left unchecked, could lead to historically based sanctions. The first set of immediate penalties was issued last spring upon the collection of two years of APR data. The first historically based penalties — a public warning — will be issued once three years of APR data are collected in spring 2007.

"As with each stage of our academic reforms — from enhanced eligibility standards to sharper measurements of progress toward degree — the goal is to help teams and student-athletes improve, not to penalize," said NCAA President Myles Brand. "The historically based phase of reform does not waver from that charge. I believe the presidents have selected an APR standard that accurately identifies those teams that are consistently under-performing and prompts them to attain a higher level of academic achievement."

The Board agreed on an "improvement-plus" model that allows teams below a 900 APR to gain relief from the initial phase of the historically based penalties by first demonstrating consistent and significant APR improvement, then meeting at least one of the following institutional-characteristic components (previously referred to as "institutional mission"):

"We believe the ‘filtered’ approach best identifies the ‘worst of the worst’ in team academic performance, which the historically based phase of academic reform was meant to distinguish," said University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, a Board member who also chairs the Division I Committee on Academic Performance, the group charged with administering academic reform. "The presidents also believe the simultaneous review of several factors is the fairest method to apply historically based penalties for a Division I membership with a wide range of institutional characteristics."

Teams that do not gain relief from the improvement-plus model would trigger a public warning for the first offense, to be issued next spring. Failure to meet APR benchmarks in subsequent years could lead to harsher penalties, such as scholarship reductions, recruiting restrictions and, in extreme cases, postseason bans or even membership restrictions.

The Board voted to retain the squad-size adjustment in the third year of the APR calculation to continue to account for variances in data around a team’s true historically based rate until four years of data are available.

Current projections are that a 900 cut score with a squad-size adjustment could result in 0.5 to 1 percent of all squads potentially being eligible for historically based penalties. When the squad-size adjustment goes away with the fourth year of APR data in 2007-08, those totals could rise to between 2.5 and 6 percent of squads. An additional 5 to 10 percent of squads could be eligible for contemporaneous penalties.

Member institutions have been notified from the beginning of reform implementation that the squad-size protection would disappear once enough APR data were collected to produce a reliable measurement of a team’s true academic standing.

For 2006-07, teams that meet APR benchmarks for the historically based model only because of the squad-size adjustment will be informed that they would have been assessed a public warning had it not been for the statistical relief. The presidents deployed a similar approach in the first year of the APR when immediate penalties could have been levied.

Override votes

The Board also considered two override requests, one regarding legislation that allows a graduate with remaining eligibility to transfer and be immediately eligible at his or her new institution (Proposal No. 05-54). The presidents approved the measure in April after the proposal progressed without fanfare through the legislative cycle. After its adoption, however, coaches and administrators became concerned about the legislation’s effect on competitive equity and its creation of what some coaches called another recruiting opportunity.

Board members stood firm on their April action, though, citing academic primacy as the basis for their decision. The presidents acknowledged the possibility of a "free agency" market with this new pool of student-athletes but agreed that the legislation correctly assumes that graduates will make their decisions based on where they want to attend school, not on where they want to play games.

The action means that the Division I membership will vote on the matter at the NCAA Convention in January. It is only the second time since governance restructuring in 1997 that Division I will have conducted an override vote, but the occurrences come back to back. Members conducted their first override vote at last year’s Convention over whether to increase scholarship limits in various women’s sports.

Division I-AA members of the Board delayed action on the other override request, which was a measure defeated in April that would provide for a 12th regular-season football game in Division I-AA (Proposal No. 05-128). The presidents delayed their vote until the October meeting because two of the four I-AA representatives on the Board were absent. Also, the Division I-AA/I-AAA Presidential Advisory Group, which conducts its summer session via teleconference, wants the chance to discuss the matter at its in-person meeting in October.

Many in the Division I-AA membership favored the proposal when it was considered at the committee and Management Council level last spring, but the four members on the Board opposed the idea at the April meeting.

Interestingly, the Ohio Valley Conference is proposing legislation for the 2006-07 cycle that would give I-AA members of the I-AA/I-AAA Presidential Advisory Group the authority to act on behalf of the I-AA members of the Board on legislative issues specific to I-AA football.

In other action, the Board heard from staff that the NCAA Amateurism Clearinghouse will become operational in November pursuant to an agreement reached through American College Testing (ACT), which already administers the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse. The Board also used its emergency authority to adopt legislation (Proposal No. 06-15) to establish an NCAA Amateurism Fact-Finding Committee, which will determine facts related to certifying the amateur status of a prospect in cases in which an institution does not agree with the determination of facts rendered by the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse.