The Division II Management Council voted to oppose a proposal to move the first competition date for basketball to the second Friday in November rather than the traditional November 15.

Meeting October 20 in Indianapolis, the Council reviewed legislation for the 2010 Convention, including the three proposals submitted by the membership.

The basketball proposal from the Peach Belt Conference, the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association and the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference mirrors one that has been submitted and defeated at each of the last two Conventions (though by only 11 votes last year).

The idea is to get basketball’s opening game on a weekend, in part to ensure less missed class time for that game and to generate more of a collective “opening night” for Division II basketball.

Opponents, including the Division II Legislation Committee and the Division II Management Council, do not like how the proposal lengthens the regular season in some years and potentially overlaps with the end of the fall season on many campuses already strapped for resources to administer contests.

The Management Council also opposed a proposal from the Lone Star Conference, the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association and the South Atlantic Conference to eliminate the requirement that an institution must provide a prospective student-athlete written notice of the five official-visit limit.

While sponsors say the proposal eliminates unnecessary paperwork and inadvertent violations due to administrative oversight, the Management Council thought it was inappropriate to turn the responsibility of tracking a legislative requirement over to a prospect rather than keeping it with an administrator.

The Council took no position on the third membership proposal from the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference to spread out the nonchampionship segment in golf to 24 days in 60 consecutive calendar days.

Members noted that regardless of the merits of the proposal, the nonchampionship segment in all sports will be part of the second phase of the Life in the Balance review going on next year.

Life in the Balance proposals

Also related to Life in the Balance, Council members conducted their last organized discussion about the four-proposal package on tap for the 2010 Convention. While the group continued to endorse the proposals that streamline seasons and reduce contests in 10 sports, members talked over a few loose ends and potential unintended consequences.

One of those was the package’s effect on field hockey. Since the 2010 National Championships Festival for fall sports – recently announced for November 30-December 4 in Louisville – puts the Division II Field Hockey Championship about three weeks later than normal, meaning that if the proposal shortening the field hockey season by two games passes, the 2010 season would have 18 regular-season games extended over 13 weeks.

Council representatives from the Northeast-10 and Pennsylvania State Athletic Conferences, which compose about 80 percent of the Division II sponsorship in the sport, asked the Council to consider delaying the effective date for the reduction in field hockey contests in the fall-sports proposal in the Life in the Balance package to August 1, 2011, reasoning that since the reduction in contests was based on a shorter season – and the fact that the 2010 season would actually be longer – a delayed effective date for the reduction in contests would be in the best interests of the sport.

The full Council, though, voted to defeat the amendment, noting the opportunity that institutions have to delay the overall start of the field hockey season.

Another issue concerned the proposed seven-day dead period for winter sports from December 20-26 and whether there was any leeway on travel on the front or back end of the period. For example, Council members wondered whether a team that played a night basketball game on the 19th would be in violation if it couldn’t return to campus until after midnight.

Council members said while unforeseen circumstances could put schools in those positions, the spirit of the rule was that seven days in fact meant seven days. If schools wanted to play on the 19th or the 27th, they should schedule so that team travel does not impede upon the dead period.

The Council also talked about membership support for the package, noting that for the most part, the presidents who have backed the effort all along don’t appear to have changed their minds.

One Council member in fact, when asked whether presidents not involved in the governance structure felt the same way, said he had attended meetings with non-governance presidents who were “quizzing each other” about whether they had completed their “phone tree” to drum up support for the measures.

So far, about 80 Division II chancellors and presidents already have registered for the January Convention in Atlanta.

In other action regarding legislation for the 2010 Convention, Management Council members adopted noncontroversial legislation on the organized-competition proposal (No. 2-6 in the Second Publication of Proposed Legislation) to change the effective date to August 1, 2010, for any final amateurism certification decision issued by the Eligibility Center on or after April 1, 2010.  The implementation of this noncontroversial legislation is contingent on the adoption of Proposal No. 2-6 at the NCAA Convention.