In conjunction with the initiative to encourage more intra-division competition, the Division II Football Committee recommended to increase the number of games institutions are required to play within the division from six to eight contests.

If approved by the Division II Championships Committee, the requirement would take effect in the 2008 season.

The committee will consider requests for a waiver by those institutions who are unsuccessful in scheduling eight Division II opponents, but who can demonstrate a “good faith” effort was made to satisfy this new requirement.

Another recommendation by the committee, which met February 12 and 13 in Indianapolis, is to add a Division II index for the 2008 season as a secondary criteria in the selection process. This is another way to further encourage teams to play more opponents within the division.

This index will encourage teams to schedule Division II opponents, and includes a “bonus” structure for those institutions who elect to play more than the minimum of eight Division II opponents.  The index base will be capped at 10 games against Division II competition, so as to maintain some level of flexibility in completing the overall schedule

The index will be a calculation based on the new minimum number of eight i regular season games against Division II opponents   as the denominator in the formula.

For instance, a team that plays eight games against Division II programs will be awarded a plus-1.0. A team playing nine games against Division II opponents would garner a 1.125 bonus and a team playing 10 Division II programs could earn a bonus of 1.25 points. The index would be a static measure that would be calculated at the beginning of the year based on the schedule and remain constant throughout the season.

In other meeting highlights, the committee plans to submit a recommendation that would increase the number of officials that can fly to preliminary-round competition.

Eight flights are currently available for officials, and the recommendation is to increase that total to 14, with the hope that this would allow for a broader representation of conference officiating crews and to ensure the best possible coverage of games during the postseason

The Division II Championships Committee will begin discussing the biennial budget in September.

Another budgetary recommendation calls for conferences to be allocated some sort of funding to offset expenses for a supervisor of officials to attend the annual officiating clinic held every July in Chicago. This would mirror the type of allocations basketball officials receive for attending a similar event for their sport.

The committee is also recommending an increase in the squad size from 54 to 58 and the travel party from 70 to 74 for the Division II championship.

Rationale for this recommendation is providing four additional student-athlete opportunities on squad size. Additionally, the committee has heard from coaches who are making decisions on which student-athletes to dress and which ones to sit out despite their contributions to team success in the regular season.  These challenges become even more pronounced in certain conferences which allow larger squad sizes during the regular season.