The actions occurred during the Council's legislative meeting April 9-10 in Indianapolis.

The Council also dealt with significant issues in basketball -- including passage of Proposal No. 2000-106 regarding certified contests -- and gave initial approval to legislative proposals that would give student-athlete representatives on various Division I and Association-wide committees the right to vote.

The postenrollment amateurism proposals the Council supported and forwarded to the Board of Directors would permit enrolled student-athletes to engage in fee-for-lesson employment; provide for NCAA payment of student-athlete disability insurance premiums; allow prospects and student-athletes to accept Operation Gold money for place finish in events such as the Olympics; and permit student-athletes to arrange for loans based on future potential earnings as a professional athlete. All four proposals were part of the original amateurism package the Council sent out for comment in October.

The loan program is significant in that it provides an incentive for prospects who are potential first- or second-round draft picks in men's and women's basketball, football, baseball and men's ice hockey to complete their college careers before turning professional. Prospects could qualify for the opportunity to obtain a loan of up to $20,000 over a five-year period if they meet the criteria for the NCAA's disability insurance program and obtain such insurance. The value of the loan is comparable to the value of outside financial aid (Pell Grant and employment) that some student-athletes may have available above the value of educational expenses to cover miscellaneous expenses during four years.

NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey said that while it might be difficult to speculate how this would help keep high-profile student-athletes from leaving college early to turn professional, it does provide some opportunities for prospective student-athletes to weigh whether they're seriously interested in pursuing a college education.

"We've had indication in the past from student-athletes who have said that had they had some additional dollars to assist them through their collegiate career, they would rather have stayed in college," Dempsey said.

The proposal to allow the NCAA to pay disability insurance premiums assists in the elimination of a method agents use as an inducement for elite athletes to sign with them. The Association would pay for the premiums rather than the current program that provides student-athletes with a loan for the premium amount.

The fee-for-lesson legislation is subject to the current $2,000 cap on employment earnings for student-athletes during the academic year. The fees also must be commensurate with the going rate in the locality for work performed.

Charles Harris, chair of the Council and commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, said the postenrollment proposals provide greater sensitivity to the needs of student-athletes.

"We're trying to recognize the demands on their time, the expectations and the pressures they face as it relates to their future, and trying to measure that against some professional demands that may be ahead of them," Harris said. "In that regard, the Council has passed four specific items that will have what we believe is a positive impact on those student-athletes."

Pre-enrollment issues

Though the amateurism proposals dealing with postenrollment passed through the Council largely intact and without much debate, the pre-enrollment package the Council reviewed had changed from the package presented during the Division I forum at the January Convention. As a result, the Council agreed to re-circulate the proposals and amendments to the membership for comment.

Membership concerns had prompted the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet and its Agents and Amateurism Subcommittee to suggest amendments to the package, the most significant of which perhaps is that men's and women's basketball be removed from the mix for a two-year period. The cabinet determined that because of the unique issues in basketball, more time was necessary to develop appropriate measures for that sport.

Also, the so-called "organized-competition rule" was revised to require prospects who participate in more than one year of specified types of organized competition after high-school graduation to forfeit all Division I eligibility. The original proposal was based on a one-for-one trade-off between years of organized competition and years of eligibility. The amendment is intended to address concerns that institutions might enroll "ringers" with only one year of eligibility remaining.

Another amendment calls for prospects who attend high schools that sponsor their sport to be prohibited from accepting compensation for participation in that sport until after high-school graduation. The amendment addresses concerns from the high-school community that high-school athletes might be enticed to leave their high-school athletics program to compete on an outside team.

A third amendment deals with educational expenses (Proposal No. 2000-47-1). The revised legislation would restrict the acceptance of educational expenses to only post-high-school (preparatory school), pre-college enrollment. Again, high schools had been concerned that allowing high-school athletes to accept educational expenses would result in the "stacking" of private high-school teams.

The amended package still has at its core the provisions to allow prospective student-athletes in sports other than men's and women's basketball to enter a professional draft and be drafted, sign a contract for athletics participation, compete with professionals, accept prize money based on place finish and accept compensation for athletics participation.

"We believe the amendments offer substantive changes that are more conservative and will tighten up areas that the membership has found problematic," said Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet Chair David Knight in his presentation to the Council.

Knight, who is the faculty athletics representative at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, also said the cabinet believes the severity of problems associated with basketball exceed those in other sports and require additional time for study.

As it did in October when it reviewed the original set of amateurism proposals, the Council sent the revised package to the membership without taking a position on it or on any individual proposal. The Council will see the proposals again at its next legislative meeting in October. The Board of Directors has indicated it will likely act on the pre-enrollment package in the fall, after receiving a presentation during the summer meeting.

As for the postenrollment proposals, they are headed to the Board for possible adoption later this month. The effective date for the fee-for-lesson, loan program and insurance premium proposals would be August 1, 2002, while the Operation Gold proposal could become effective immediately.

Basketball issues

Along with the amateurism package, basketball issues received a good deal of Council attention. In particular, the proposal to change the way basketball contests are counted garnered intense scrutiny.

Though four amendments to Proposal No. 2000-106 were offered, the Council in the end approved the original proposal and forwarded it to the Board for adoption (effective date of August 1, 2002).

What the proposal does is establish a 29-game regular season for basketball (up from 28) and require schools to count participation in all games toward maximum contest limits. Teams could participate in either one informal scrimmage against a four-year collegiate institution or one exhibition contest against a non-Division I four-year college before the regular playing season.

That means institutions that choose to participate in an eight-team, single-elimination tournament during the regular season, for example, would be required to count as many as three games (the maximum number of games it could play in the tournament) toward its limit of games instead of one as is currently allowed. Conference postseason tournaments would continue to count as one contest.

The proposal, which had stirred much debate since being formally submitted to the Council in October 2000, also generated discussion on the Council floor during the April meeting. Of the four amendments offered, three were defeated and one was withdrawn. The failed amendments would have continued exceptions currently in place for single-elimination preseason events or for games played in tournaments hosted by the University of Hawaii, Manoa, or would have moved the effective date of the proposal to 2010. A fourth amendment, which was withdrawn, would have increased the number of permissible games to 30 and increased the playing season from 136 days to 143 days.

The Council cited competitive-equity concerns, as well as a concern about the varied number of regular-season games available to institutions, as the primary reasons for passing the proposal. Proposal No. 2000-106 addresses those concerns by setting a uniform number of permissible games for all institutions.

Harris also said the Council favored the proposal because it eliminates the process for certifying events, which the group believed had become fraught with caveats.

"We've seen the number of certified contests grow," Harris said. "And while those contests may have various meanings to various people, for managers of athletics programs, this area has been an issue of equity as far as access is concerned."

Harris said it was important to note that while the proposal eliminates the certification process, it does not eliminate the events, which opponents of the proposal had argued it would.

"The issue now," Harris said, "is whether teams that participate wish to commit the number of games that they have available to play in them."

The proposal passed by a six-vote margin. Interestingly, nine Divisions I-AA and I-AAA conferences, leagues that opponents of the proposal claimed would be hurt by its passage, voted in favor. In fact, had it been up to Division I-A alone to carry the day on the proposal, it would have failed. While the majority of Division I-A supported the measure, the proposal would not have passed had it not been for the Divisions I-AA and I-AAA votes.

"The process was one that engaged our entire membership," Harris said. "No matter how people wish to interpret the reasons for passing this proposal, the fact of the matter is that the clear sense of the folks charged with reviewing this matter -- and in this case taking a vote -- was that, if anything, we have the need to establish some limit that then forces institutions to make informed decisions about where they want their games played."

Harris said that may also encourage sponsors of the previously exempted contests to rethink the formats of their events.

"What everyone seems to be focusing on is the notion that business -- in this context the manner in which games are scheduled -- needs to go on the way that it has always gone on," Harris pointed out. "The membership, which has the control here in terms of determining the number of contests, has set a fixed number, so it strikes me that the real focus of energy ought to be on how to be creative and responsive to what the new set of challenges are."

The Council also approved and forwarded to the Board an amended version of Proposal No. 99-121-1-A that would tie financial aid limits in Division I men's basketball to an institution's average four-year graduation rate in the sport. Institutions with graduation rates of 50 percent or higher would retain the current limit of 13 awards; those with a graduation rate of less than 50 percent would have a reduction to 12.

The amendment changed the effective date of the proposal from August 1, 2001, to August 1, 2003, to have a two-year transition period. Institutions could exclude from their graduation-rates calculation student-athletes who transfer to another four-year institution (the original proposal permitted the exception for transfers to Division I institutions only) and those who depart to a professional league so long as the student-athletes meet satisfactory academic-progress requirements in the preceding term.

The original proposal was part of a package from the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues. The Council defeated the proposal last April, but the Board of Directors remanded it back to the Council for reconsideration, as well as to develop parameters for what constituted "good academic standing" as it relates to defections.

In other actions involving basketball, the Council moved another package of reform items, this time from the recently created Division I Basketball Issues Committee. The package includes five proposals related to the recruiting process for Division I men's basketball that all would become effective April 1, 2002.

As it has done with previous legislative packages, the Council distributed it to the Division I membership without taking a stance on the package or any of the individual proposals. The Council will review the package again in October. In addition to basketball legislation, the Council acted on more than 100 other legislative proposals at this legislative meeting. For a summary of all the legislative actions taken by the Management Council, see the chart on page 11.

(Approved by the Management Council and forwarded to the Board of Directors for adoption)

No. 2000-48 -- Allows prospects and student-athletes to accept Operation Gold money for place finishes in such events as the Olympics.

No. 2000-49 -- Permits student-athletes to engage in fee-for-lesson employment.

No. 2000-102 --Provides for NCAA payment of student-athlete disability insurance premiums.

No. 2000-103 -- Permits student-athletes to arrange for loans based on future potential earnings in professional sports.

(Forwarded without a position by the Council to the Division I membership for comment)

No. 99-106-1 -- Amends the organized competition rule to state that prospects who participate in more than one year of organized athletics following graduation or discontinuation of high-school enrollment would forfeit all Division I eligibility.

No. 99-107-1 -- Permits individuals in sports other than men's and women's basketball to enter a professional draft and be drafted.

No, 99-108-1 -- Permits individuals in sports other than men's and women's basketball to sign a contract for athletics participation.

No. 99-109-1 -- Permits individuals in sports other than men's and women's basketball to compete with professionals.

No. 99-110-1 -- Permits individuals in sports other than men's and women's basketball to accept prize money based on place finish.

No. 99-111-1 -- Permits individuals in sports other than men's and women's basketball to accept compensation for athletics participation.

No. 99-111-2 -- Prohibits prospects who attend high schools that sponsor their sport from accepting compensation for athletics participation in that sport until after high-school graduation.

No. 2000-47-1 -- Permits a prospective student-athlete to accept educational expenses to attend post-high-school (prep school) institutions.

Division I Management Council
April 9-10/Indianapolis

Discussed the process used by the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet to fill a recent vacancy on the Division I Men's Basketball Committee when the cabinet selected an individual who was nominated by his conference after the publicized deadline. The Council requested that the cabinet examine its current procedures in regard to accepting committee nominations after a publicized deadline, determine whether the cabinet complied with its policies when it made the appointment and submit a report to the Council in July with the cabinet's recommendations for any changes to the current policies and assurance that sports committees remain separated from the appointment process and do not influence committee appointments or unduly influence conference nominations.

Supported Championships/Competition Cabinet budget initiatives, including new funding for men's and women's soccer bracket expansion, upgraded championship awards and transportation expenses for preliminary-round games, and expansion of the men's and women's outdoor track and field championship as a result of the cabinet's prior decision to implement a regional-qualifying system.

Received a report from the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance cabinet on legislative deregulation efforts and agreed that a moratorium be established on a staggered basis for all new legislation (other than emergency and/or noncontroversial legislation) until the deregulation project has been completed. (Proposals that already are in progress will continue their normal progression through the governance structure during the moratorium.) The Council also agreed to establish a policy requiring sponsors of legislative proposals to include, within the rationale, a statement indicating whether the proposal is consistent with Division I's deregulation efforts.

Approved a 5.8 percent inflationary adjustment to one of the alternatives for satisfying Division I financial aid minimums, based on an unweighted average change in tuition and fees from 1999-00 to 2000-01. This would result in the following new minimums specified in Bylaw 20.9.1.2.-(b): Financial aid representing a minimum aggregate expenditure of $771,000 (with at least $385,500 in women's sports) in 2002-03, exclusive of grants in football and men's and women's basketball provided the aggregate grant value is not less than the equivalent of 38 full grants, with at least 19 full grants for women. If the institution does not sponsor men's or women's basketball, the minimum aggregate expenditure must be $509,000 in 2002-03 for the gender without the basketball program, but in no case fewer than the equivalent of 29 full grants for that gender.

Approved a recommendation from the Honors Committee to create a new award, the Inspirational Award, which would be added to the existing program at the Honors Dinner on an occasional basis and awarded to a coach or administrator associated with intercollegiate athletics, or to a current or former varsity letter-winner at an NCAA institution, who when confronted with a life-altering situation used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome the event and now serves as a role model to give hope and inspiration to others in similar situations.

Gave initial approval and circulated to the membership for comment a proposal that would expand the size of the Academics/Eligibility/ Compliance Cabinet to 42 members (22 Division I-A members and 20 Division I-AA/I-AAA members) to include representation for all Division I conferences represented in the governance structure and to maintain the voting majority of Division I-A, without mandating specific conference representation in Division I-A.