The Division III Management Council had a full plate of issues vital to the division on its agenda October 22-23, including a $530,000 shortfall in the championships budget and the future of the proposed financial aid audit.

The Council, which met in Indianapolis, also discussed other issues, including whether to recommend rugby as an emerging sport for women, and automatic qualification for individual-team sports.

Many of the Management Council's decisions will now go to the Presidents Council for review at its November 1 meeting.

The Management Council learned that the 2000-01 Division III championships budget was exceeded by $530,000, after the review of fourth-quarter budget-to-actual financial results.

The shortfall has occurred primarily in the area of championships travel, and the Management Council discussed the reasons for this situation, noting that transportation costs are difficult to predict and that the teams selected to the championships and to host the championships directly impact the travel budget.

The Council also noted that the overage in the sport of football made up a large portion of the shortfall because of the large travel-party size. Some of the issues, such as a travel party of 75 flying into an airport that typically accommodates only small shuttles on a commercial basis, may force a decision to either fly in a charter plane that can accommodate the entire party or fly in five different 20-seat planes, neither of which is inexpensive.

The Council noted that part of the issue is related to budget forecasting and management, including championship-site selections and participating teams.

The Championships Committee has proposed repaying the overage over a three-year period, but Council members were concerned that option would unduly postpone championships expansion needed to address automatic-qualification issues.

NCAA staff noted that funds will be tight over the next two budget cycles (now a four-year period since the Association has gone to a two-year budget) no matter what decision is made. Staff noted that in previous years the division did not have significant nonchampionships programs as it does now with the Division III initiatives, and that the division also has a new policy requiring that an amount equal to 20 percent of the division's revenue allocation be held in reserve. (That policy, approved by the Presidents Council and Management Council this summer, will go into effect in 2002, replacing the previous policy that 30 percent of the division's budget be held in reserve.)

Some Management Council members were concerned about burdening the division's championships with the shortfall, and others were concerned about protecting the Division III initiatives, which were developed to address nonchampionships priorities in the division's strategic plan, such as student-athlete welfare, membership education and diversity.

Staff reminded the Council that the initiatives were endorsed for only a three-year period, through 2002-03, and that changes could be considered after that time.

The Management Council discussed a number of recommendations from the Championships Committee, but the Council delayed acting on them until after the Division III Budget Committee meets in December. That group is expected to provide a number of relevant recommendations for the Management Council and Presidents Council to review at their pre-Convention meetings in January.

In other championships-related action, the Council:

Financial aid audit

The future of the Division III financial aid audit took an unexpected turn when the Management Council declined to forward any of the recommendations from the Division III Financial Aid Committee on to the Presidents Council.

Now that the Division III pilot audit had been completed, the Council had been expected to make several recommendations to the Presidents Council that would further describe additional specifics of the audit that is partially described in Proposal No. 2-51, which the membership was expected to vote on at the upcoming NCAA Convention in January.

Instead, the Council remained concerned that the audit as proposed by the Financial Aid Committee had gone too far in terms of cost savings and would not be a worthwhile exercise. In particular, Council members were concerned with recommendations to permit internal auditors and also with plans to require the examination of only 10 percent of full-time, first-time freshmen student-athletes and incoming transfer student-athletes at each institution. The Council remained concerned that those recommendations, which surfaced in response to concerns from pilot-audit participants about the audit's cost, would compromise the audit's integrity, involve too small of a sample and ultimately render the audits ineffective, producing no meaningful data that could be used to ensure integrity in Division III financial aid.

Several members of the Council also believe that only a team-by-team audit -- which is thought to be more expensive -- would deliver meaningful data, and that type of audit was not among the committee's recommendations, although some pilot audit participants completed that exercise.

Council members also suggested that individual institutions be charged with identifying and designing a methodology for conducting the audits on their campus to provide an accurate picture of each institution's financial aid in light of each institution's unique aid structure.

The Council discussed a number of options, noting that there would not be enough time to conduct more pilot audits before the 2002 NCAA Convention.

It ultimately recommended to the Presidents Council that Proposal No. 2-51, which outlines financial aid audit procedures, be withdrawn for this year's Convention and referred back to the Division III Financial Aid Committee.

The Council further recommended that the committee look to increase the sample of files to be reviewed, examine the feasibility of conducting an external audit every three years and an internal audit during interim years, and perhaps ultimately consider a system that would assign all NCAA Division III institutions to a random, three-year rotation for external audits.

The Presidents Council will review these recommendations at its meeting next month.

Women's rugby

The Management Council's discussion of women's rugby proved to be a two-part, contested debate that resulted in Division III as the only division declining to immediately endorse the sport of rugby as an emerging sport for women as recommended by the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics.

Instead, the Council referred the issue back to the CWA, asking it to request the rugby community to provide a full review of all available injury data on the sport and that the CWA should include a full review of health and safety data from all sports seeking emerging status, beginning with the sport of rugby. The Council further asked the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to provide assistance to the CWA in developing an outline of the type of health and safety information that would be required from emerging sports.

That decision, the original one put forth by the Council that morning, was still the decision after the Council voted to reconsider the issue.

In the ensuing follow-up discussion, several members of the Council remained concerned about health and safety issues in the sport of rugby, and many noted that a lack of adequately trained coaches appeared to be a problem. Other members thought that a lack of athletic trainers could be problematic in a sport thought to have a high injury rate.

The Council noted that it had asked the competitive-safeguards committee to review the safety issue, but the committee reported that it only has injury-surveillance data on current NCAA championship sports.

Some Council members noted that they believed permitting emerging status would give the sport legitimacy and perhaps improve coaching. Others were concerned that asking for safety data on rugby might send the message that women are incapable of playing a contact sport with a history of injuries. Some Council members also noted that having a sport as an emerging sport for women did not require institutions to offer it but merely offered them the opportunity to do so.

Still others were in favor of making rugby an emerging sport to create an avenue through the NCAA to address insurance and safety concerns in the sport. And, some were concerned that changing the requirements of the emerging sport process would be better done from this point forward, rather than retroactively.

Ultimately, those favoring recommending the sport to the Presidents Council for emerging-sport status lost again during reconsideration, 6-7 with one abstention, and the Council again agreed on its original decision to refer the issue back to the CWA.

Other highlights

Division III Management Council
October 22-23/Indianapolis