Though the agendas for the Division I Management Council and the Board of Directors will be light on legislative matters, several issues still will merit discussion during the groups' meetings at the NCAA Convention in San Diego.

The Management Council will meet from 1 to 6 p.m. on Friday, January 7; from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, January 8; and from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday, January 9. The Council also will meet with the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee from 8 to 10 a.m. January 9. The Board of Directors will convene from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, January 11. The Board and the Council will conduct a joint meeting from noon to 2 p.m. Monday, January 10, to discuss common issues.

The meetings will be the first since the new governance structure was implemented in 1997 that do not call for a review of proposed legislation. The new Division I legislative calendar, which was approved last summer, provides for the Management Council to consider legislation twice annually (October and April) and allows the Council to review only emergency, noncontroversial legislation at its January and July meetings.

There are three pieces of emergency, noncontroversial legislation to be considered by the Council for this meeting, all of which regard core-course requirements for initial eligibility. The three proposals are designed to be consistent with current trends in the secondary education reform movement. The proposals, No. 99-46 (No. 18 in Division II), No. 99-47 (Division I only) and No. 99-48 (No. 17 in Division II) have been initially approved by the Council. However, the Council agreed that the proposals should be reviewed again in January for possible adoption because of concerns that April adoption would not allow adequate notification to high schools of the new standards. The proposals, if approved, will become effective August 1, 2000 (for those student-athletes first entering a college on or after August 1, 2000).

Committee reports

Other items on the Council's agenda will be reports from several committees, including the Committee on Women's Athletics, which is recommending that the Council sponsor two pieces of legislation regarding women's sports -- one that would exempt the emerging sport of women's bowling from the requirement that a minimum of 40 institutions sponsor the sport in order to be classified as a championship sport; and another that would create an Association-wide rules committee for volleyball. The committee also is recommending that the NCAA allocate additional funding for officiating clinics in volleyball and soccer.

A report from the Committee on Financial Aid includes recommendations regarding proposed legislation that the Council had referred to the committee. The committee is recommending that the Council support two proposals submitted by the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues. One, Proposal No. 99-120-A, would allow athletically related financial aid during summer school before initial enrollment for men's and women's basketball student-athletes. The committee believes that the proposal would provide institutions with another mechanism to improve retention and graduation rates by providing student-athletes an opportunity to become acclimated to academics and other demands associated with attending college.

The committee also is recommending that the Council support Proposal No. 99-121-A, which would establish an incentive-based financial aid model that would determine an institution's men's basketball team limits based on each school's four-year graduation rate.

Action in April

Those two proposals are part of a larger basketball issues package that contains 14 proposals from the basketball working group and other alternative proposals from various Division I conferences. The Council approved the working group proposals and seven alternative conference proposals in October to initiate the comment period without taking an official position on the package as a whole or on any individual proposal. The Council will review other alternative proposals submitted by conferences and will be able to forward those proposals to the membership for comment, with a second Council in review in April, along with the other proposals considered in October.

The Council also will look to the Division I forum January 10 for some indication of membership position on the proposals.

The basketball issues package is one of two topics that will be debated during the forum. The other is an amateurism deregulation package of six legislative proposals that include an expansion of the "tennis rule" to other sports, as well as deregulation of legislation restricting contractual agreements with professional sports teams, and pay and compensation or prize money for athletics participation before college enrollment.

The Council expects to use the forum to gauge the membership's stance on each of those packages, particularly the basketball proposals, before its next legislative meeting in April.

The Board of Directors will receive a status report on the basketball issues package during its January meeting, though it will not be taking action on the proposals until April.

Other items expected to be on the Board's agenda include an update on initial-eligibility issues from the Division I consultants, as well as a report on the tentative allocation of Division I funds for the 2000-01 budget.