The Division I Management Council conducted a landmark legislative meeting April 19-20 in Indianapolis that culminated the division's recently adopted single annual legislative cycle.

Council members made final recommendations on more than 80 legislative proposals, including final endorsement of a disincentives package designed to hold institutions more accountable for student-athlete academic success. One of those proposals in fact allowed for a controversial measure regarding initial counters in men's basketball -- the so-called "five/eight rule" -- to be rescinded.

Proposals approved by the Management Council will be forwarded to the Division I Board of Directors for possible adoption April 29.

The disincentives package anchors a long-term academic-reform initiative that combines enhanced eligibility standards, real-time measurements for student-athlete academic progress and penalties for failure to meet standards. The package includes Proposal No. 03-112, which establishes an Academic Progress Rate (APR) that measures academic performance for all sports teams on a term-by-term basis, and Proposal No. 03-113, which puts penalties (disincentives) in place for teams that do not perform according to APR parameters.

In addition to those disincentives based on academic performance over time, Proposal No. 03-114 establishes an immediate penalty for poor academic performance by prohibiting a team from re-awarding the athletics aid of a student-athlete who leaves the institution in poor academic standing to an incoming prospect. Because it is designed to encourage coaches to recruit with retention in mind, Proposal No. 03-114 also allowed the Management Council to rescind the controversial five/eight rule in men's basketball by passing another proposal -- No. 03-76 -- which eliminates the limit on the number of initial

counters.

The five/eight rule was part of a comprehensive package developed by the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues, a group the Board of Directors appointed several years ago to recommend reforms in men's basketball. The rule prevented teams from signing more than five initial counters in a given year and more than eight in a two-year period.

The rule was contentious from the beginning among basketball coaches who believed it was too restrictive and did not adequately allow relief for legitimate roster attrition. In fact, a recent National Association of Basketball Coaches survey indicated that 85 percent of respondents urged the Management Council's support of Proposal No. 03-76 to pave the way for rescinding the five/eight rule.

Supporters of the five/eight rule, however, believed the measure effectively punished basketball programs that do not retain student-athletes. They maintained that before the adoption of the rule, programs with a high rate of transfers because of academic failure, NBA departures or other factors could introduce 25, 30 or more different grant-in-aid players into a program over a five-year period.

Management Council members did not necessarily dispute the effect of the five/eight rule, but they felt comfortable that Proposal No. 03-114 would be an even stronger retention incentive than the five/eight rule.

NCAA President Myles Brand supported the move, saying the five/eight rule -- which at one time addressed a relevant concern -- was no longer necessary given the context of the entire academic-reform package.

"You've got to look at the five/eight rule as part of the entire academic-reform package that includes enhanced initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree standards," he said. "The five/eight rule in and of itself is a rather blunt instrument, one that has had the unintended consequence of punishing some academically well-performing teams, which is why coaches have been so unhappy with it.

"But it's no longer necessary given the entire new package that has been formulated."

If the Board adopts Proposal No. 03-76 at its April 29 meeting, the action will occur during the National Letter of Intent signing period in men's basketball, meaning teams will be able to award up to 13 scholarships for the 2004-05 academic year. In order to make for a seamless regulatory transition, however, it also would mean that the contemporaneous penalties provided in Proposal No. 03-114 would be applied based on student-athlete academic performance in 2004-05.

Changing the recruiting culture

In addition to deliberating legislative proposals, the Council heard from the newly created Recruiting Task Force about recommendations to change the culture sur-
rounding official campus visits.

The task force was established in February in response to a number of allegations at Division I campuses of improprieties during campus visits. The group chaired by David Berst, NCAA vice-president for Division I, was charged with proposing changes to ensure an adequate opportunity for recruits to evaluate both the academic and athletics components of a school while also requiring standards of appropriate conduct and ac- countability.

The group is on a fast track, having indicated its intention for new recruiting rules to be in place before the next recruiting season begins.

Management Council members discussed and generally agreed with the task force's preliminary recommendations, including:

Requiring institutions to use coach-class commercial airfare when providing air transportation to and from official visits.

Requiring prospects (and parents or legal guardians) to be housed in standard lodging available generally to all guests and to eat standard meals comparable to those provided to student-athletes during the academic year.

Prohibiting personalized promotional activities and game-day simulations (for example, personalized jerseys, or personalized audio or video scoreboard presentations) during official visits.

Requiring hosts used to entertain prospects during official visits to be current student-athletes from the prospect's sport, or designated in a manner consistent with the institution's policies for providing tours to prospective students.

Requiring written departmental policies related to official visits to be on file.

Little debate ensued over those recommendations, though some Council members noted that transportation restrictions may in fact increase costs for some institutions, and that trying to regulate limits on meals and lodging might be difficult based on regional economic variances. Members also discussed conference involvement regarding the establishment of institutional policies. Atlantic Coast Conference representatives, for example, indicated the ACC probably would provide suggested guidelines for its members to follow when fortifying existing policies or creating new ones.

The Council was more vocal, however, about areas still under task force review, such as whether to eliminate the $30 cash allowance provided to student hosts, or whether to reduce the number of, or length of, official visits.

Some members, for example, thought the cash allowance was directly linked to the likelihood of unethical off-campus activity during the unstructured portion of the official visits. Some even supported limiting the entertainment options altogether in order to discourage prospects from taking the fourth or fifth visit just for the entertainment opportunity.

Interestingly, research shows that only about 6 percent of football prospects take all five allowable official visits, though it is unclear whether those prospects take all five in order to make their decision or if they take one or two just for entertainment purposes. About 85 percent of football prospects take three or fewer official visits.

Task force members, however, were reluctant to recommend reductions in the number of visits, or to reduce the length of the visits. Council members agreed that such actions would be "artificial fixes" that did not address the real problem of excesses that are driven by competition for the attention of prospects.

While the two-hour discussion about recruiting policies did not produce a consensus on the nuts and bolts of the proposals so far, it was clear that task force and Council members alike agreed upon the overarching goal: to purify the purpose of the official visit as a resource for the prospect to make an informed educational decision, and to eliminate the excessive behavior that some prospects have come to expect.

"What was gratifying was that everyone in the room seemed to approach this as a shared responsibility," said Berst, the task force chair. "What we're trying to do is to shift from an environment in which all we're doing is competing to best influence a prospect to pick our school -- and not necessarily for the right reasons -- to one that is more grounded in the academic missions of our institutions. We need to educate prospects from that academic perspective, much like you would a music or science prodigy. If you look at it from that point of view, you begin to develop different answers to the questions of how prospects should travel to institutions or what entertainment they should be provided.

"While there are those skeptics who would say that you can't get there from here, what I've found is that people from all levels -- presidents, coaches, administrators, student-athletes and the general public -- have expressed an interest in addressing this issue. That climate of desired change is an opportunity we shouldn't let get away."

Task force members will incorporate feedback from the Management Council into an updated report that will be distributed to conferences for discussion during spring and summer meetings. Feedback from those sessions will used to compile a final report for the Management Council's review in July. The Division I Board of Directors is expected to adopt emergency legislation in August that implements new recruiting standards for the 2004-05 academic year.

Summer financial aid

At the Board of Directors' request, the Council revisited the idea of expanding an existing summer financial aid program for prospective student-athletes in basketball to all sports. The current program in basketball, which is a five-year pilot program recommended by the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues, allows schools to provide financial aid to entering prospects during the summer term before initial enrollment to better acclimate them to the rigors of college academic life.

Preliminary data from the first two years of the program indicate that so-called "at-risk" student-athletes, or those prospects with high-school core-course grade-point averages of 2.750 or lower, are the primary beneficiaries of the academic head start. Program participants also maintain a significant edge in credit hours earned after their first year in school over student-athletes who did not take part.

The Council in January, though, defeated a proposal (No. 03-15) that would apply the program to all sports, as well as an amendment (No. 03-15-1) that would apply the program only to "at-risk" students, as defined by the institution. The Council also defeated a proposal (No. 03-65) to apply the program only to football student-athletes. Opponents of the measures cited cost concerns and a significant competitive advantage for those schools that could afford it.

Board members, however, indicated they were interested in the idea and told the Council to at least provide clear rationale for why the proposals were defeated. Though the Board does not have the legislative authority to resurrect a proposal that has been defeated, it does have at its disposal the ability to adopt such a measure as emergency legislation.

Council members were still divided on the issue at their April meeting, so much so in fact that a motion to tell the Board to adopt the provisions of the old Proposal Nos. 03-15 as amended by 03-15-1 was defeated because the vote resulted in a dead heat -- 24 for, 24 against and one abstention.

The primary concern in addition to cost was the uncertainty surrounding the definition of an at-risk student-athlete. Some Council members, even though they agreed with the philosophical intent of the concept, were not comfortable endorsing the initiative without knowing exactly who was intended to benefit from it.

After further discussion, though, the Council agreed to refer the concept back to the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet to better define "at-risk" student-athletes and to reconsider the financial ramifications. Council members agreed this would indicate to the Board their support of the concept but also demonstrate their discomfort with the practical application of the idea.

Other legislative proposals

The Management Council approved another important proposal that affects men's basketball. Council members OK'd Proposal No. 03-92, which precludes teams from scheduling exhibition games against noncollegiate teams. The proposal alleviates pressure for basketball coaches to schedule exhibition games against "club" teams run by people with connections to high-school prospects.

That practice created an ethical dilemma for coaches who believed they were being "held hostage" to play games against those teams in order to obtain access to potential recruits. Proposal No. 03-92 as written is inclusive, which means that longstanding noncollegiate fund-raising programs such as Athletes in Action are swept into the restrictions. But the Big Ten Conference, which sponsored the legislation, and other supporters believed that a clean break was necessary.

In other action, Council members worked through an interesting turn of events when they considered proposals regarding printed recruiting materials, specifically media guides. In January, the Council gave initial approval to two measures, one that would restrict media guides from being distributed to recruits (Proposal No. 03-32) and one that would eliminate the printed guides altogether and allow the information to be provided only online (Proposal No. 03-88).

The latter created a stir among sports information personnel and media members who believe the printed guides, despite some in football that approach or exceed 500 pages, serve an important informational and promotional purpose. Many also believed the guides do not create the cost concern that formed the impetus for Proposal No. 03-88.

The matter seemed to be resolved when the sponsors of Proposal No. 03-88 (the ACC) indicated their desire to withdraw the proposal. But representatives from the Big Ten moved it, citing the same cost concerns their ACC counterparts based the original proposal on.

That re-opened the discussion on the merits of printed recruiting materials. In the end, Council members decided to refer not only Proposal Nos. 03-32 and 03-88, but also No. 03-36 (dealing with video and audio materials) to the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet as part of a comprehensive review of all recruiting materials.

Council members also approved a series of proposals that respond to student-athlete concerns. The group overwhelmingly ap-proved Proposal No. 03-82-A, which establishes a student-athlete's individual maximum financial aid limit as the cost of attendance, and allows student-athletes to receive institutional aid based on athletics ability up to the full grant level, plus permit non-athletics aid (for example, academic scholarships) up to the cost of attendance.

The Council also approved Proposal No. 03-139, as amended by Proposal No. 03-139-1, which combines the provisions of two former proposals (Nos. 98-103 and 03-49) and will allow institutions to pay for a student-athlete's medical expenses resulting from an athletics injury or illness at any time, and medication and physical therapy during the academic year, provided the expenses are necessary for the student-athlete to return to competition.

Council members also approved proposals that retain foreign tours but reduce competitive-equity concerns by not allowing them to be conducted during the period beginning 30 days before the first permissible practice date until the first scheduled contest in the applicable sport. A proposal that would have eliminated foreign tours altogether was defeated.

Other proposals the Council defeated were:

No. 03-81, which would have allowed an institution to provide actual and necessary expenses related to participation in Olympic, Pan American, World Championships, World Cup and World University Games competition during an academic year in which a student-athlete is eligible to represent the institution in athletics competition (or in the following summer).

No. 03-74, which would have precluded an institution from considering a travel day to and from competition as a day off.

No. 03-104, which would have eliminated contacts and official visits in men's basketball with prospective student-athletes in their junior year of high school.

The complete list of legislative actions taken by the Council is on pages 16 and 17.

Other highlights

Division I Management Council
April 19-20/Indianapolis

Took no action to change the effective date of a reinstatement directive first issued by the Management Council in July 2002 and then clarified in both October 2002 and January 2004. At its January 2004 meeting, the Council amended the effective date of the amateurism reinstatement directive to state that if a student-athlete enrolled full-time in "any" collegiate institution before the 2003-04 academic year, then the student-athlete's eligibility should be assessed under the former "intent-to-professionalize" standard. The amendment to the effective date has resulted in a majority of current transfer student-athletes being analyzed under the intent-to-professionalize standard, since their initial enrollment at a collegiate institution occurred before August 1, 2003.

Supported a governance subcommittee recommendation to alter the Division I meeting schedule during the 2005 NCAA Convention. The change calls for the Management Council to meet from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, January 7, to address non-voting matters, then reconvene Sunday, January 9, to give initial consideration to proposed legislation. Division I conference meetings would be Saturday morning, January 8, and the Division I legislative forum would take place Saturday afternoon. The Division I issues forum would be Monday morning, January 10, and the Board of Directors would meet that afternoon.

Elected America East Conference Commissioner Chris Monasch as chair of the Management Council for the 2004-05 cycle. Monasch, who has served as the Council's vice-chair since January 2003, replaces outgoing chair Chris Plonsky, director of women's athletics at the University of Texas at Austin. Election of a vice-chair to replace Monasch will occur in the coming weeks.