The Division I Board of Directors decided at its meeting today that starting in 2010, men’s basketball student-athletes will have less time to “test the waters” of the NBA draft.

The Board also accepted Legislative Council action on proposals adjusting the baseball season. The Council at its April meeting added a 14th week to the beginning of the baseball season and defeated a proposal that would have reduced the number of games from 56 to 52.

The basketball legislation (No. 2008-79) establishes May 8 as the date by which student-athletes must remove their name from the NBA draft to retain eligibility. In addition, the proposal removes the option for draft entrants who are not selected to resume college eligibility. Student-athletes with eligibility remaining previously had up to 30 days after the draft to declare their intention to return.

The shorter declaration period will assist coaches in roster planning and encourage student-athletes to refocus on academics before the draft and decrease the potential for amateurism rules violations.

The proposal softened an initial concept forwarded by the Atlantic Coast Conference that would have set the deadline as the day before the spring National Letter of Intent signing period in mid-April. The longer period was endorsed by the Legislative Council on April 20 based on a recent change in NBA policy to permit team workouts for early entrants  beginning in late April The May 8 date allows student-athletes to obtain relevant feedback on their draft status for a limited period.

The Board let stand Legislative Council action on the baseball proposals – defeating No. 2008-48, which would have reduced the number of games in the season from 56 to 52 and approving No. 2008-46, which adds a week to the beginning of the baseball season. Board members agreed that the compression of the baseball season was problematic, and adding a week to the front-end eased some of the academic concerns that popped up as a result of the uniform start date.

Board members also approved 2008-62, a proposal it had tabled in January that gives Football Championships Subdivision presidents who serve on the Presidential Advisory Group final authority to act on football legislation that applies to that subdivision.

In other business, the Board reconfirmed its charge to the Leadership Council to examine the diversity of the governance structure, with a particular emphasis on the number of faculty athletics representatives on a broad range of governance groups.

The action came in the wake of a letter from Josephine Potuto, Nebraska law professor and chair of the Division 1A Faculty Athletics Representatives that expressed the group’s concern about limited faculty representation within the reorganized Division I governance structure. The group called for at least a 25 percent of the slots on each governance body be filled by faculty, with the percentage upped to 30 percent for the academic cabinet.  

The Board supported the need for academic voices to be heard on different cabinets and councils, particularly because the faculty perspective is often most similar to the presidential perspective. While Board members hesitated to set a percentage minimum, they did encourage the Leadership Council to look at the issue as more than another category to be assigned a quota like race or gender.

The Leadership Council will discuss the issue at its next meeting, with the goal of having a report to the Board in the fall.