee asked for an evaluation of the financial ramifications of paying some additional expenses for championships participants who desire to stay through the conclusion of a championship that concludes on a Saturday (even though the participants may have concluded competition earlier in the week). Current policy permits such participants to stay through the conclusion of the event at the expense of their institution.

The committee wants to determine whether the Association could benefit in two ways by paying for participants to stay until Sunday.

The first would be that the athletes would be able to view the championship through its conclusion, thus enhancing their experience. The second would be that airline tickets would be significantly less expensive if they covered a Saturday night stay -- perhaps enough to more than cover the cost of an extra night of lodging.

The committee acknowledged the concern that implementation of such an option could result in missed class time for some student-athletes, but it noted that the athletes would have missed classes anyway had they remained in competition through Saturday.

In another fiscal matter, the committee developed a recommendation regarding how independent institutions will be treated under the conference cham-pionship prong of the Division II enhancement fund. Part of the new formula, adopted last year, splits $1 million among Division II members based on the number of championships conducted by their conferences.

Because independent institutions do not participate in conference championships, a need existed to develop a way to provide them access to that portion of the fund.

After a lengthy discussion, the committee agreed to recommend to the Management Council that independent institutions share a total equal to the smallest conference-championship allocation.

For example, if there are 20 independent institutions in Division II and the conference with the fewest conference championships is entitled to $20,000, then each Division II independent institution would receive $1,000 from this segment of the enhancement fund ($20,000 divided by 20).

On other matters relating to fiscal matters, the committee: