One of the casualties of the NCAA's federated structure in Division I is that the annual Convention doesn't mean what it used to. No longer are delegates required to convene and debate on the Convention floor, because legislative changes are being handled at the Management Council and Board of Directors level throughout the year instead of in one fell swoop.

The fallout is that Division I attendance at the Convention -- particularly for CEOs -- has dropped. In 1999, just 15 Division I presidents attended.

Division I has tried to modify its Convention schedule to attract attendees. Discussion forums, such as one conducted last year on basketball issues, have helped some. More are planned this year on amateurism and basketball issues. Conferences have been encouraged to conduct meetings at the Convention site as well, but so far, all those efforts haven't attracted the numbers like the old Convention did.

"It's true that the Convention isn't the same," said Kenneth A. Shaw, chancellor at Syracuse University. "The question is how do we find a Convention that's meaningful to Division I participants? We're working on that."

The fact that delegates no longer feel compelled to attend the Convention leads to another criticism of the structure in general: People who don't vote on legislation at the Convention feel they're not part of the structure.

"There's a tendency to feel 'I'm dealt out of the decision-making, where I was involved before.' " Shaw said. "But I'm not quite sure how to relate to that because when you had all of Division I trying to make a decision on the floor, you might feel that you're a part of it, but what are you really a part of? Either you're a part of decisions that already have been made that passed through effortlessly or you're part of a discussion that never ends."

Another concern is that debate on the Convention floor had a chance to carry the day on legislative matters whereas debate at the Council and Board level is diluted because of directed voting from conferences.

"I liked the Convention floor, and I think many people miss that," said University of Oklahoma athletics director Joseph Castiglione. "Sure, there are some who don't, but it gave people a chance to advocate their position when there was a vote at stake."

The only time votes will be at stake now is in the case of an override, which has yet to happen. Even then, the severity of the issue could have a lot to do with the number of people willing to travel to cast their vote.

Perhaps more than anything, Division I's withdrawal from the "Conventional" format has taken away the one event that most unified the Association. So much of the Convention was the camaraderie outside the meeting rooms, the informal discussions, the lobbying and the by-chance meetings in the hallways that transcended divisional ties.

That, at least at the Convention, went out when the new structure came in.

"But in this era of litigiousness and the complexity of certain issues, we can't really return to a system of governance by holding up hundreds of paddles," said Board of Directors Chair Graham B. Spanier, president at Pennsylvania State University.

"We're no longer a small organization," Shaw said. "We make decisions now -- they may not always be good ones, but we make them and we do so in a timely way. We identify the issues and we go after them."

-- Gary T. Brown