At its September 7 meeting in Indianapolis, the Division I Academics/
Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet asked the Division I Management Council to table the proposals that had been scheduled for the Council's review next month.

Three packages have been proposed, all of which include the amended organized-competition rule (Proposal 99-106-2), which the cabinet refers to as the "cornerstone" of the amateurism deregulation effort.

The least comprehensive package (Package A) includes just three additional proposals -- No. 99-109 (allowing prospects to compete with professionals), No. 99-108 (allowing prospects to sign a professional contract) and No. 99-107 (allowing prospects to enter a professional draft and be drafted).

Package B includes all of Package A, and adds Proposal No. 99-110, which allows prospects to accept prize money based on place finish.

Package C, the most comprehensive of the three, contains all the proposals, including the one allowing compensation for athletics participation (Proposal No. 99-111).

Conferences have until November 20 to select a preference, or support none of the three. The cabinet then will make further recommendations at its February meeting before the Management Council and Board of Directors provide a final review in April 2002.

It will be the second time in a year that the deregulation package will have been modified and redistributed to the membership for comment. The Council moved the package forward last October without taking a stance on the proposals, but after Division I members voiced concern during the 2001 Convention, the AEC Cabinet amended the package to remove men's and women's basketball from the equation and change the proposed organized-competition rule so that prospective student-athletes who participate in more than one year of organized athletics after high-school graduation would forfeit all Division I eligibility (instead of a year-for-year eligibility trade-off). The amendments also included not allowing prospects who attend high schools that sponsor their sport to accept compensation for athletics participation in that sport until after high-school graduation, and restricting acceptance of educational expenses to those who enroll in preparatory education.

Other amateurism issues

The AEC Cabinet also approved a recommendation from its Agents and Amateurism Subcommittee to support Proposal No. 01-87, which would allow a basketball student-athlete to be drafted and have 30 days after the draft in which to declare his or her intention to resume intercollegiate competition. The men's subcommittee of the Basketball Issues Committee has since opposed this proposal.

The cabinet also accepted a recommendation from its Subcommittee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement to sponsor legislation modifying the definition of a professional team. Under the proposed language, a team would be considered professional if it provides any of its players more than actual and necessary expenses for participation on the team. The current legislation, according to the subcommittee, results in violations of amateurism status where leagues or teams receive funding from professional teams, even when the league or team does not pay its players, and fails to result in violations where an amateur team pays its players but doesn't receive funding from a professional team.

The cabinet also supported a companion proposal that would make an individual ineligible for intercollegiate competition in a sport only if the individual ever competed on a professional team. The new proposal removes existing language requiring that the athlete "knew (or had reason to know) that the team was a professional team."

The Subcommittee on Recruiting reviewed a number of proposals supported by the Basketball Issues Committee's men's subcommittee regarding the summer recruiting process and either supported them or proposed amendments. Specifically, the subcommittee and cabinet supported portions of Proposal No. 01-52 that would:

* Permit evaluations of prospects during a 20-consecutive-day period in July.

* Reduce from 50 to 40 the number of evaluation days during the academic year.

* Restrict evaluations in April to those approved, sponsored or conducted by the applicable high-school or two-year college association, and that such evaluations at sites other than the prospect's school may occur only on weekends.

* Eliminate evaluation opportunities at sites other than the prospect's school during the fall contact period.

* Permit a prospect to place collect or toll-free calls to an institution at the end of the prospect's sophomore year in high school.

* Permit an institution to correspond with a prospect at the end of the prospect's sophomore year in high school.

The cabinet, based on a recommendation from the recruiting subcommittee, did not support three parts of Proposal No. 01-52. Specifically, the cabinet recommended only one contact during a prospect's junior year (rather than the maximum of two set forth in the proposal), recommended no calls to prospects until March of a prospect's junior year (rather than during the summer after a prospect's sophomore year as set forth in the proposal), and recommended providing paid official visits after January 1 during a prospect's junior year (rather than during any time of the prospect's junior year).

The cabinet also supported Proposal No. 01-53, which would prohibit any contact during certified summer events between institutional personnel and prospects. However, the cabinet did not support Proposal No. 01-55, which would permit the restricted coach in men's basketball to engage in off-campus evaluations.

In other action, the Cabinet agreed to sponsor legislation to eliminate the Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse Committee. If passed, the work of that committee will be handled in joint meetings of the cabinet's Subcommittee on Initial-Eligibility and the Division II Academic Requirements Committee.

In other action, the cabinet's initial- and continuing-eligibility subcommittees considered conditions under which graduation rates could be clarified by no longer counting transfers who leave in good academic standing against the school in which they originally enrolled and counting them in the graduation rates of the institution to which they transfer. The two subcommittees also reviewed data from the Academic Performance Census and worked with the research staff on developing new eligibility models that would, at a minimum, result in graduation rats comparable to those yielded under current rules and would minimize the disparate impact on minorities (see related story, page 1). The models are expected to be presented to the Division I Board of Directors in April 2002.