The newly formed Division II Championships Eligibility Project Team took an initial pass at its large responsibility January 25-26, first considering its charge and then determining how to complete its business.

The project team is responsible for evaluating issues relating to eligibility for Division II championships and sharing findings with the membership by the 2005 Convention. It was established as a result of 2004 Convention Proposal No. 54.

After hearing extensive background information, the project team defined areas of responsibilities for five subcommittees:

Ineligibility and outcomes. This subcommittee will examine what bylaws should -- or should not -- cost a team or individual eligibility to a Division II championship. This group also may examine what circumstances merit nullifying a victory.

Penalties and sanctions. The area of examination for this group will be what the penalty structure should be for an institution that uses an ineligible student-athlete when it had reason to know beforehand that a problem existed. Financial penalties may be among the options.

Student-athlete welfare/due process. This group will be responsible for making certain that any penalty mechanism is flexible enough to take student-athlete welfare considerations into account.

Legislation. The focus for this subcommittee will be to determine what bylaws should be changed, what should be added and what should be removed to strengthen Division II championships eligibility issues. This group also will seek to achieve consistency with Divisions I and III legislation on postseason eligibility.

Compliance/education. This subcommittee will explore development of a championships eligibility verification process. Current championships policy provides for advising member institutions when their teams are under consideration to participate in championships. The main purpose is to advise those institutions that they may have the opportunity to host championships competition. This group will examine the possibility of extending this notification to require that the athletics director certify that, to the best of his or her knowledge, all of the institution's student-athletes would be eligible to compete in championship play.

No chairs have been identified for the subcommittees. Dave Riggins, athletics director at Mars Hill College, chairs the overall project team.

The full project team includes representatives from every conference, including the North Central and Peach Belt Conferences, which were among the co-sponsors of 2004 Convention Proposal Nos. 37 and 38. Among other things, No. 37 would have required that governing sports committees consider contests involving ineligible student-athletes as losses for the student-athletes' institutions and as wins for the opponents. No. 38 would have required regular-season forfeits to be counted as a loss for the offending team and as a win for the opponent.

The Division II Championships Committee, Management Council and Presidents Council voted to oppose both proposals, but only because of concern that they could have a number of unintended consequences if they passed as they were written. In the alternative, the Presidents Council sponsored a resolution mandating study of the issue through an ad hoc project team (Proposal No. 54). The sponsors agreed with the approach and withdrew Nos. 37 and 38, and supported No. 54, which passed easily.

At the January 25-26 meeting of the Championships Eligibility Project Team, North Central Commissioner Mike Marcil and Peach Belt Commissioner Marvin Vanover addressed the rationale behind their proposals. The project team also heard a presentation from NCAA Director of Enforcement Chris Stroebel, who described how the NCAA enforcement process currently relates to postseason competition.