After months of gathering opinions and suggestions from a broad array of stakeholders, the Division III Presidents Council has endorsed for further study a list of ideas generated from the Future of Division III initiative.

The ideas include ways to address membership growth, review conference alignment, seek sport equity and promote student-athlete academic success and campus involvement.

Only a handful of the 20-plus ideas presented to the Council by the Future of Division III -- Phase II Oversight Group would require membership approval of legislation, and many would be achieved through educational or informative efforts, such as creation of "best practices" guides.

The Council approved the oversight group's list during its April 28 meeting in Indianapolis.

The action to study specific ideas is a significant milestone in the initiative, which began with adoption at the 2004 Convention of a resolution directing a broad study of Division III's continuing growth and wide diversity of institutions.

The resolution also listed enhancement of institutional and conference autonomy, sport and program equity, and access to championships and other programs and services among areas for review, and required a report to the membership at the 2006 Convention.

After months spent gathering data and opinions, including a membership survey late last year, a forum discussion at the 2005 Convention, a review of various issues by the Division III Membership and Championships Committees, and e-mail-based discussion by Virtual Focus Groups (including institutional and athletics administrators, student-athletes and coaches), the Future of Division III -- Phase II Oversight Group met April 27 and hammered out the list of ideas for delivery to the Presidents Council.

The Council endorsed consideration of ideas in five subject areas: management of growth and championships, sports sponsorship and broad-based programs, sport and program equity, academic success of student-athletes, and cultural and campus integration.

Growth and championships

Ideas addressing membership growth and championships are:

• Cap team sport championship brackets -- some of which currently are threatening to grow to an unmanageable or undesirable size because of Division III's growth -- at 64 teams, once the access ratio exceeds 1:6.5 (retaining the current 32-team cap in football).

With the 1:6.5 ratio, brackets will expand as more institutions join Division III or its 421 existing members decide to add a sport. Some championships -- most likely, women's basketball and volleyball -- are likely to achieve a 64-team bracket during the next three to four years. Capping brackets would prevent championships from exceeding three weeks in duration, and a 64-team bracket ensures that all participants are paired against an opponent in each round of a championship.

The action would require revision of Division III Bylaw 31.3.4.5.

• Explore specific ways to ease reclassification to NCAA Division II, giving attention to minimizing adverse effects on student-athletes who aspire to championship competition. The suggestion calls for Division III representatives to discuss with Division II any relief that could be granted for institutions interested in making such a move.

• Consider increasing minimum sports-sponsorship requirements (which would require legislation), but also consider alternative ways by which smaller institutions may be able to demonstrate a commitment to Division III's philosophy of broad-based participation.

The Council expressed a preference to retain current sponsorship minimums, absent clear rationale that links any proposed increase to the division's philosophical principles and growth management. It noted that requiring an increase would affect an estimated 10 percent of current members that sponsor only the current minimum of 10 sports.

Noting that many of those institutions are small in enrollment, Council members expressed interest in pursuing ways of crediting such institutions for commitment to participation on criteria other than the number of sports sponsored (for example, the percentage of the overall student body participating in athletics). It also noted that any proposed legislation would require a delayed effective date.

• Consider increasing minimum contest requirements and/or the minimum number of required student-athletes in selected individual sports. The Council asked the Membership Committee to further explore those ideas.

The Council also noted that, at its April meeting, the Management Council approved noncontroversial legislation to increase the minimum number of participants in tennis from five to six.

• Continue permitting institutions to maintain dual memberships in Division III and other intercollegiate athletics organizations, noting that while few current members are involved in such arrangements, dual membership helps those institutions deal with geographic isolation from other Division III members or to schedule competition against similar programs.

• Maintain current levels of support for NCAA services, as endorsed by the membership in last year's survey.

The oversight group also discussed the idea of permitting conferences to "opt out" of NCAA championships to participate in other season-ending competition, but did not forward that idea to the Council. The oversight group concluded that such arrangements already are possible among Division III members, as long as competition is scheduled within current playing- and practice-seasons limitations.

Conference autonomy

Ideas for encouraging conferences to review current alignment and, if appropriate, to explore realignment include:

• Create a Conference Self-Study Guide to prompt institutions to discuss philosophical and other reasons for maintaining affiliation in a conference. Such a discussion would include development of a conference philosophy statement, while encouraging review of reasons for maintaining membership in a conference other than obtaining automatic qualification for championships.

Respondents to last year's survey suggested strong support for several other reasons for conference membership: similar institutional mission, similar academic profile, geographic proximity, and similarity of athletics programs. Presidents Council members also suggested that the role played in conferences by chief executive officers should be included in a self-study.

Council members stressed that the purpose of such a review would not be to force acceptance of specific criteria for conference membership, but to ensure that conference members engage in conversation about reasons why they are joined together.

Legislation would be needed to require conference self-study.

• Consider permitting -- as an outcome of conference self-study and for a limited period of time -- realignment of conferences without loss of automatic qualification.

• Support involvement in governance of intercollegiate athletics by institutional personnel who oversee athletics in addition to chief executive officers (such as chief student affairs or academic officers).

Council members noted plans already are underway to identify such individuals at Division III institutions for inclusion on the annual NCAA institutional demographic report and mailing list, and to provide funds through the strategic-initiatives program to encourage their attendance at the Convention.

Sport and program equity

Ideas involving sport and program equity include:

• Explore ways to promote equality in an institution's treatment of sports. The idea reflects support expressed in the membership survey for equitable athletics opportunities for males and females and equal emphasis on men's and women's sports, and concern expressed about preferring certain sports over others within programs.

• Maintain NCAA programming and create best practices that enhance opportunities for the recruitment of minority coaches and staff.

• Establish NCAA programming to enhance opportunities for the recruitment of minority student-athletes.

Academic success

Ideas for promoting academic success of student-athletes include:

• Legislation to amend the Division III philosophy statement to indicate that admissions policies for student-athletes should be consistent with those for the general student body.

• Legislation to amend the philosophy statement to indicate that student-athletes' academic performance should be, at a minimum, consistent with performance of the general student body.

• Create best practices for assessing the college academic performance of student-athletes, using widely supported measurements such as graduation rate and college grade-point average.

Cultural and campus integration

The Council endorsed consideration of several ideas in this area, including creation of "best practices" to support:

• Chief executive officers' active involvement in the oversight of intercollegiate athletics.

• Institutional governing boards' or boards of trustees' awareness of campus intercollegiate athletics.

• Student-athletes' integral involvement in campus life.

• Coaches' familiarity with institutional missions and integral involvement in campus life.

• Evaluation and annual compensation of coaches on criteria that go beyond "wins and losses" and are consistent with institutional educational priorities.

The Council also endorsed considering:

• Legislation to amend the Division III philosophy statement to specify that administration of an institution's athletics program should be fully integrated into that institution's educational mission and campus culture.

• Maintaining NCAA programming to enhance sportsmanship, including student-athletes, coaches, officials, athletics staff and spectators.

During the next three months, all those ideas will be discussed further at various Division III committee meetings, membership seminars and conference gatherings, and also by the division's Virtual Focus Groups. In addition, three subgroups of the Future of Division III -- Phase II Oversight Group will work to compile specific best practices by October to support the various ideas employing that approach.

All of the ideas endorsed for further study -- as well as reactions to those ideas gathered from coming discussions -- also will be reviewed by the Division III Management Council at its July meeting in Anaheim, California, and revisited by the Presidents Council at its August meeting in Indianapolis.

Other highlights

Division III Presidents Council
April 28/Indianapolis

• Approved recommendations from the Division III Presidents Council and Management Council Strategic Planning Subcommittee to allocate funds during the 2005-06 budget year for division-wide sportsmanship efforts; to support attendance at the NCAA Convention by institutional officers who oversee athletics (such as chief student affairs or academic officers); and to support an educational partnership between the NCAA and the National Association of Division III Athletics Administrators. It also approved a reduction from six to four in the number of student-athlete regional leadership conferences per program cycle, thus enabling institutions to send participants to a conference every other year instead of every three years. It also approved including part-time athletics personnel, faculty athletics representatives and student-affairs staff among participants.

• Endorsed consideration of an enhanced conference grant program that would give member conferences more authority and discretion over how Division III funds for strategic initiatives are used. The program, which could be included in the Division III budget for 2006-07 and 2007-08, is envisioned as a means of enhancing conference and institutional autonomy and broadening membership participation in achieving the division's strategic goals and objectives, while reducing costs and achieving greater efficiency in administering various programs.

• Agreed to sponsor legislation at the 2006 Convention specifying penalties for failure by an institution to submit the financial aid electronic report (which must be submitted annually between July 1 and September 30 beginning in 2005-06). Failure to submit the report would result in probation, and subsequent failure would result in restricted membership status, then reclassification to corresponding membership.

• Agreed to sponsor legislation at the 2006 Convention specifying penalties for failure to comply with the Division III Institutional Self-Study Guide deadline. Failure to meet the deadline would result in probation, and failure to submit the form within one year of that deadline would result in restricted membership.

• Agreed to sponsor legislation at the 2006 Convention to permit a representative of an institution's athletics interests to provide an occasional meal in a restaurant for a team, and approved a package of 21 other proposals from the Division III Interpretations and Legislation Committee addressing student-athlete well-being that are deemed noncontroversial (see the April 25 issue of The NCAA News).

• Approved a package of legislative proposals from the Interpretations and Legislation Committee involving recruiting (Bylaw 13), including proposals for the 2006 Convention to permit institutions to purchase meals off campus to provide at an on-campus facility during an official visit by a prospective student-athlete and family, and to specify that subvarsity teams may not compete against high-school or preparatory-school teams.