A variety of issues prompt new tremors from Association's divisional faultiness.

A meeting at the end of the Association's 99th year tidily summed up the ceaseless pressures that constantly remake the NCAA -- and provided a glimpse of what is shaping up to be an important story during the Centennial year.

Representatives of membership committees in all three divisions attended the meeting hosted by the Division II Membership Committee, largely to help that group plot strategies for dealing with recent migration of members away from Division II.

But the gathering was noteworthy for another reason: To the best of anyone's memory, it marked the first time since restructuring in 1997 that representatives of all three divisions gathered somewhere other than in an NCAA Executive Committee meeting to talk about how the divisions' ongoing struggle to define themselves affects the Association as a whole -- for better and for worse.

In some respects, it's just a beginning. The Executive Committee is forming a working group of institutional presidents from all three divisions that will review Association-wide ramifications of division-specific membership issues, and that group's work likely will attract significant interest during the coming year.

But the Division II meeting also marked the end of one of the most volatile years in recent memory in the Association's long history of divisional bumping and jostling.

Shaking things up

For now, no one really expects another tectonic shift like the one during the mid-1990s that resulted in full federation of the divisions. But events of the past year suggest the possibility of significant reshaping of the landscape of the Association -- ranging from new names and identities for divisions and subdivisions to significant modification of current limits on division membership.

Landscapes are shaped both by nature and by engineering, and both of those forces were evident when Division II began the year divided over the level at which members who play football would be permitted to support that sport.

Following a debate that raised the spectre of some schools leaving Division II rather than submit to a forced reduction in financial aid for football -- or other schools dropping football because they can't bear the cost of competing at the current limit of 36 equivalencies -- members voted two-to-one against a proposal at the 2005 Convention to reduce equivalencies to 24.

The vote certainly didn't mark the end of the issue, and the fracture produced tremors that soon were felt in the other divisions.

During the Convention, the Division II Management and Presidents Councils floated the idea of possibly breaking apart the four current football classifications -- Divisions I-A, I-AA, II and III, which are defined by limits on the number of grants that can be awarded -- and then reforming into classifications that would permit like-sized programs to compete against each other regardless of division affiliation in other sports.

Though the idea naturally encountered resistance as the year progressed -- especially from Division I-AA institutions working to strengthen their own position within Division I -- it was the first of several threads that were unwound during 2005 in hopes of knitting a solution to some nagging problems.

If nothing else, the proposal seemed to spark an introspective look at how the divisions -- as well as Division I's subdivisions -- are perceived by others.

In May, the Division I Board of Directors asked the national office staff, the Collegiate Commissioners Association and the Division I Management Council to study elimination of the I-A and I-AA descriptors for football, suggesting they might be replaced by terms like "bowl-eligible" and "championship-eligible."

Division II devoted its first Chancellors and Presidents Summit in June primarily to identity issues, including talk of whether the division should change its name during a broader discussion of reasons why institutions recently have chosen to reclassify from Division II to Division I.

"Names send messages, and 'II' has only one message -- that it's inferior to 'I,'" said summit participant Beheruz Sethna, president of the University of West Georgia.

Not everyone agreed with that sentiment, but most summit participants did agree that Division II needs to do more work to earn greater public understanding and support -- especially in local communities -- as a place within the Association where sports balance naturally with scholarship.

Even Division III wrestled with identity, though its struggle had more to do with preserving than defining the division's attributes.

The four-year-old Future of Division III initiative, which sought to more closely align institutions' athletics practices with divisional philosophy, moved forward during the year toward a conclusion at the 2006 Convention. Some legislative proposals resulting from that effort -- including measures to increase minimum sports sponsorship and to require self-study within conferences of reasons why their members are aligned with each other -- clearly were shaped by concerns across Division III that its rapid growth and increasing diversity of membership are diluting traditional commitments to broad-based athletics participation opportunities and other long-held philosophical beliefs.

The more things change...

Such introspection is a new twist even within an organization that worries increasingly -- with good reason, considering gigantic political and judicial pressures -- about what others think about the NCAA and its member schools.

But there's nothing new about pressures arising from what members -- and membership divisions -- think about each other. The impulse to draw and maintain distinctions between components of the Association's membership constantly creates tension and occasionally shakes up the NCAA; as it did during the 1950s with establishment of the University and College Divisions, in the early 1970s with establishment of Divisions I, II and III; and the restructuring of the 1990s that changed no divisional labels but gave each membership classification unprecedented control over its own affairs.

Likewise, considering history, it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that the footing both within and across the divisions again seems a bit shaky as the Association enters its second century.

In May, the Division I Board of Directors addressed a stress point within its membership by easing Division I-A membership requirements just as several current subdivision members faced involuntary reclassification due to failure to meet the criteria.

The Board agreed to permit institutions to demonstrate compliance with minimum-attendance requirements either by posting actual average attendance of 15,000 at home football games over a rolling two-year period beginning in 2005, or by posting average paid attendance of 15,000 during either the 2005 or 2006 seasons. That action delayed -- at least for now -- the prospect of forcibly moving institutions from one membership classification into another for the first time in NCAA history.

However, even as Division I dealt with that internal issue, a legislative proposal within Division III touched off what appears to be the biggest disturbance in inter-division relations since the discussions during the mid-1990s that led to restructuring.

A membership-cap proposed in July by the North Coast Athletic Conference seeks to halt the growth of Division III, which with 437 active and provisional members is bumping up against practical limits on championships brackets and access to the Association's programs and services.

The Division II Presidents Council reacted by asking the Executive Committee to take steps to discourage any unilateral action that could adversely affect other segments of the Association. The Council, already concerned about current Division II members studying reclassification to Division I, worries that a membership cap will create new pressures by making Division II the only point where schools can achieve membership within the Association -- regardless of how well they actually might fit within the division.

That was one of several concerns voiced during the Division II Membership Committee's recent summit meeting.

"As we look to increase our membership, we need to be prudent and not drive away bona-fide Division II members," said Bob Oliver, commissioner of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference and a member of a task force exploring the possibility of attracting new members to Division II.

The problem isn't limited to Division II, either. A Division III cap ultimately might push even more schools currently competing in Division II to seek Division I membership -- despite worries in Division I about whether those schools are financially able to support athletics at that level.

"Limiting access to divisions clearly impacts other divisions," said Greg Sankey, associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, who represented the Division I Management Council's membership subcommittee at the Division II summit. "If we're going to talk about limiting access, all divisions need to have a conversation."

The Division III Presidents Council upped the ante in October by agreeing to support the membership-cap proposal and also imposing a moratorium on accepting new exploratory members -- but it also advised the division's membership to delay a vote until 2007 to give the Executive Committee's working group a chance to review the Association-wide ramifications of the proposal and study possible alternatives.

The working group, whose composition is expected to be finalized by the end of this year, will include representation from all three divisions and is expected to make recommendations before January 2007.

That group's formation not only caps an eventful year in the ongoing ebb and flow in relationships among the Association's divisions; it also is an indication that further reshaping of the NCAA always will remain a possibility -- next year, a generation from now, and in another 100 years.