NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- Division II delegates to the 98th annual NCAA Convention showered extensive attention on financial aid limits -- an issue that did not appear in the Official Notice but that was much on the minds of presidents and athletics administrators alike.

The stimulus was 2003 Convention Proposal No. 39, a resolution sponsored by the Pennsylvania State and Rocky Mountain Athletic Conferences that mandated an across-the-board review of the sport-by-sport limits described in Bylaw 15. The Division II Management Council assigned the task to the Legislation Committee, which conducted research and provided forums throughout the year in which the issue was discussed. Ultimately, however, the Legislation Committee thought it lacked sufficient direction to sponsor legislation.

So, after all the study and debate, what's next?

"I hope this is an ongoing discussion," said PSAC Commissioner Steve Murray. "When we sponsored the resolution last year, we didn't believe this would be a 12-month discussion. I hope we have just begun to talk about this, and I encourage our leadership to continue the examination."

Murray believes that further research, perhaps under the auspices of an ad hoc committee, is needed to consider financial aid limits in the context of changing economic times. He also wants to account for the effect of recently implemented NCAA Bylaw 15 legislation, to sift Division I programs and sports out of Division II research on the subject and to involve financial aid officers in any ongoing examination.

Sue Willey, athletics director at the University of Indianapolis and the new chair of the Management Council, believes that the supporters of change should take the available information and use it to develop legislation for a future Convention, if they desire. She said abundant information is available and that Division II is not far removed (eight years) from a comprehensive review of the matter. "I don't know if we want to legislate this from a national level," she said.

The debate

The topic is so big that it is difficult to identify a single motivation for change. At a January 11 forum, panelists Jay Helman of Western State College of Colorado and Charles Dunn of Henderson State University started out addressing the matter as a cost issue. By the end of the forum, they were talking about competitive-equity questions. When the Management and Presidents Councils conducted a joint examination of the issue on January 10, they considered gender-equity ramifications.

Helman, who coached basketball before assuming his current role as president, alerted the membership to what he called "a perfect storm" that is forming for public funding in higher education. That crisis has yielded an environment in which far less money is available to support athletics at many public institutions.

"If we took steps now," Helman said, "we would still be behind the curve. I'm concerned about the sustainability of intercollegiate athletics at the Division II level. If we don't take measures to change, we will collapse of our own weight."

Dunn, the Henderson State president, agreed that public higher education funding questions are acute, but he said that cutting athletically related financial aid for student-athletes should not be a first response.

"Balance is necessary, also," Dunn said. "We must look at one hand on the effect this would have on the student-athlete and at the ability to compete on the other. I would say the same thing if we were talking about band."

If the issue is about money, Dunn said the division should consider the effect that a reduction in aid limits would have on prospects from middle-income families. "Student-athletes from low-income families will have access to other financial aid," he said. "They will be able to use Pell Grants and loans, for instance. But that's not as true for student-athletes from middle-income families. For them, tuition and fees are increasing at double-digit rates. And many of our student-athletes are from middle-class families."

In the alternative, Dunn said the division would be well-advised to look in other places to reduce expenses. Among the possibilities, he said, are facilities, coaching-staff sizes and the number of permissible contests. He also suggested that if further study is merited, it might focus more broadly on the overall economic climate in Division II rather than merely on financial aid limits.

Evolution

Not only did the PSAC/RMAC resolution ask for the Management Council to determine overall equivalency norms, it also asked the Council to determine if the equivalency limits make sense within the individual sports. "We have to justify expenses in all areas, but we have no strong rationale for why the limits are as they are," said RMAC Commissioner J.R. Smith. "How can we take the data to our leadership and get support for intercollegiate athletics?"

As part of its review, the Legislation Committee assembled a history of Division II financial aid limits, but it reached no conclusions on whether they are appropriate.

"We got where we are not because of any formula," said Paul Engelmann, faculty athletics representative at Central Missouri State University and chair of the Legislation Committee. "In fact, the membership has rejected formulas. Our limits have been what the membership wants them to be at any point in time. I don't know how else to explain it."

In fact, the limits do not correspond to what is actually allocated. Engelmann said that in football, more schools offer between 32 and 36 scholarships than another increment of four. Still, 33 percent of the institutions that sponsor football provide 16 or fewer equivalencies, less than half of what is permitted.

Those who support the status quo say that the current approach leaves Division II members with the flexibility they need to make institutionally appropriate decisions. Beliefs on the issue often are strongly held, and in some cases, administrators can be blunt in resisting change.

"If a school doesn't want to give athletically related aid, there's a division for that, and it's called Division III," Doug Echols, commissioner of the South Atlantic Conference, said during the January 11 forum.

"I might say that the people at the top should go to Division I," said the PSAC's Murray. "What is at stake is the very core of our existence."

In fact, the issue is quite polarizing, with the potential to pit large programs against small, men against women and private institutions against publics. Division II's recent history has been to address complicated issues in a cooperative manner, but on this matter, the achievement of collegiality may be an especially large challenge.