Executive Committee also finalizes plan for $5 million gift to disaster-relief fund

A moratorium on new NCAA membership that was implemented almost two years ago will be lifted in May 2002.

The NCAA Executive Committee, which met November 2 in Indianapolis, recommended the measure after reviewing an internal study of NCAA membership issues that indicated the Association was prepared to address potential growth.

The moratorium issued in 2000 was done so in large part to allow the three NCAA divisions to assess potentially rapid growth. At that time, Divisions II and III in particular already were experiencing migration from colleges and universities that were joining the NCAA ranks from other organizations. In just over a two-decade period, NCAA membership had increased almost 43 percent, from 725 institutions in 1978 to 1,039 active and provisional members in 2001.

In the two-year period since the moratorium was established, each NCAA division has had a chance to review its membership criteria and adjust accordingly. Division I, now at 321 members, has proposals in the legislative pipeline that will change provisional-membership and reclassification requirements, as well as restructure the criteria necessary for schools to be classified as Division I-A institutions. A decision on those proposals is expected in April. Based on recent reclassification trends and the small number of schools that have been involved in the Division I provisional process, Division I membership is expected to remain below 350 for the next decade.

Division II has seen its membership grow by 52 percent (from 194 to 295 members) over the last two decades. Since the moratorium was put in place, the division has developed legislation to establish new minimum financial aid requirements and increased sports-sponsorship requirements. In addition, the legislation would limit the total number of schools in any given provisional class.

Division III, which has expanded by 34 percent since 1989, also has proposed steps to limit its annual provisional class size.

The Executive Committee believes that the membership requirement changes made in each division will allow the Association to manage future growth at a pace that will result in little, if any, disruption to current NCAA members. In order for that to happen, the Executive Committee needed to recommend that each division lift the moratorium by May 1, 2002. That will allow applications for new membership to be processed beginning in September 2002.

Disaster-relief fund

In another Association-wide issue, the Executive Committee reviewed its commitment to donate $5 million on behalf of the NCAA to establish scholarship funds for victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The funds will be set aside to provide scholarships for undergraduate degrees at NCAA member institutions. The scholarships will be earmarked for former and current NCAA student-athletes; specific family members of the firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians who died during the World Trade Center tragedy; the military, civilian staff and contract personnel who died during the Pentagon tragedy; and those who were on the plane that was hijacked and subsequently crashed in western Pennsylvania on September 11.

The NCAA donation will be administered by the Citizens' Scholarship Fund of America (CSFA), which has had extensive experience with administering scholarship funds and working with students, parents and universities. The CSFA also stood out among many organizations in that the majority of the NCAA donation will go to the intended beneficiaries and not toward overhead costs for the organization overseeing the trust.

The $5 million will be funded by the following means:

Division I will forgo a supplemental distribution that would have been made to its members from the dollars available from the 2000-01 budget.

Divisions II and III will commit money from their reserves.

The national office will reduce its operating budget by $1.5 million.

In all, Division I will contribute $3,235,750 toward the $5 million, while Divisions II and III will contribute $152,950 and $111,300, respectively.

The Executive Committee's Budget Committee has endorsed the proposal.

A special announcement of the funding will be made at the annual Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia December 1.