Jun 24, 2010 9:11:06 AM

The Division III Championships Committee is advancing a concept to the Management Council that could eventually require an institution to be a core member of only one conference.

The idea is not yet a proposal, but the Championships Committee wants feedback from the Council and others before deciding whether to formalize it as a legislative recommendation. The concept would change the current definition of "core" to preclude the formation of "umbrella" conferences (an overarching conference with two sub-conferences in which schools are core in both the umbrella conference and the sub-conference). In such arrangements, the umbrella conference is eligible to gain two automatic-qualification spots.

An effective date has not been discussed, nor has the specific effect on the one existing umbrella conference in Division III (the 16-member Middle Atlantic Conference and the related Freedom and Commonwealth Conferences), although the committee is aware of the historical relationship of these conference members and would seek to minimize any negative impact on the existing group if changes are eventually proposed.

The action taken at the Championships Committee's meeting Monday and Tuesday in Indianapolis is the result of the committee's ongoing discussion about requirements for automatic qualification to Division III championships. The Championships Committee is trying to determine whether legislative changes are necessary to protect the integrity of automatic qualification and what the resulting implications would be on conference membership.

The review has been spurred by several informal inquiries regarding the potential establishment of additional umbrella conferences. Currently, a conference must have seven members competing in a sport, including four core members, to earn automatic qualification to a team championship. A school must participate in more than one sport in that league to be considered a core member.

Championships Committee members considered three models that addressed the core requirement, including one that would retain the status quo (and thus allow more umbrella conferences to form). But that and another model that would retain the definition of "core" and allow conferences with at least 14 members to receive an additional AQ were not supported.

While either of those options could re-emerge as the discussion progresses through the structure, the Championships Committee believes requiring schools to be core in a single league is the most reasonable approach.

Because the core designation could be used to assign accountability for other conference requirements and benefits (for example, grant money, voting rights and conference self-study guides), the committee believes the concept would help stabilize conference membership and require schools to think more strategically about alignments.

"By tying grant money, voting rights and other items to a single conference, there is an opportunity to provide stronger and more sustained leadership, commitment to philosophy and values, and a cohesion and purpose that endures over time – both at the conference and institutional level," said committee chair Ira Zeff, the athletics director at Nebraska Wesleyan.

While the committee has not discussed details about how this would affect the MAC, Zeff acknowledged that a grandfather clause could be considered.

The committee also discussed the minimum number of institutions required for a conference to be AQ-eligible (currently seven) and the minimum number required to meet parameters for being considered an active conference (currently six) and asked the Division III Membership Committee to consider whether both standards should be seven.

Regional alignments and rankings

The Championships Committee continued its review of the division's regional structure for evaluating teams for championships, including examining current sport region alignments and regional ranking processes.

The review of the regional structure was touched off by a variety of sport-specific recommendations requesting actions ranging from moving conference members in multistate leagues into the same region as other league members, to setting the number of teams that should be included in publicly released rankings.

Championships Committee members are interested in achieving more standardization in regionalization, ranging from assignment of schools to regions across sports to the number of teams publicly ranked – and even to the naming of regions, which varies from sport to sport.

At the June meeting, members were intrigued by a regionalization model based on conference groupings that produced eight regions (tentatively labeled as New England, East, Mid-Atlantic, South, Great Lakes, Midwest, Central and West) with a relatively balanced distribution of schools. Committee members charged staff with applying the same conference-based approach to sports that have fewer than eight regions.

The committee will continue to review this model and others before its next meeting in September and solicit feedback from sport committees, commissioners and other membership bodies. Changes would not be effective earlier than the 2012-13 academic year.

Committee members also charged staff with developing ranking models in the proposed regions based on a method the men's basketball committee uses (number of sponsoring institutions in each region divided by the bracket ratio). The committee will review those ranking models at its September meeting.

Other highlights

In other action at the Championships Committee meeting, members:

• Asked the Management Council to approve an administrative change to Bylaw 31.1.12.1.2 for all Division III championships (including combined events) held at a professional sports organization's or team's facility to allow the professional organization or team to promote the championship.
• Asked the Management Council to approve noncontroversial legislation to delete the provision that would require institutions to follow the eligibility rules of the division that has two-thirds of its members in a given sport that holds a National Collegiate championship.
• Asked the Management Council to sponsor legislation specifying that one of the two designated at-large positions on the NCAA Women's Bowling Committee be a Division III representative.
• Evaluated the 2009-10 score reporting pilot program designed to make more transparent the data the men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball, softball, and baseball committees use for selection purposes. The Championships Committee decided to extend the practice to the remaining team sports (field hockey, football, volleyball, men's and women's ice hockey, and men's and women's lacrosse) for 2010-11 and beyond.