National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

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Jan 11, 2010 9:52:11 AM

The Division I Leadership Council will put the finishing touches on its recommendations for Division I membership standards at its Thursday meeting at the NCAA Convention in Atlanta.

The group also is expected to continue its discussion of diversity in the governance structure.

Since August 2007, Division I has operated under a moratorium that prohibited consideration of any new institutional, conference or multidivisional Division I members. The Board of Directors charged the Council to study the impact of membership migration and to develop reasonable philosophical expectations and legislated membership standards for the division.

The moratorium lasts until August 2011, and the Leadership Council hopes to sponsor appropriate legislative changes from its recommendations in the 2010-11 legislative cycle.

The Council's recommendations include:

• A five-year "reclassification" process for new members following no less than five years of membership in Division II.
• New members must have a bona fide offer of membership from a multisport, voting Division I conference.
• An application fee, the nature of which has yet to be determined.
• A requirement to meet Division I sport-sponsorship and financial aid requirements upon beginning the reclassification process.
• A stipulation that institutions subject to historically based Academic Progress Rate penalties will not be elected to active membership.
• A policy that new active members of Division I should not qualify to receive revenue distributions related to sport sponsorship, grants-in-aid, academic enhancement or Special Assistance/Student-Athlete Opportunity Funds for three calendar years after election to membership.
• After the 2010-11 academic year, a discontinuation of the multidivisional practice that permits Divisions II or III institutions to designate one men's and one women's sport in Division I, except in sports that do not have a Division II championship. Institutions that currently "play up" could continue to do so, but would forfeit the opportunity permanently if the school failed to conduct the sport in Division I in any ensuing academic year.
• Eliminate the designations of "core" and "continuity" for Division I institutions and create a more meaningful definition of a multisport conference, including a minimum number of active members, minimum sport sponsorship, officiating and compliance program rules.
• Administration Cabinet recommendation of active membership to the Board of Directors instead of the Leadership Council.

The Council will also continue its discussion of diversity within the governance structure, including concerns brought from the Division I-A Faculty Athletics Representatives about the need for more even distribution of faculty representatives on councils and cabinets. Currently, faculty representatives are concentrated on the Academic Cabinet.

The Council also will hear from the chairs of several cabinets about issues facing those groups. Carolyn Callahan, chair of the Academic Cabinet and faculty athletics representative at Virginia, will discuss her group's work with initial-eligibility standards. Petrina Long, chair of the Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet and senior associate athletics director at UCLA, will discuss the examination of the recruiting model that her group is about to consider