It took some doing, but the Division I Management Council managed to recommend options for the Board of Directors to consider regarding legislation that liberalizes financial aid limitations for student-athletes.

Council members spent about 90 minutes at their October 17 meeting in Indianapolis wrestling with the complicated issue of how to exempt institutional nonathletics aid from team limits in a way that mitigates competitive equity. In the end, they recommended that the Board consider imposing residency and academic parameters on exempted aid, but the debate it took to arrive at that decision indicated that the issue remains a hot-button item for the diverse Division I membership.

It was déjà vu for a group that had gone through similar discussion in April when it passed Proposal Nos. 02-82 and 03-23-A that loosen current restrictions by not counting nonathletics financial aid against team limits. Proposal No. 02-82 deals with football and basketball student-athletes, while Proposal No. 03-23-A is for student-athletes in equivalency sports.

Even that vote was close. The Council unilaterally favored student-athletes being able to receive more financial aid, but many members had trouble reconciling that desire with the concern of institutions with more resources being able to "stockpile" scholarships and thus gain a competitive advantage.

Those concerns were manifested even more at the Board's April meeting when the presidents paused on the measures altogether. While they, too, were interested in liberalizing financial aid restrictions, they sent the two proposals back to the Council to explore alternatives that allay the competitive-equity concerns.

At its core, the financial aid matter seeks to avoid putting student-athletes in the untenable position of having to turn down nonathletics aid to protect the team. Current rules count institutional nonathletics aid in team limits, and members of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee long have advocated for relief in this area. They say current rules most harshly affect student-athletes who do not receive athletically related financial aid, or who receive very little, and must forgo receiving financial aid from legitimate institutional sources to play the sports they love.

Some administrators, though, worry that providing such flexibility could lead to instances in which schools "create" various nonathletics aid resources and thus abuse the intent of the legislation. One Council member put it this way: "We're all in favor of more money going to student-athletes. Nothing is stopping that other than coaches who want to spend the money on students they recruit. If you allow for all aid to be exempt, you allow all of that to be used again and again to recruit the next class."

Despite the debate, though, the Council still had to advise the Board per its directive. Thus, in what became one of the more complicated votes the Council has taken in its eight-year history, members decided to rank their preferences from among seven options that placed varying levels of restrictions on each of the base proposals. It took a series of 14 votes to accomplish that.

One of the options was simply to reiterate support for the base proposals themselves. A straw poll to do that in fact passed for equivalency sports and just narrowly failed for football and basketball. But Council members reasoned that staying the course didn't address the Board's concern. However, the Council did feel that its second vote should indicate to the Board that there still is at least moderate support for the original legislation.

The other six options, developed by NCAA staff and other groups this summer and vetted through conference discussion over the last two months, impose restrictions that range from a mandated year in residence to requiring specific academic profiles before the aid may be exempted.

When the Council ranked those options for both of the base proposals, two emerged as common among both lists. Both employ the year-in-residence and academic-profile requirements (see the accompanying description for details) that were offered in various degrees for most of the alternatives.

While Council members were pleased with their progress, they admitted that the message to the Board was that it was challenging to gain a clear majority on any one alternative over the original proposals.

"The message to the Board is that the Council remains split on this issue," said Council Chair Ron Wellman, director of athletics at Wake Forest University. "There is slightly more comfort with liberalizing restrictions in sports other than football and basketball. On balance, this group is interested in providing more flexibility, but members are divided on how many -- if any -- safeguards to apply."

For example, while some Council members feel the residency and academic parameters allay the competitive-equity concerns, SAAC members on the Council remained unconvinced.

"We continue to favor the base proposals," said Council member and SAAC Chair Ian Gray. "Each one of these safeguards is unnecessary."

Gray said, for example, that requiring a year in residence only delayed the competitive-equity concern. In the end, he said, the intent of the original legislation outweighs the concern of abuse, and that the restrictions only moderate rather than eliminate those concerns.

"This doesn't lessen the recruiting issue," he said. "We all know that coaches often make promises about where money will come from in the future or what can happen based on need. Delaying by one year will just delay that promise. It's not going to alter the recruiting advantages or disadvantages."

In other action from the October meeting, the Council approved as noncontroversial legislation a proposal that clarifies the process the group uses at its January meeting when it considers legislative proposals for the first time.

The change permits the Council, upon initial review of a proposal, to (1) approve and forward the proposal to the Board of Directors for consideration and possible adoption; (2) initially approve and forward the proposal to the membership for review and comment; or (3) if the proposal does not receive initial approval, on motion, forward the proposal to the membership for review and comment without taking a formal position.

The Council believes the proposal defines its role in the initial consideration of legislation at the January meeting. While some proposals require the complete legislative cycle to receive a thorough vetting from the membership, others do not require as much time for the membership to feel comfortable taking a position.

Council members think that by allowing proposals that receive initial approval by a two-thirds majority to move directly to the Board for possible adoption, the Division I legislative agenda will be further simplified.

In turn, the simplification allows both the Council and the membership to focus attention on those proposals that require more examination and discussion in April. Additionally, it provides a way for the Council to indicate the distinction between proposals truly receiving initial support by the Council and proposals being sent for additional comment. Council members believe that will result in less confusion within the membership regarding the significance of actions taken at the January meeting.

Other highlights

Division I Management Council
October 17/Indianapolis

• Approved as noncontroversial legislation Proposal No. 05-157, which establishes a quiet period in women's ice hockey beginning with the Monday before the American Hockey Coaches Association convention through midnight May 31.

• Agreed to revise the effective date for implementation of the Amateurism Clearinghouse (Proposal No. 05-37) to August 1, 2006, for all final certifications for student-athletes initially enrolling at a Division I institution on or after August 1, 2007.

• Approved as noncontroversial legislation a proposal specifying that an institution with a female director of athletics may designate a different female involved with the management of the member's program as a fifth representative to the NCAA governance structure. The proposal also clarifies the definition of a conference senior woman administrator as the "highest ranking female involved with the conduct and policy processes of a member conference's office." The determination of "highest ranking" is left as a conference decision.

• Did not support a Championships/Competition Cabinet request for the cabinet to appoint members of the Football Issues Committee. Currently, the Football Issues Committee reports to the cabinet and the Management Council appoints its members. All other sports-issues committees report to the cabinet and have their members appointed by the cabinet.