SAVANNAH, Georgia — The Division III Management Council, seeking alternatives to implementing a membership cap to halt the division’s rapid growth, has endorsed a list of options recently submitted to an NCAA Executive Committee working group that is studying the Association-wide ramifications of various membership issues within divisions.

The Council received the list of options from the Division III Membership Committee as an information item in its April 10-11 meeting agenda, but decided to actively endorse the recommendations to demonstrate its commitment to moving quickly toward addressing concerns about growth.

The options were listed by the Membership Committee in January and forwarded to the working group, which consists of institutional presidents and chancellors representing all three divisions.

The working group was instructed by the Executive Committee to respond with any recommendations by January 2007, but the Membership Committee suggested that, as a practical matter, that group should respond by early summer 2006 to give the Division III membership an opportunity to submit related legislative proposals by the July 15 legislation deadline for the 2007 Convention.

For that matter, the Council will consider sponsorship of or support for legislative or other approaches to addressing membership issues during its July meeting.

The options, as reported in the February 13 issue of The NCAA News, include:

n Consider further limiting the annual class size of provisional members to more closely match the number of institutions that leave Division III — perhaps one or two institutions a year. Division III currently is including six institutions in each year’s provisional-membership class.

n Consider assessing institutions’ readiness to comply with the Division III philosophy and requiring compliance with most or all current requirements for active membership — including with the five-sport (or recently adopted six-sport)/three-season requirement, contest and participant minimums, and successful submission of the annual financial aid report — before they enter the provisional-membership process. (The committee also suggested it may be appropriate under that scenario to reduce the current four-year provisional-membership process.)

n Review the NCAA division structure long-term, noting the Division III membership’s opposition to subdivision as expressed in past Future of Division III membership survey results.

n Review resources currently available to Division III — including the current guarantee of 3.18 percent of the Association’s annual budget as well as programs and services provided by the national office — in determining an optimal size for the division. The committee indicated such a review should determine the actual cost to the division of each member, and the impact of adding new members. The committee — noting membership support expressed in Future of Division III survey results for the current championships structure — also supported study of the most appropriate championships structure based on the Division III philosophy statement.

n Incorporate demographic data and trends in higher education — such as increasing enrollments and transitions by two-year institutions into four-year schools and single-gender institutions into coeducational schools — during the working group’s review.

n Consider more aggressive review of active members to determine their commitment to the Division III philosophy and to complying with membership and legislative requirements, noting that it may not be justifiable to retain active members at the expense of potential members who may fit better within the division.

n Consider increasing membership dues, if necessary, to ease constraints on Division III resources and services and to apply additional funds toward long-term options for addressing membership issues.

Implementation of some combination of those options could address the growth-related pressures that prompted the North Coast Athletic Conference to sponsor a proposal at the 2006 Convention to impose a hard cap on the size of Division III. The NCAC cited stress on access to championships, programs, services and NCAA staff support as reasons for implementing the cap.

Convention delegates referred that proposal to the Executive Committee working group.

During its discussion of the Membership Committee’s recommendations, the Council noted that adoption of some combination of the options would offer more flexibility than a hard cap in dealing with changing circumstances. For example, a cap might cause Division III to deny membership to a future desirable applicant, whereas a more stringent screening process could slow growth significantly while leaving the door open to an institution that could become a valuable member.

“The Membership Committee’s options provide a solid framework for addressing the growth issues that have caused considerable concern among the membership,” said Michael Miranda, Management Council chair and faculty athletics representative at Plattsburgh State University of New York. “The Management Council appreciates the efforts of the Membership Committee and was comfortable with a formal motion to send them forward to the Division III Presidents Council for its action.”

The Presidents Council also will review the status of the review of membership issues during its April 27 meeting in Indianapolis. Two Presidents Council members — John Fry of Franklin & Marshall College and Rick Wells of the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh — are serving on the Association-wide working  group, along with former Council member Dale Knobel of NCAC-member Denison University.

Drug-testing pilot

The Management Council also ushered a proposed pilot drug-testing program to be conducted througout the academic year toward implementation beginning this August — but only after a lengthy discussion about whether testing will be more effective than increased educational efforts in deterring substance abuse by student-athletes.

The Council recommended to the Presidents Council that it approve the two-year voluntary program, which would test up to 2,000 student-athletes at Division III campuses during each year of the pilot effort. The program’s annual $400,000 cost would cover testing of 10 student-athletes at each of 200 institutions that volunteer to participate in the program.

No penalties would be assessed during the pilot period, which was proposed earlier this year by the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, The program seeks to produce data for use in determining whether Division III will expand its drug-testing program, which currently is conducted only during championships.

The NCAA currently conducts year-round testing in select sports in Divisions I and II, but Division III previously has resisted expanding testing because of skepticism that the scope of substance abuse justifies the cost, as well as philosophical concerns about treating student-athletes differently on campuses from other students who are not subject to testing.

Those concerns were raised again during the Council’s discussion of the proposed pilot, but members agreed that two years of data will be helpful in making a more informed decision about the issue.

All Division III members would be eligible to volunteer for the program. Participating schools would be selected by the National Center for Drug Free Sport, Inc., the organization that conducts testing on behalf of the NCAA. Selection of participating schools will be based on ensuring a representative sample of geographic regions, size and types of institutions and array of men’s and women’s sports.

If approved by the Presidents Council, the program would be conducted during the next two academic years.

The cost of the pilot drug-testing program is included in nearly $1 million in new nonchampionships initiatives for the biennial budget beginning in fall 2006. Those expenditures, along with approximately $800,000 in additional championships expenditures, were approved by the Management Council and forwarded to the Presidents Council for final approval later this month.

Other nonchampionships initiatives include a first-ever allocation of Division III funds totaling $163,000 to increase direct NCAA staff support for division member institutions beginning in 2006-07, and $400,000 in additional funding during 2007-08 for the Tier II component of the recently revamped Strategic Initiatives Grant Program addressing social responsibility and integration.

The strategic grant funds will be applicable to initiatives administered by conferences and the Association of Division III Independents dealing with student-athlete well-being and community service, diversity and gender equity, and sportsmanship.

The championships initiatives include $158,000 to provide participant awards to all student-athletes participating in championships and $174,000 to fund the first expansion in seven years of the Division III Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships field.

Council members also endorsed a pair of recommendations from the Division III Budget Committee impacting how funds will be allocated by the division in future year.

One of the recommendations, which would go into effect with approval by the Presidents Council later this month, would change Division III’s current minimum reserve policy. The Budget Committee is recommending that 10 percent of the division’s annual budget allocation be placed into reserve, instead of the $1.5 million that currently is set aside. As a result, the annual amount of the mandated reserve will increase as the division’s budget allocation increases through the next few years.

The committee also is recommending that Division III adopt for the first time targets for allocating funds to championships and nonchampionships uses. The Council endorsed the committee’s recommended target allocations for the next four years of 75 percent of the annual budget for championships expenditures and 25 percent for nonchampionships expenditures — which is consistent with historic allocation ratios in the division.

Other highlights

Division III Management Council 

April 10-11/Savannah, Georgia

• Approved a draft of the new Conference Self-Study Guide, which will be used by conferences between August 1, 2006, and August 1, 2008, to review institutional missions and league philosophy, as well as such aspects of conference operations as governance structures and compliance activities.
• At the request of the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics, asked the Division III Women’s Basketball, Ice Hockey, Soccer and Volleyball Committees and coaches associations to review the issue of using male practice players in female sports. The Council also agreed to seek feedback on the issue through the Division III Virtual Focus Groups.
• Endorsed guidelines proposed by the Management Council’s Administrative Review Subcommittee for use in selectively considering waivers for student-athletes who graduate and transfer from their undergraduate institution and seek to compete as a graduate student at another institution.
• Approved a recommendation by the Division III Nominating Committee to establish a project team to review the four currently defined membership regions, including consideration of championships, membership and committee-composition issues.
• Endorsed requests from the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to permit the SAAC to ask student-athletes at institutions and conferences to consider partnerships with Habitat for Humanity for community-service projects during 2006-07, and to promote use by institutions and at Division III championships of a sportsmanship statement that could be recited by a student-athlete before the beginning of a contest.