The Division II Football Issues Project Team has many tasks before it, but after one meeting it appears that the biggest challenge may involve identifying ways to improve access to the Division II Football Championship.

The project team met for the first time in March and promptly divided work among four subcommittees that will examine access, selection and scheduling, health and safety, and exposure for Division II football.

All are important to the viability of Division II football, but the major priority appears to involve determining how more Division II institutions can compete in the football championship.

The Division II bracket currently contains 16 teams for 153 football-playing institutions. That means that one of every 9.5 institutions sponsoring the sport reaches the tournament. Division III has a ratio of 1:8 while Division I-AA's ratio is 1:7.5 (lower if I-AA nonscholarship programs are excluded).

The Division II football ratio of 1:9.5 is much higher than Division II men's and women's basketball, both of which are moving to 64-team brackets. Brackets for most other team sports also have lower sponsorship-to-berths ratios than football.

The answer to the problem, however, is not as simple as merely expanding the football bracket.

The problem rests with funding and maintaining the gender-equity balance for championships participation that the division has recently achieved. Acting on a mandate from the NCAA Executive Committee, the division has divided championship participation opportunities equally between men and women.

Because football squad sizes are so large, an increase in bracket size would tilt Division II championship participation opportunities toward men again unless creative approaches are used to re-establish the balance.

In that regard, two preliminary options have been discussed:

Expand the football field to 24 or 32 teams. Such an approach would necessitate an examination of how to re-establish equity between men's and women's championships participation opportunities. One possibility would be to expand bracket sizes in selected women's sports.

Leave the bracket at 16 but help establish regional "bowl games" outside the NCAA structure that would serve as play-ins to the NCAA Division II football playoff. The advantages would be more -- and in some cases more meaningful -- postseason opportunities for Division II football student-athletes and the fact that the extra participants would not count as championship participants (just as Division I does not count Division I-A postseason football bowl participation in its championship-equity computations). The liabilities would be that the NCAA would not control the selections to the bowl games; also, funding for any such games probably would have to be acquired through sources other than the NCAA.

"The project team knows that the access question involves major challenges in terms of funding and maintaining a gender-equitable championships environment for Division II student-athletes," said Mike L. Racy, Division II chief of staff. "The group will be working closely with the Committee on Women's Athletics and other groups to identify a solution that is fair to everybody."

The project team is chaired by Jerry E. McGee, president of Wingate University.

The subcommittee chairs and areas of examination are as follows:

Access. Chair: Greg Warzecka, athletics director, University of California, Davis. Issues: Postseason opportunities and bracket expansion, automatic qualification, and conference bowl games.

Exposure. Chair: Robert Vowels, commissioner, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Issues: Opportunities resulting from new CBS contract, Internet exposure, attendance (regular season and playoffs), and sportsmanship and playing, coach and fan conduct.

Health and safety. Chair: Ken Borden, faculty athletics representative, University of Indianapolis. Issues: Spring practice, skill instruction, length of season, out-of-season conditioning, nutritional supplements and spit tobacco.

Selection and scheduling. Chair: Brad Smith, athletics director and head football coach, Chadron State College. Issues: Playoff team selections and regular-season scheduling limitations, regional boundaries, playoff site-selection policies and national championship site issues, and regional advisory committees.

Other issues

In addition to identifying solutions to problems, the project team also will attempt to maintain or improve upon desirable features of the Division II Football Championship. Among those is the time slot for the event, typically the second Saturday in December. The position has helped the Division II Football Championship become the highest-rated NCAA fall championship on television for the last three years. Last year, it outdrew the I-AA championship, 1.5 to 0.9.

"Division II has played very competitive championship games the last few years, and that has undoubtedly helped the ratings," Racy said. "But the time slot also has been a factor. The Division II championship does not compete with any other NCAA championship and follows the I-A regular season but precedes the I-A postseason. Also, the NFL isn't competing on Saturday at that time."

The project team identified two areas as being off-limits at this time. First, it determined that it would not address financial aid limits for football -- either to increase or decrease them. The group noted that the membership may propose Convention legislation in that regard any time enough sponsors are available. The project team noted that a membership proposal to decrease aid limitations failed at the 1998 Convention. Second, the project team has decided not to engage in discussions about football subdivisions within Division II.

No deadline has been established for recommended legislation, although the project team hopes to have a report completed within a year. A number of issues may be studied through or referred to other committees for resolution. A panel discussion about the project team's work likely will take place at the 2003 Convention.