The Division I Board of Directors at its October 27 meeting in Indianapolis reached an agreement on how to handle two financial aid proposals that have been on hold for about six months.

Proposal Nos. 02-82 and 03-23-A, which liberalize financial aid limitations for student-athletes, were approved by the Management Council in April and forwarded to the Board for adoption. Board members at that time, though, delayed approval because some felt the proposals as written would allow institutions with greater financial aid resources to "stockpile" student-athletes and thus gain a competitive advantage.

Instead, the Board sent the proposals back to the Management Council for further review. The Council revisited the proposals and six alternatives at its meeting earlier this month and recommended that academic and year-in-residence parameters accompany the original legislation. Council members also emphasized that they remained divided on the issue of whether to alter the original proposals at all. Their vote on the proposals in April was close, as was a second motion to support the original legislation at their most recent meeting.

In the end, the Board took two votes, one that defeated a motion to adopt the proposals as written. With the other, the presidents approved an option that allows student-athletes in all sports who receive institutional academic scholarships to compete without counting in the institution's financial aid team limits as long as they have completed at least one academic year at the certifying institution and present an academic profile after at least one year with a 3.300 grade-point average. There was only one dissenting vote for that option.

The Division I-AA/I-AAA Presidential Advisory Group, which met a day earlier and had favored defeating the proposals in any form, saw the option that was approved as the most palatable compromise.

The alternative the Board approved also was slightly favored among the options the Council considered at its meeting earlier this month. In a series of straw votes, Council members ranked the option among its top three for both proposals.

The Board vote culminates a financial aid deregulation package begun almost four years ago. The Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee had long advocated for relief from current financial aid restrictions. SAAC members in fact strongly favored Proposal Nos. 02-82 and 03-23-A as written. SAAC Chair Ian Gray, however, said this summer that his group would not be opposed to the option the Board ended up approving, "as long as the core intent of the original proposals was maintained."

Academic reform

The Board also began talking in earnest about an incentives and rewards package that recognizes academic achievement. The presidents had focused much of their attention recently on the penalty phase of academic reform, but with the contemporaneous-penalty structure in place and the historically based component on the way, Board members began deliberating about how to reward exemplary academic performance and entice under-performers to improve.

The Committee on Academic Performance (CAP), the group the Board has charged with implementing and monitoring the academic-reform structure, began working on the incentives plan in July and forwarded preliminary concepts for Board comment after its October 24-26 meeting in Indianapolis.

The plan focuses on three major elements: rewards for absolute academic performance, rewards for academic improvement and incentive need-based grants to institutions.

Among programs being considered are:

* A public-recognition program that highlights academic performance for the top 10 percent of teams in each sport, based on Academic Progress Rates (APR). Recognition might be in the form of trophies, plaques, media buys (for example, full-page advertisement in a national newspaper or magazine) or other outlets.

* A rewards program that allocates dollars directly to institutions for their teams' academic achievement. The distribution, again based on an APR ranking, would be as broad as possible and would consider, for example, a balance among public and private institutions, schools with varied enrollments and academic missions, and schools with varied per-capita resources.

* A program that rewards institutions for their teams' academic improvement, based on APR scores from one year to the next. The allocations come with expenditure guidelines that restrict dollars from being spent on athletics operations.

* A grant program targeting institutions that may lack the resources to implement broad-based academic-improvement programs. The program may include matching grants that require application and long-term planning, including institutional commitment through designation of institutional funding sources to be used in conjunction with NCAA grant money.

* Academic-support partnerships that could provide counseling services, education training and professional-development programs for institutional personnel attempting to understand the policies and procedures inherent in the academic-reform model.

The CAP recommended an allocation of $10 million to fund the incentives and rewards program. The plan calls for funding to come from an annual percentage of the expected incremental increases for the remaining years of the television-rights agreement with CBS Sports and ESPN (through 2013).

That would distribute the expected funds to Division I institutions based on academic guidelines. Board members, at least at first blush, supported that approach.

They also agreed that the CAP was focusing its attention on the right kind of programming. CAP Chair Walter Harrison, president at the University of Hartford, said the Board's feedback will help the CAP make its final recommendations later this winter or early in the spring. Also, Harrison said, the CAP will have access to a second year of APR data by then, which will provide a stronger indication of how dollars should be allocated.

"This is the kind of exchange we were after," Harrison said. "In some ways, the incentives part of reform is as complex as the disincentives portion. It will take this type of thorough discussion to make sure we get it right. We wanted to hear from the Board whether a $10 million package made sense, and we heard that it did. Now we can move on to a detailed accounting of how that will be allocated."

Historically based penalties

Board members also reviewed other CAP issues, including potential cut scores in the APR under which teams would be subject to sanctions in the historically based penalty phase. With only one year of APR data available so far, only the contemporaneous-penalty phase is in play at this point. However, once year-three APR data are finalized next winter, the historically based penalty phase will kick in, starting with warning letters to under-performers early in 2007.

While neither the Board nor the CAP decided on APR cut-offs, both groups identified an 875-900 range for further study. An APR score of 925, which projects roughly to a 50 percent graduation rate (as calculated by the federally mandated methodology that does not take into account transfers who leave in good academic standing), is required to avoid being assessed a contemporaneous penalty.

Board members are comfortable basing the "shot across the bow" contemporaneous-penalty phase on a 50 percent graduation-rate projection, but the presidents aren't as unified about where they want to set the benchmark for the stricter sanctions in the historically based penalty structure. At issue is whether to seek an APR cut-off that equates to a certain projected graduation rate or whether to set the bar in such a way that identifies only "the worst of the worst" in academic performance.

Some Board members suggested that the CAP consider a gradual implementation of a cut score, one that perhaps would begin at 875 and then move upward over several years.

Others favored a more lenient cut score, but stricter penalties for teams whose APRs strayed significantly from the mark.

The CAP is not expected to make a final recommendation until it has reviewed the second year of APR data, which should be available at the group's next meeting at the January Convention. The CAP also meets in April.

In other action, the Board agreed to sponsor several legislative proposals recommended by the CAP, one that imposes playing-and-practice-season restrictions for teams that incur a "second-occasion" penalty in the historically based structure (see CAP story on page 7).

Other highlights

Division I Board of Directors
October 27/Indianapolis

• Discussed preparations for the override vote at the 2006 Convention concerning Proposal No. 04-21, which would increase scholarship limits in women's gymnastics, volleyball, soccer, and track and field and cross country (see related story, page 10). The roll-call vote will occur during a January 7 business session at 11 a.m., right after the Division I Legislative Forum. At least a five-eighths majority vote of individual active members present (including conference members in the governance structure) and voting shall be required to override the legislative action the Board took in April when it approved the proposal and in August when it reiterated support. The membership will vote separately on the four women's sports addressed in the proposal.

• Adopted several noncontroversial legislative proposals approved earlier by the Management Council, including a proposal clarifying the senior woman administrator position as a designation, not a job description.

• Heard an update regarding the Men's College Basketball Partnership, including the "We are the game" promotional initiative that appeals to all constituents in the sport to preserve the game's past and build its future. Board members also viewed the accompanying DVD that has been distributed to men's basketball coaches.

• Approved a proposal from the Management Council that clarifies the Council's voting procedures in January.

• Appointed a group< of Board members to explore whether funds are available in Division I to assist in the relief efforts associated with Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

• Approved a one-year term extension on the Board for University of Hartford President Walter Harrison to facilitate him serving a two-year term as chair of the Executive Committee.

• Used its emergency authority to adopt Proposal No. 05-175, which will remove phenylephrine, an ingredient contained in over-the-counter medicines used to treat colds and flu, from the list of NCAA-banned drugs.