Thanks to student-athletes who live it, campus administrators who worry about it and conference commissioners who are promoting it, sportsmanship has become a front-burner topic in Division III.

The evidence is popping up everywhere, and that’s making it increasingly difficult for another Division III constituency — fans in the stands — to ignore sportsmanship efforts.

Fans increasingly will see student-athletes personally pledging their own sportsmanship before games begin. They also will see a variety of promotional materials — including banners and posters created by the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and recently distributed to athletics directors at all of the division’s member schools — in sports venues.

They also will discover that administrators at their hometown institutions are more serious than ever before not only about promoting sportsmanship, but insisting that fans practice it in the stands.

"It’s a new day and age for our division," said Chuck Mitrano, commissioner of the Empire 8 and chair of a committee overseeing the Division III Commissioners Association’s Fan Sportsmanship Program, which through September 1 had signed up 326 Division III institutions (including the entire membership of 31 conferences) to implement sportsmanship initiatives on their campuses.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the growing focus on sportsmanship is its grass-roots genesis.

Independently, discussions of ways to support sportsmanship have been occurring among various groups around Division III. Now, those separate efforts are merging, in ways ranging from the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s recent use of the Tier Two portion of its Division III strategic initiatives grant to hold a sportsmanship summit involving schools’ administrators, coaches, student-athletes and referees, to the commissioners’ division-wide program and their partnership with SAAC to promote fan education on campuses.

It’s no surprise that so many people are paying attention to the issue.

One of the most interesting results from the 2004 Future of Division III — Phase II membership survey was its revelation of division-wide concern about sportsmanship.

It’s probably not surprising that 91.5 percent of respondents to the survey "strongly supported" and the remaining 8.5 percent of respondents "supported" the Division III philosophy statement’s encouragement of "development of sportsmanship and positive societal attitudes in all constituents, including student-athletes, coaches, administrative personnel and spectators."

However, in a more revealing finding, the survey helps explain the division’s grass-roots approach to the issue. Ninety percent of respondents indicated that sportsmanship should be addressed at the institutional level, compared to 83.8 percent who believed it should be addressed at the conference level and 74.7 percent who believed it should be addressed nationally by the NCAA.

When asked who should be targeted by sportsmanship programming, the largest percentages (more than 95 percent) either "strongly supported" or "supported" aiming efforts at student-athletes and coaches, but strong support also was expressed for targeting spectators.

The opinions were recorded at about the same time that the NCAA began funding a division-wide program initially established by Mitrano to track conduct fouls in the Empire 8. The system tracks behavior penalties assessed during games, such as personal fouls in football, technical fouls in basketball or yellow cards in soccer.

"I’ve been involved with the conduct-foul program for four years within the Association, and almost six years within our conference," Mitrano said. "When we brought that initiative to Division III through the grant program, that got people thinking along the lines of sportsmanship and programming, and what they could do to buck the trend.

"I recall people saying at that time, ‘Our concern isn’t so much the athlete behavior, it’s the fan behavior.’ "

The commissioners association formed a sportsmanship and ethical conduct committee and began focusing on ways to address the issue of fan sportsmanship.

"We identified a need for a unique way to address our issues as a division," said Mitrano, who chairs the committee, "and then coupled that with the fact that people within our division were concerned about the behavior of fans and were looking for a way to adequately address that."

The effort resulted in creation of the Fan Sportsmanship Program.

Three-pronged focus

The program features a three-pronged focus on fan education, game management and policy enforcement.

The idea is for participating institutions to take all three of those focus areas into account in creating initiatives for promoting fan sportsmanship on their campuses.

"You could educate until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have a policy under which to monitor and enforce things — to hold people’s feet to the fire — it just isn’t going to be beneficial," Mitrano said. "We look at these as three pieces of the puzzle that must be together. To really have an impact, be successful and have longevity, all three things have to work together."

Program materials suggest a variety of ways to promote education, establish policies and situate personnel in support of the three-pronged sportsmanship effort:

Fans likely will see a variety of approaches employed from one school to the next. They also, however, almost certainly will see the same slogan used by all participating schools: "Be Loud. Be Proud. Be Positive."

The slogan appears on banners, posters and other materials — most of them created and recently distributed division-wide by the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, but some specifically created by conferences for use by their member schools.

The SAAC, using funds allocated by the Division III Presidents Council after endorsement of the effort by the Division III Management Council, sent three vinyl banners and six posters to athletics directors at every Division III institution, along with a CD-ROM containing graphics for use in creating additional materials.

Some conferences, including the North Coast Athletic and Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conferences, are creating their own materials incorporating the commissioners’ slogan.

"This is a program the conference believes in strongly," said Dan McKane, executive director of the MIAC. "Our league wants to set an example for good sportsmanship in college athletics. We want both our student-athletes and spectators to exhibit positive behavior at athletics events."

The MIAC developed a sportsmanship logo for incorporation into signs, posters and its own campaign Web site: www-miac.
org/sportsmanship.html.

At least one league already has devoted a portion of this year’s Division III conference grant to a sportsmanship summit. The St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s day-long assembly at Blackburn College featured sport-specific discussions of sportsmanship issues, in which athletics directors, coaches, student-athletes and supervisors of officials tackled a list of discussion topics or questions that included:

"We feel the sportsmanship level in our conference is pretty good, but it can improve, and this will reinforce with our coaches and student-athletes that it is an important issue," said Commissioner Rich Meckfessel, who believes the conference may have been the first in Division III to use Tier Two funds in the recently revamped Strategic Initiatives Grant Program for any purpose — sportsmanship or otherwise.

Student-athlete leadership

Commissioners weren’t the only constituency in Division III plotting ways to promote fan sportsmanship. SAAC members independently were discussing ways to lead Division III student-athletes in efforts to improve behavior in the stands — and in the process, to improve student-athletes’ competition experience.

"There are only 24 of us but we represent such a large number of student-athletes, and we look at this as a leadership role," said Otterbein College football student-athlete and SAAC Vice Chair Doug Tima, explaining the committee’s interest.

"There’s a thing called the ‘tipping point.’ We think we have to move forward with something — there’s a point where we need to push these ideas forward," Tima said.

In addition to its decision to create the banners and posters, SAAC members decided to write a pledge to be read publicly by a student-athlete before games. Coincidentally, the commissioners’ committee also planned to include a sportsmanship pledge in its program.

"When the national office staff noticed we put a pledge in there, we learned that the Division III SAAC was working on a pledge of its own," Mitrano said. "At that point, we said we’d be glad to include their pledge in our program. They already were working on this initiative and they already were doing the banners, and so we all worked it out where we could piggyback our initiative with the SAAC initiative.

"Since they’re all in the same spirit and the same tone, it works out well."

Tima expects the SAAC’s message will have an impact among student-athletes — even more so than messages from school administrators or national organizations.

"If Myles Brand says sportsmanship is important, that’s one thing, but when those who represent student-athletes say it — we’re out there and playing," he said.

Tima also hopes student-athletes’ support for sportsmanship — especially their public pledge to demonstrate "respect toward others and ourselves" — will resonate with others, too

"Athletes are told to be a good sport. But this statement — it includes opponents, fans, coaches and referees — and that basically covers everybody," he said.

Mitrano said student-athletes’ visible participation is crucial to the success and longevity of sportsmanship efforts in Division III.

"We all know that the more people you engage in creating policies or programs, the more ingrained it will be — the more people will buy into it," he said. "When you have student-athletes stepping up and saying, ‘We want to be part of the solution, here’s what we think,’ then obviously they’re going to have more at stake, and they’ll be more involved in the solutions.

"I think it creates a much different atmosphere and culture."

With at least three-quarters of the Division III membership joining commissioners and student-athletes in organized pro-sportsmanship efforts, Mitrano thinks the division is in the best position it ever has been in to improve the game environment — and possibly create a model for use throughout the NCAA.

"When we talk about some of these programs that are taking place and the participation we’re seeing early on, that’s a credit to the type of leaders we have in our division and the values of individuals within our division — from the presidents to the athletics directors to the coaches to the support staff," he said. "These are the things that we care about."