Kent State University faces an interesting dilemma when it comes to football.

On any autumn Saturday afternoon in northeastern Ohio, a Division I college football fan need only pick a direction and drive a short distance to be sitting in the stands before kickoff. The University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Ohio University, the University of Akron, the University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, Eastern Michigan University, Youngstown State University and many more teams play within 200 miles of Kent, Ohio, home to the Golden Flashes.

Sometimes, especially in years the Flashes do well in the Mid-America Conference, the stands will be filled. But in other years, such as this season when Kent State went 5-6 and ended up in the middle of the MAC's Eastern Division, the seats at Dix Stadium are harder to fill.

"On a given Saturday, (fans) might be choosing between a Big Ten game or a MAC game. And if they have ties to both, they're often going to choose the game that has a little bit more hype around it," Kent State President Carol Cartwright said. "If we run into a stretch of good weather and we start winning early, we can hold our own in our market. But if we have a stretch of bad weather and we peak late instead of early, we have challenges."

Those challenges were even more crucial for the 2004 season, the first time Division I-A required its member institutions to meet a 15,000 average attendance threshold to retain membership at the I-A level. Institutions that fail to meet the requirement are informed that another violation in a 10-year period results in restricted membership in football, which prevents an institution from participating in a postseason bowl game.

Under the old rules, the criterion was an average of 17,000 in paid attendance over the previous four-year period. However, institutions could seek a litany of waivers and other exceptions, including a conference waiver that would allow members to retain their I-A status if the majority of schools in their conference met the requirements. That process, and the need to begin creating a more obvious separation between Division I-A and Division I-AA, led to the appointment of the Football Study Oversight Committee, which -- after working with other governance and membership groups -- agreed upon the latest attendance requirement and other criteria, such as scholarship commitments and sports sponsorship.

The attendance requirement, though, and the consequences for not meeting it, has become an issue of concern among Division I officials at all levels, including presidents, athletics administrators and conference commissioners.

Cartwright, who chairs the NCAA Executive Committee and is a member of the Division I Board of Directors, believes the requirement does not align with the newly adopted NCAA strategic plan, a document that emphasizes the collegiate model of athletics and the student-athlete experience as core values and goals the Association is working to uphold.

"I don't believe it fits the principles underlying a collegiate model of athletics. If you're in or out based on that variable and you spend a quarter of a million dollars on some marketing activities to put a thousand more people in your stadium instead of investing in student-athletes, is that what we really intended? I don't think it is," Cartwright said.

"I believe we need to look at alignment of the membership criteria with the new strategic plan ... and decide whether it measures up."

Sidney McPhee, president of Middle Tennessee State University, another school in danger of not making the minimum attendance requirement, said he believes the strategic plan's focus on student-athlete issues is "more important and should be our focus."

"I'm not sure how consistent or how much this focus on 15,000 fits with the new strategic plan that the members have approved and the direction in which President (Myles) Brand is taking the organization," McPhee said.

Not only does the requirement not reflect a renewed focus on the collegiate model of athletics, it also could contribute to a continued destabilization of college athletics, Cartwright said. More than 20 schools will align themselves with new conferences or leave conference play altogether between now and 2006. The shifting of major conference rivals makes scheduling difficult, particularly long-term. If schools are in and out of subdivisions based on the attendance requirement, that instability will only continue, Cartwright said.

Measuring public support

While some people believe the 15,000 plateau may be an arbitrary number, others say it is a well-thought-out benchmark of public support for I-A programs.

Greg Sankey, associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and former chair of the Division I Management Council's membership subcommittee, said the Football Study Oversight Committee (whose voting members were presidents), the membership subcommittee and a representative group of conference commissioners all spent the better part of two years looking at six different membership models for collegiate football that included community support -- which is inherent in the Division I philosophy statement -- as a criterion. Though the NCAA strategic plan was not completed at the time of the study, Sankey said the new plan does include community support as a core ideology.

As for the figure of 15,000, Sankey said those groups considered several factors, including a longstanding "minimum-stadium-size" criterion that suggested a capacity of 30,000 as meeting Division I-A standards. Members decided that requiring institutions to fill half the stands was reasonable.

He also said previous attendance records indicated a line of demarcation at around 15,000, above which few Division I-AA teams resided and below which only a handful of I-A teams fell.

Taken together, Sankey said, the study groups thought it was appropriate to expect Division I-A members to generate an average of 15,000 fans as a show of "meaningful community support."

"It's important to point out that a great deal of thought went into analyzing the criteria that would be used to define a I-A football program and that a number of people spent a good amount of time doing so," Sankey said. "When you talk about community support for a program, the most representative way to do that is to have people attend games on a consistent basis."

The 15,000 dividing line also is important for the I-AA subdivision, said Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton, who would favor an even higher attendance standard.

"We think it's extremely important to have meaningful I-A standards (to discourage) the siren's call to I-A," Fullerton said.

He pointed out that an examination of attendance of teams that recently have made the jump from I-AA to I-A reveals an interesting pattern. Fullerton said because those teams typically choose to play larger Division I-A institutions on the road for high-dollar guarantees as the way to build funding for their programs, the result is a drop in the school's fan base over time.

"As they're playing 'money games' on the road, their fans are finding other things to do on Saturdays," Fullerton said. "Then after about the third year they wonder why their home crowds have disappeared.

"People will go to I-A and perhaps beat somebody that first year and think what a great move they made. But watch the third and fourth year when the attendance is gone because their fan base has eroded."

Fullerton also said attendance provides a good indication of the level of funding it takes to succeed at the I-A level. He said typical I-A programs garner about 85 percent of their revenues from "earned income" (for example, ticket sales, television rights, etc.), whereas the typical I-AA program relies more on "unearned income" (university subsidies or student fees).

"True I-A programs have the ability to operate on earned income, while I-AA programs need about 60 percent of unearned revenues from the institution or the students to support their programs," Fullerton noted. "The funding standard actually complements the attendance requirement -- they get at the same thing, which is whether you have the base to buy the tickets and do the things you need to do to be successful at the I-A level."

Both Fullerton and Sankey also note that a meaningful attendance bar can be viewed as a developmental tool rather than a restrictive measure since it forces institutions to be creative in marketing to maximize fan interest.

"That obviously is a central part of funding a program," Sankey said. "(The attendance standard) increases the focus for some of those on the attendance margin and helps strengthen their financial situation."

Conditions beyond control

The reasons for an institution not drawing 15,000 people to its home games are varied, but many have one thing in common: They are beyond institutional control.

Cartwright said she or her institution can't control how many other schools within driving distance have home football games on a given weekend and how many people would rather go to a Big Ten Conference game than a MAC game. Likewise, Philip Dubois, the president of the University of Wyoming, can't control that his institution is located in a town of only 27,000 people located 45 miles from Cheyenne (population of about 55,000).

"To reach the 15,000 barrier in a town of 27,000, I've got to have the stars align in the right direction," Dubois said. "For me to think that I'm going to get 50 percent of the city's population, that's a problem."

Dubois has another factor to contend with -- the weather. Other programs across the country must deal with inclement weather occasionally, but Dubois said Wyoming weather is especially unpredictable. What is predictable, he said, is the correlation between kickoff temperature and attendance. In charts that he has compiled over the last 10 years, Dubois said a kickoff temperature of 45 degrees or below guaranteed an attendance figure significantly fewer than 15,000 people.

Another issue outside of his control is television broadcasts. If the Wyoming game is picked up by a national network, the game will begin at about 1 p.m. If not, and the game is broadcast only regionally or in point-to-point broadcast, game time must be moved outside what he called "the ESPN window" between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Games must start at 10 a.m. or 4 p.m. -- or later. Fans who must drive an hour or more through sometimes sketchy weather often will decide that driving after dark -- or getting up before sunrise -- to get to the game isn't worth the effort.

Wyoming reached the attendance plateau this year, Dubois said, but he isn't sure it would have done so last year when three games were played after November 1, including one on Thanksgiving weekend (when few students were even on campus) and one during a blizzard.

Dubois, Cartwright and others do not dispute that public support is an important component of Division I-A programs. They understand that student-athletes attend Division I institutions in part to have the glory and the grandeur of a cheering crowd every Saturday. But Cartwright said she believes public support is something institutions should have a vested interest in for their own purposes, not for NCAA divisional membership.

"Of course you want your student-athletes to have a good experience, and that means fan support," she said.

Tom Hansen, commissioner of the Pacific-10 Conference, which includes powers such as the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, said public support reflects the magnitude of a football program.

"We have wrestled with this for all the years that I've been involved in this business, with what are the best criteria, and attendance is the one that has remained as part of the picture," he said. "I would say that frankly, at 15,000, that it is a very minimal requirement for a I-A program. ... If you don't have fans in attendance, it's not a positive experience and a positive atmosphere for the student-athletes. I think attendance is part of the I-A culture, and that's one of the things a student-athlete is seeking -- recognition and support."

McPhee, who like Cartwright is a Division I Board member, agrees that public support is important for Division I-A institutions, but he said that support isn't always evident in attendance figures.

"We have a significant number of season tickets that were sold, much higher than many of the schools that made the average 15,000 this year," McPhee said. "Whatever the standards are, we're going to try to make them. However, give us an opportunity to meet standards that we can control. Why 15,000? Why not 14,000? What's so magical about 15? Why not 18? To have that as a major criterion with so much emphasis I think misses the point."

Public support can be measured in many different ways, Dubois said. He pointed out that Wyoming also sold a significant number of season tickets this past football season. However, if those ticket holders don't show up for the game because of weather or because of television constraints, the stands go empty and the 15,000 requirement is pie in the sky.

R.C. Johnson, athletics director at the University of Memphis, believes that an institution's commitment to being Division I-A should be measured financially, not by the number of people in the stands at game time.

"If some school is spending the dollars for 85 scholarships, that's a pretty good commitment," he said. "It would seem to me that if you make the commitment financially for your staffing, for your scholarships and to have an adequate number of home games against other I-A opponents, that's pretty good. I don't know that attendance really determines whether you are a viable I-A player."

Johnson, whose Tigers draw more than twice the attendance minimum, said he thinks institutions often "fake" meeting the bar. "There are those that are concerned about it that will find a way to beat it. It's kind of counterproductive," he said.

Many of those who disagree with the attendance minimum agree with Johnson -- an institution's commitment to being Division I-A should be measured with factors that institutions can control.

"You cannot be held accountable for the weather and for what else is going on in your marketplace," Cartwright said. "To be 'in' or 'out' based on one variable that is not under institutional control seems to me to fly in the face of what we're trying to do with membership."

Ongoing discussion

Changing the new rule is something that could come up as early as the Convention. The issue in fact is on the agenda for the Division I Board of Directors, which meets January 10 in Dallas. Cartwright said she and others in the MAC are working on several suggestions. She believes they will be able to build support for those concepts, which will include strengthening and enhancing the experience at I-AA or looking at Division I football the same way as Division I basketball -- as all Division I. She also said scholarships and team sponsorship might come into play.

Johnson believes providing a financial declaration with scholarship and budgetary information and scheduling an adequate number of home games against I-A opponents should be sufficient for I-A membership.

"If you're doing all those things, I'm not sure it really matters how many people are in the stands," he said. "It's all about commitment. Being I-A is wanting to be the best. You want to be at the best level. I think the way you can really show that is through your financial commitment."

Dubois said he doesn't know what he would change yet, but he thinks counting paid tickets would be a good start. Perhaps grandfathering in institutions that met stringent criteria to be admitted to the classification or those that have been I-A since its inception -- like Wyoming -- also would be possibilities.

"You've got to ask yourself the question if it's fair to an institution that made the financial commitment to go I-A now to have the rules changed on them so they don't meet the standards. That's a fairness question," he said. "If we make the decision not to be Division I, it ought to be our decision, not because somebody's decided, OK, now that you've cleared five feet, we'll raise the bar to six feet. Now that you've cleared six feet we'll raise the bar to seven. When does that stop?"

The variables that matter, Cartwright said, are whether schools and conferences have nationally ranked athletics teams and outstanding graduation rates.

"We have a commitment to the student-athlete. That seems to me to be what we're talking about in the collegiate model of athletics," she said. "Can you really stand up and defend the difference between 12,000 people at a game and 15,000?"

When the Board of Directors meets at the Convention, presidents will have to try.

Division I-A Membership Standards
Approved April 2002
Effective August 1, 2004

• An institution shall sponsor a minimum of 16 varsity intercollegiate sports, including football, including a minimum of six sports for men and eight sports for women

• Provide an average of at least 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of overall football grant-in-aids per year over a rolling two-year period

• Annually offer a minimum of 200 athletics grant in aids or expend at least four million dollars on grants-in-aid to student-athletes in athletics programs

• Schedule and play at least 60 percent of its football games against members of Division I-A

• During the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons, schedule and play at least four regular season home football games against members of Division I-A. Thereafter, the institution shall play at least five Division I-A regular season home games

• Annually average at least 15,000 in actual attendance for all home football games