Divisions I and II institutions are taking their amateurism issues to the house -- the NCAA Amateurism Clearinghouse, that is.

At their spring meetings, the Divisions I and II Management Councils learned of NCAA President Myles Brand's authorization of a streamlined, centralized certification process that ensures the consistent application of amateurism rules and maintains a level playing field in recruiting.

The initiative is in large part a response to membership concerns that amateurism rules in Divisions I and II are applied unevenly, often resulting in competitive-equity concerns in both divisions. Schools in fact have complained about their teams having to compete against student-athletes they abandoned recruiting because they thought the prospects had competed professionally before their initial collegiate enrollment -- yet they show up on other schools' rosters.

The new clearinghouse will be the processing center for determining the amateurism eligibility of all freshmen -- international and domestic -- and transfer student-athletes, both from junior colleges and Division III schools. In other words, any student-athlete who has never attended a Division I or Division II institution will cycle through the clearinghouse.

It has been increasingly difficult for individual institutions to determine the amateur status of international prospects because of the complexities of defining what constitutes professional competition in other countries. The initiative also will include domestic prospects because of the increases in club leagues, particularly in basketball and soccer, and the fact that those teams travel across the country more than in the past.

"When you have each institution trying to determine eligibility on their own, it becomes redundant and risky in nature, particularly for the institutions and for the prospects they're trying to certify," said Mike Alden, athletics director at the University of Missouri, Columbia. "The Amateurism Clearinghouse idea allows us to take an independent look -- one that isn't being done on individual campuses or that coaches and staff are attempting to do on their own. It's an objective, third-party review, similar to standardized testing and the Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse."

The announcement of the Amateurism Clearinghouse brought a sigh of relief from Divisions I and II governance members.

"This will be extremely beneficial to all our institutions' athletics departments," University of Houston Athletics Director Dave Maggard told the Division I Academics/Eligibility/
Compliance Cabinet in June. Maggard, who chairs the cabinet's amateurism and agents subcommittee, said the effort will alleviate confusion and decrease the likelihood of an institution running into eligibility problems once the student-athlete begins competing.

Division II Management Council members also were supportive after they spent much of their April meeting voicing their frustration over the uneven application of the division's organized-competition rule. The issue became troublesome enough that one Division II conference began developing a system on its own to certify eligibility of international student-athletes.

"We found, though, that it's difficult to get all the information that we need from many different parts of the world and of the United States," said Sunshine State Conference Commissioner Mike Marcil, who chaired the Division II Management Council when the division became the first to adopt sweeping amateurism deregulation at the 2001 NCAA Convention. "We feel that a national clearinghouse with the leverage of the NCAA behind it will shift the burden to respond to the international side, and we hope the clearinghouse will make the process more accessible for everyone to get the information they need through the NCAA.

"We think it will actually promote opportunities for international student-athletes to be certified."

How it will work

The clearinghouse, which officials plan to be operational in time to certify prospects seeking to enroll in fall 2006, probably will work in tandem with the Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse (IEC), which is administered by American College Testing. Prospects and transfers looking to be certified will have to complete an online questionnaire about their athletics history.

"Our hope is to integrate this seamlessly with the IEC Web site," said the NCAA's Bill Saum, who has been appointed to oversee the Amateurism Clearinghouse along with fellow staff members Kevin Lennon, Dave Schnase and Ellen Ferris. "About 85 percent of prospects already register online with the IEC, and the goal is to increase that with the Amateurism Clearinghouse."

Saum said he expects about 150,000 requests to be made annually, with about 3,000 involving international athletes. However, he also expects the process to be efficient for the prospect.

"We believe the majority of prospective student-athletes are meeting NCAA amateurism standards," Saum said.

Still, it is the potential bureaucracy that may worry some member institutions. When the IEC was introduced a decade ago, members balked at the time it took initially to get a response, and some were not always pleased with the response they got. But criticism quelled once the system had been in place and improved over time.

"There were some issues with the eligibility clearinghouse at first, as we all know. And many people remember them," said Missouri's Alden, who has agreed to serve on a membership advisory group that will work with the national office staff to implement the amateurism effort. "It's critical that we learn from past experience to make this next effort a little smoother."

Alden pointed out two primary hurdles the Amateurism Clearinghouse will have to clear. As with the IEC, one is a matter of timing. "It will have to be efficient to keep up with the pace of our industry," he said. The other is a matter of fairness.

"When you ask someone for an interpretation, it may not be the one you were hoping for," Alden said. "With the IEC, though, over the course of time people recognized that this was the system, this is how it works, and sometimes you're going to get the answers you want and sometimes you won't. But at least you'll know it was fair.

"So will the Amateurism Clearinghouse have to be fair."

Competitive equity

While fall 2006 is an ambitious goal given the expected crush of applicants, Saum said there is interest from the membership for such expediency. As it is a work in progress, the specifics of the clearinghouse will evolve over time. The membership will receive periodic updates on the effort and will be able to provide input and feedback as well. The advisory group will play a role as a communication conduit.

"Over the last five years there has been more interest regarding the application of amateurism rules," Saum said. "Some institutions don't have the staff to allocate to doing the research when it comes to reviewing amateurism status, some don't have the necessary knowledge or experience and some don't have the dollars. One of the goals for the clearinghouse is to alleviate some of those concerns.

"The clearinghouse represents a consistent application of policy by one entity rather than by hundreds of separate institutions."

Doug Woolard, athletics director at the University of South Florida, said that kind of consistency will be the primary benefit to the NCAA-led effort.

"There have been cases in the past where an institution quit recruiting a prospect because the school's administrators interpreted that the prospect may have professionalized himself. But other institutions continued to recruit the same prospect because they either had gathered different data or had interpreted the same data differently," said Woolard, who also will serve on the advisory group. "It can put institutions in opposition -- the first team may even wind up competing against a second team that believes the student-athlete to be eligible. This will help institutions and coaches understand who they can and can't recruit."

Woolard also said the effort allows institutions to be more fiscally responsible in recruiting. "You won't spend time and money recruiting someone and then on the back end -- or sometimes even after the student-athlete has competed -- find out that there was information you didn't have."

The scope of the clearinghouse's review may include:

• Contracts

• Salary

• Prize money

• Play with professionals

• Educational expenses

• Preferential treatment

• Tryouts before enrollment

• Agent benefits and contracts

• 21st birthday rule (Division I)

• Tennis and swimming and diving rule (Division I)

• Organized-competition rule (Division II)

The certification will not cover all areas of Bylaw 12, though. Thus, Saum said, institutions will be responsible for determining if there are any issues with the areas of the amateurism bylaws not covered by the clearinghouse. Institutions also will be responsible for certifying compliance for all amateurism bylaws during the time period between the student-athlete's clearinghouse certification and their initial enrollment at an NCAA institution.

Saum cautioned that the advent of an Amateurism Clearinghouse does not indicate that the current amateurism rules are changing. He emphasized that while the clearinghouse will assist coaches and compliance officers in the recruiting process, it won't act as a crutch for not knowing the rules.