The Division I Board of Directors and Management Council are asking the membership to comment on legislation that redefines the men’s and women’s basketball season. Both groups during their Convention meetings agreed to distribute a measure that allows for 28 regular-season games and permits teams to exempt participation in one multiple-team event once per year.

Currently, teams may play a maximum of 28 regular-season games but are subject to the “two-in-four rule,” which precludes schools from playing in an exempted event more than twice in a four-year period. The revised legislation would eliminate the two-in-four restriction and allow teams to play in multiple-team events annually — as long as they don’t play in the same event more than once in a four-year period.

Under the proposal, multiple-team events, which no longer would be certified by the NCAA, could not exceed four contests and could not include more than one team from any league. Those events would count as one game toward the 28-game maximum. Thus, if a team elects to play in a multiple-team event, it could play 27 additional regular-season games (resulting in up to 31 total games). If not, then the team could schedule a maximum of 28 games.

The proposal also would set the second Friday in November as the official start of the season. The start date previously had been confusing, resulting in multiple-team events in November being called “preseason events.” Under the new proposal, both single regular-season contests and multiple-team events could start on a uniform date.

The proposal comes after gauging membership interest in several proposals that would revise the playing and practice seasons in many sports, including basketball. It also follows the Management Council’s deferral on those measures until litigation concerning the two-in-four rule was resolved. A U.S. Court of Appeals decision in 2004 upheld the two-in-four rule after it had been challenged by promoters as violating antitrust law. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently denied a request to hear an appeal of that decision.

A related case — the lawsuit from the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) that challenged the NCAA’s authority to preclude schools from choosing their postseason participation options — also was settled in August when the NCAA acquired the National Invitation Tournaments that the MIBA previously oversaw.

Those outcomes effectively cleared the way for the Management Council to set playing-season parameters.

“Because of those settlements — and discussions with many constituents — more certainty exists and has resulted in the development of this substitute draft proposal,” said Division I Vice President David Berst. “The proposal is intended to eliminate the two-in-four rule, which has been an impediment for some time, and it simplifies the rules relative to multiple-team events.”

Board and Council members noted that the proposal, coupled with the completed litigation, could lead to a proliferation of multiple-team events, especially since the availability of teams to participate in those events increases under the proposed legislation. They reasoned, though, that the restrictions on the number of teams from a conference and on repeat participation in a given event may better accomplish what the two-in-four rule was meant to do in the first place, which was to increase the diversity of teams playing in exempted events.

The proposal also appears attractive to the so-called “mid-major” schools. One Division I-AAA athletics director said even if such proliferation causes more multiple-team events to be hosted by the larger institutions, it still affords smaller schools the access they need to the high-profile games that help build tournament resumes. And not all of those games would be against an institution on its home court, either, he said, since a multiple-team format would in effect create neutral-site games for some of the participants.

The Council and Board expect to consider the proposal again in April. The Board in fact may use its emergency legislative authority to adopt the measure at that time. The Management Council elected not to move the other playing and practice season proposals, meaning they no longer are subject to consideration by the Council.