The Division II Championships Eligibility Project Team has agreed that teams using ineligible student-athletes should be subject to a nullification process and that their institutions could be subject to fines.

The project team, which conducted its third meeting October 7, was created as a result of a resolution at the 2004 Convention that mandated a review of what Division II can do to ensure that only student-athletes who are eligible under Bylaws 12 through 16 are competing in NCAA championships.

Perhaps most significantly, the project team agreed that a penalty system is superior to systems that involve forfeits or to having sports committees assess the material contribution of student-athletes.

Under the concept contemplated by the project team, the penalty system would have two components: fines (to penalize institutions when circumstances merit) and nullification (to eliminate any advantage that may have been gained through the use of an ineligible student-athlete). Both concepts were agreed to in principle at the group's June 24-25 meeting.

The project team recently agreed that:

• Fines could be issued for any type of eligibility certification violation. They would not apply in cases involving restitution or de minimus violations.

• Fines would be imposed on a "strict liability" basis.

• Fines would be for $250 per contest per student-athlete, to a maximum of $2,500 in a particular sport for ineligible competition arising from the same violation or incident.

• Fines would be assessed by the enforcement staff, through the regular enforcement process.

• Fines might not be assessed if the institution did not know, nor should have known, about the ineligibility of a student-athlete. However, the nullification process still would be applied regardless of whether the institution should have known.

• Any appeal of such a fine would be heard by the Division II Committee on Infractions.

As for nullification, the project team agreed that:

• A contest will be nullified when a team uses an ineligible player, regardless of the player's contribution.

• Enforcement staffs will inform the NCAA championships staff when violations occur; sports committees then will impose appropriate penalties.

• Nullification will be assessed against each contest (win, lose or tie) in which an ineligible student-athlete participated. Previous discussion had considered the possibility of applying nullification only against victories.

• Nullification penalties will be assessed to the won/lost percentage and to the team's strength of schedule (in region, if necessary).

• The amount of the nullification penalty is yet to be determined, although the project team is committed to values that would make the nullification process consistent for each sport [that is, football (11-game schedule) would be treated the same as baseball (56-game schedule)].

The other area of recommendations involves follow-up to reduce the likelihood that any institution caught using an ineligible student-athlete would do so again in the future.

To that end, the project team agreed that any institution showing a pattern of violations of using ineligible student-athletes will be placed on "compliance watch." Although the project team has not offered a precise definition about what a "compliance watch" would involve, the sense is that it could include solutions such as requiring offending institutions to develop a Compliance Blueprint, requiring participation in NCAA regional rules-compliance seminars and completing a two- year period without further violations.

Sharon Cessna, NCAA director of championships, emphasized that the work of the project team is nothing more than recommendations -- and tentative recommendations at that.

"Dave Riggins (the Mars Hill College athletics director who chairs the project team) has said from Day 1 that it is more important for us to do this work correctly than to do it quickly," Cessna said. "That continues to be the prevailing attitude, so the group plans to devote a lot of attention in the next few months to getting membership feedback to its recommendations."

With that in mind, a final draft of the project team's recommendations will be sent to the Division II membership in early November. After the membership has had an opportunity to review the proposals, Division II institutions will have the opportunity in mid-November to respond to a Web survey about the recommendations (one response per institution).

The results of that survey, along with the project team's recommendations, will be featured during an educational session at the 2005 NCAA Convention in January.

If a clear consensus has not yet emerged at that point, Cessna said that a post-Convention survey could be taken.

Ultimately, a final report will be provided to the Division II Management Council no later than July 2005. If any legislation is necessary, it would be considered at the January 2006 Convention.

Regionalization

Another major Division II championships issue also was addressed October 7. The Regionalization Task Force, which was established at the July meeting of the Division II Management Council, met for the second time. While the group discussed a number of concepts, task force Chair Jill Willson, director of athletics at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, said the group was far from making any recommendations.

"This task force is very much in an information-gathering phase," Wilson said. "We have talked about a number of concepts, but it's all extremely preliminary and we are not committed at this time to any particular course of action."

The Regionalization Task Force was created to determine what can be done to make Division II's regionalization philosophy easier to apply and understand. At the moment, Division II championship regions vary greatly from sport-to-sport and year-to-year.

The task force has identified eight influences that affect regional alignment:

• Conference membership and location.

• Conference alignment.

• State geographic boundaries.

• Automatic qualification.

• Number of institutions sponsoring a sport.

• Historic, or perceived, strength of conferences.

• Fiscal responsibility.

• Missed class time.

The task force's next meeting will occur at the January 2005 Convention.