Seven years ago, the Division II Strategic Alliance Matching-Grant Program was nothing more than a promise.

An NCAA racial and gender demographic study had just shown that Division II athletics programs were trailing their Divisions I and III peers when it came to diverse hiring practices, especially with regard to minorities. It clearly was a time for action, but it was less clear what the action should be.

Division II swallowed hard and put its money where its problem was.

The Management Council conceived a program in which institutions and conferences would compete for grants that would help fund new positions that would be filled by ethnic minorities and women, or both. The Presidents Council authorized the new approach on a pilot basis, but in 2002 — after just one year of pilot testing — the Strategic Alliance Matching-Grant Program became a permanent part of the Division II landscape.

The allocation for that first pilot year was $250,000. By 2005-06, Division II support had grown to $550,000, and in 2007-08, it will increase to $700,000.

"Next year, we’ll be giving about $1 million of our divisional funds in efforts for inclusion and diversity," said Augusta State University Athletics Director Clint Bryant, who led the Management Council’s development of the program. "I think that speaks volumes for how Division II has been a leader in this regard."

The Strategic Alliance Matching-Grant Program has not had a large per se effect on the number of women and minorities working in Division II athletics. After all, only 37 positions have been created, and (with turnover) only 63 people have filled those positions. That’s only about 1.5 percent of the 4,000 Division II positions that were reported in the 2003-04 NCAA race and gender demographics report.

What the program has addressed, however, is quality. It has permitted member institutions and conferences with the means to create high-grade positions, and it has provided minorities and women access to those opportunities.

By now, almost any Division II administrator can recite how the program works. The NCAA provides winning institutions or conferences with 75 percent of the salary in Year One, 50 percent in Year Two and 25 percent in Year Three. Institutions or conferences using the grant are obligated to fund the position for a total of five years; if they don’t, they must return the NCAA money.

Except for one case in which Division II rescinded the grant, all of the positions continue to exist today, each position filled with a woman or a minority.

"It’s a tremendous program," said University of New Haven Athletics Director Debbie Chin. "It gives us the opportunity to provide experiences for minorities going into the profession. Those kinds of experiences need to be available."

The program involves large financial commitments from both Division II and the participating institution or conference. The NCAA’s obligation to pay half of the employee’s salary over three years is substantial, but the institution’s commitment is much greater: half the salary over three years and all of the salary over the last two. If the compensation is $40,000 annually, here’s how the finances work out over the life of the agreement:

Year One $10,000 $30,000

Year Two $20,000 $20,000

Year Three $30,000 $10,000

Year Four $40,000 0

Year Five $40,000 0

Total $140,000 (70%) $60,000 (30%)

In fact, the program seems to work best when social awareness intersects with necessity. If an institution or conference is already prepared to establish a new position, the grant can seem like found money.

That’s how it worked at New Haven during the 2000 pilot year. That institution’s athletics program had grown to the point that the previous rules-oversight process was no longer reliable. Chin was authorized to create a new compliance position at a financially propitious time.

"Our position was for an assistant director of athletics for NCAA compliance and student development," she said. "It just happened to come at the right time at our institution when this grant also became an opportunity. In our case, we were just fortunate."

Although the program has benefited minority males at New Haven (see the accompanying story), white females have gained the most from the program.

Of the 28 positions that are currently occupied, 17 (61 percent) are filled with white females. While that does not necessarily represent a problem — after all, the guidelines say only that the positions must be filled by a woman or a minority for the positions’ first five years — the proportion is different from what was envisioned when the program was created six years ago. At the outset, the expectation was that the grants would be equitably distributed among the various demographic groups.

Still, Bryant said he is not alarmed that significantly less than half of the grants are going to minority recipients.

"No, not at all," he said. "What it has shown is that there’s a lot larger number of white females out there than there are probably African-American females or males interested in pursuing a career in athletics.

"I think it has to do with what has happened over the years with Title IX and gender equity, but it also has to do with the emphasis on the role of the senior woman administrator, something that we have pushed as a division."

One other possible explanation for the preponderance of females relates to the nature of the positions being created. Several of the 23 matching-grant positions currently occupied by females explicitly identify rules-compliance responsibilities in the title; other positions that are more broadly titled (for example, "assistant athletics director") likely involve at least some responsibility for compliance.

While many positions in Division II athletics administration traditionally have been filled by men (faculty athletics representatives, sports information directors and athletic trainers, among others), about half of the compliance officers in Division II are women, according to the most recent demographics report.

Bryant noted that women also have benefited from other developmental efforts, such as the NACWAA HERS Program. He believes that the new NCAA office of diversity and inclusion is now poised to assist professional development for all groups that have been disadvantaged in the past.

"Because our society is becoming more multicultural, we have to get beyond gender and ethnicity," he said. "The whole diversity issue is a lot broader than that. I think we in athletics are aware of that, but we’ve never really talked about it.

"We’ve got to get comfortable in our discussion about homophobia and gay and lesbian issues because they’re real. We’ve got to be educated enough and sensitive enough that we don’t create an environment for anyone that may lead to discrimination or (bad hiring practices) in intercollegiate athletics."

That highly global view leads to the question of whether the entire Association, including Division I, would benefit from such a program.

Eric Wood, a former NCAA national office intern who served stints at New Haven and Wake Forest University before taking on his current role in compliance and student services with the Atlantic Coast Conference, believes that the concept is so sound that the program should be expanded on merit alone. "You walk into a position as an assistant AD, and you’re already a member of the senior management team," he said. "You bring in a male perspective, you bring in an African-American male and get it 75 percent paid for in the first year. Really, it eliminates the excuse that ‘this is not a line item that we can work with right now.’ "

But however true that may be, Division I has chosen not to participate, and that leads to a practical concern: The program creates situations in which Divisions II and III develop talent that quickly works its way to Division I.

Bryant takes a high road, saying he’s satisfied if the recipients continue to work in higher education, let alone in Division II. "The problem, as the demographic study has shown, is not a divisional problem as much as it is an Association problem," he said. "And so, if it is providing inclusive opportunities throughout the Association, we’re still getting where we need to be."

And Wood said he wouldn’t rule out returning to a Division II institution some time in the future.

"I really respect Division II because of the balance image they have," he said. "And there are some really strong Division II programs that would beat a lot of Division I-AA programs.

"So by moving to Division I, that’s not to say that I wouldn’t go back (to Division II). This is what you do when you’re young. You get a chance to come up here to Division I and say, ‘I’m really in for this balance ideal that Division II is projecting, but let me see if Division I is what I thought it was.’ "

Even so, both believe the program should be for Divisions I, II and III.

"When this program was first announced," Bryant said, "I said that one day it would become an Association-wide program. That is still my hope. Division III has started a similar program, and I believe Division I will have a similar program, also. With those programs, we will again emphasize the need for a diverse athletics department and give people the opportunity to get in on the administrative end."

Charlotte Westerhaus, NCAA vice president for diversity and inclusion, said the success of the program has attracted attention — and respect — among Division I members of the Diversity Leadership Strategic Planning Committee.

"The members have been discussing whether Division I would be interested in replicating the Division II matching-grant program," she said. "That may be a recommendation. It has generated a great deal of conversation — and constructive conversation — among the committee members. They’re very impressed with the Division II matching-grant program and its actual success."

Regardless of what the future holds, the program will continue to benefit Division II, along with the individuals who participate.

"When I went to Wake Forest," Wood said, "I was doing solely compliance, but when I applied for this job at the ACC, they said, ‘What’s your student services background?’ I went right back to my matching-grant position.

"It just opened up so many doors for me."

That speaks well for the past, and portends a future full of greater promise.

Here are descriptions of the five most recent awards made through the Division II Strategic Alliance Matching-Grant Program. The grants totaled $472,747 ($550,000 is budgeted); the NCAA’s contributions ranged from $76,462 to $104,010.