Football Championship Subdivision members of the Division I Board of Directors declined to reconsider their decision to defeat a proposal to allow a 12th regular-season game for that subdivision at the Board’s October 26 meeting in Indianapolis.

The proposal, No. 05-128, will now be considered by the FCS membership at the January Convention in Orlando.

A majority of the Board members representing the FCS defeated the proposal in April, but enough institutions requested an override for those members to reconsider the measure. The proposal was submitted a year after the Board approved a 12th game for teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

The decision means that two overrides will be considered at the Convention. Earlier this year, the Board upheld its adoption of Proposal No. 05-54, which allows graduates with remaining athletics eligibility to transfer to another institution and participate immediately, regardless of sport. The full Division I membership will consider that override request.

In other legislative action, the Board defeated a proposal that would have excluded graduates with eligibility remaining from the Academic Progress Rate cohort. The Committee on Academic Performance had opposed the proposal based on the premise that any student participating in athletics should be subject to at least minimal academic requirements, including remaining eligible. An eligibility point makes up half of the formula for the APR calculation. The other piece is retention. Graduated student-athletes always earn the retention point.

CAP members noted that the current policy, which includes student-athletes who have graduated with eligibility remaining, helps more teams than the proposed change would.

The Division I Management Council had suggested an alternative to exclude student-athletes from the APR cohort if they do not earn the eligibility point and include them if they do, but neither the CAP nor Board supported that approach.

Board members also heard an update from the CAP on a tiered system of penalties for teams that reach the second stage of the historically based penalty structure.

The proposed tiers for the occasion-two penalties emphasize improvement as a factor in determining the level at which a team is penalized. The Board earlier approved a structure in which teams falling below an APR of 900 would be subject to a simultaneous examination of several factors, including meaningful team improvement based on a multi-year APR. Teams that meet both the improvement standard and one of several other comparative factors would not be subject to historical penalties.

CAP members proposed that teams with APRs below 900 be subject to different penalties depending on their history of improvement.

The Board also reviewed a proposed timeline for future public release of academic data. The timeline includes a May release of all APR information for institutions, contemporaneous penalties and historically based penalties. The spring release allows institutions to exhaust the appeals process before information is made public.