Sometimes things aren't what they seem. Just ask members of the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet. After considering a proposal to restrict institutions from counting travel days to and from games as the required weekly day off for student-athletes, cabinet members have reversed their field from support to opposition.

Meanwhile, the Division I Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet has maintained its support for the proposal, No. 03-74, which puts it on a collision course for the Management Council to resolve in April.

Why did the Championships/Competition Cabinet change its mind? According to cabinet member Carol Reep, it was because there was time to think.

"While the cabinet certainly supports student-athlete welfare," said Reep, who chairs the cabinet's playing and practice season subcommittee, "after the full group talked about the application of some of the issues, some members felt that in the end the proposal doesn't produce a better situation for student-athletes."

Reep's reference to student-athlete welfare is important since that's the premise upon which Proposal No. 03-74 was based. And at the time it seemed like a no-brainer. In the words of Jerry Kingston, longtime faculty athletics representative at Arizona State University who chairs an ad hoc group looking at student-athlete time demands, "Those of us who travel frequently probably wouldn't describe our travel days as days off, and we shouldn't expect student-athletes to, either."

So in an effort to reduce those time demands on student-athletes -- something the Division I Board of Directors emphasized to the cabinet last year that it was interested in doing -- Reep's playing and practice seasons subcommittee developed the concept. It backed Proposal No. 03-74 from the Pacific-10 Conference to prevent plane trips and bus rides from counting as down time.

The Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee supported Proposal No. 03-74, too, and the Management Council gave it initial approval in January (though only by a 27-22 margin), setting up an April adoption and August implementation. As time passed and discussion continued, however, concerns surfaced.

Reep, senior associate athletics director at Butler University, said her playing and practices seasons subcommittee discussed those concerns at length during the cabinet's February meeting. She said the primary caveat appears to be that the legislation could possibly prompt coaches to keep their teams at the competition site an extra day in order to practice. "And most schools wouldn't have the budget to afford that," she said. Indeed, Reep said, if the travel day was lost as the day off and an additional day substituted, many coaches and student-athletes could possibly see that only as lost practice time and not as additional time to focus on other aspects of student life.

The legislation also might divide along economic lines, prompting more competitive and more financially advantaged programs to charter flights to travel more quickly, thus saving time on the travel day to fit in a practice session upon the return to campus.

Despite those concerns, Reep said, the playing and practice seasons subcommittee brought the proposal to the full cabinet with continued support, but once the concerns were raised among the full group, momentum shifted.

"When the cabinet began looking at some of the possible ramifications of the legislation," Reep said, "members began to believe that the outcome could possibly be worse than the current rules.

"That's why the cabinet wound up where it did -- not because members don't support student-athlete welfare."

Cabinet Chair Nora Lynn Finch, senior associate athletics director at North Carolina State University, said when members played out the practical applications of the proposal, they saw student-athletes having less time to themselves than current rules provide, which in her mind could actually set up a health and safety concern. "When you start practicing on travel days, you have more fatigue than if you have that day off and you practice when you're fresh."

There doesn't seem to be a consensus among student-athletes, either. The more competitive student-athletes, even some on the Division I SAAC, warned that the proposal, though well-intentioned, would eat into their practice time.

"Student-athletes opposed to the proposal see it as taking away from their time to be better at their sport," said SAAC Chair Katie Groke, a soccer student-athlete at the University of Wyoming. "Some teams travel the day after games, which means they wouldn't practice for two days. Then they may have another competition in two days, which means the legislation would prevent them from practicing at all before that particular competition."

Groke also pointed out that those in favor and against divide into economic classes. "It makes a big difference if you can afford to fly rather than drive," she said.

Different effects

But Groke said she personally supports the proposal because ultimately it is time-demand-friendly. "It will allow student-athletes to focus more on academics and whatever else outside of athletics," she said.

Indiana State University softball student-athlete Melissa Biniewicz couldn't agree more.

"When I arrive home at an ungodly hour early in the morning from a lengthy weekend road trip, one thing I could actually look forward to is a day consisting solely of classes," Biniewicz said. "That's right. Even those of us who love our sport and who are willing to work so many hours for the good of the team need those days off.

"It sounds as if the travel-day-off option would be taking advantage of the time commitment it takes to be a student-athlete."

Ian Gray, vice-chair of the Division I SAAC, said the proposal affects "elite" athletes differently from the rest. He said those student-athletes who focus more on the athlete than the student will naturally resist legislation that would restrict their practice time. "They may not mind as much missing out on other opportunities college may afford outside of athletics," Gray said.

Gray, a cross country runner from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, said many basketball student-athletes -- men and women -- from the Big 12 Conference opposed the proposal due to the frequency of travel in their sport and the need to have organized practices. Gray noted that for other sports, such as cross country, fitting in practices may be easier since less supervision is required.

For example, Gray said, cross country runners can practice on their own. "The day after a competition or even on our travel day, we can go for a 10-mile run without the need of a coach," Gray said. "But in basketball you need organized practices to maintain that competitive edge."

Gray added that cross country runners typically compete in just six or seven meets per season, whereas basketball players often compete in 30 or more.

Gray said as a SAAC member, he supports his peers and thus supports the proposal, but as a Big 12 Conference member, he supports his peers and opposes the proposal. Personally? He said he supports the legislation. "To be both students and athletes we need to find the time in those 24 hours per day outside of our planners and unhindered by a set agenda," he said. "The best way for that to happen is for this legislation to pass."

A working example

Nancy Lyons, associate athletics director at Northwestern University and a Big Ten Conference representative on the Management Council, said the proposal already is standard procedure at Northwestern and in her eight years at the school there's been but one incident where it was a problem.

"In our experience, student-athletes need at least one day away from their sport. They appreciate having a breather -- it's beneficial to them academically, physically, mentally and socially. It probably does the coaches some good, too," Lyons said. "I believe it's the right thing to do and that it's possible for it to work."

Lyons wonders if the stories of coaches keeping teams on site an extra day or practicing immediately after long trips are being used as scare tactics to persuade voters into rejecting the legislation. She said incidences of problems should be rare if coaches and administrators assemble schedules carefully before the season begins.

"Unless a team is traveling three days a week for competition, I don't see how you couldn't fit a non-travel day in as the day off within a seven-day segment," Lyons said.

Some schools in remote locations, or conferences that may be spread out geographically over several states and regions may differ with Lyons, but she pointed to an existing waiver process for such extenuating circumstances.

Tom Adair, who chairs the AEC Cabinet's continuing-eligibility subcommittee, which also supports the proposal, said Lyons is right.

"The bottom line is that this proposal is in the best interests of student-athletes as far as time demands are concerned," said the faculty athletics representative at Texas A&M University, College Station. "Subcommittee members talked about the concerns, and they understood that point of view, but the group believes student-athletes need that additional time."

Adair said the SAAC representatives on the AEC Cabinet helped sway the decision. He said they pointed out that it also was important for student-athletes to have a weekday off in order to take care of business that couldn't be conducted on weekends.

But Adair also said that his subcommittee recognizes the different viewpoints and that in the end the vote in April could be just as close of a call as it was at the Management Council meeting in January -- but that it might go the other way.

That's what the Championships/Competition Cabinet ultimately has recommended, even if it did start out from the other side.

"The cabinet has been discussing this for more than a year," Finch said, "and we're now at the point where we believe that not being able to count the travel day as a day off is actually harmful to student-athletes.

"There's been meaningful discussion and intense examination of all the issues, and the cabinet is just not comfortable now moving ahead with what would be a significant policy change."