The idea of a festival of NCAA championship events conducted at a common time and place isn't new.

What's new is actually doing it.

During his tenure, former NCAA President Cedric Dempsey often described a vision of championship festivals. In fact, the idea of a championships complex at which such festivals could take place held a prominent place for a while in the "NCAA 2000" examination before the NCAA relocated to Indianapolis.

The NCAA 2000 study didn't yield a championships complex, but -- five years later -- the Association finally will conduct a multi-sport championship week when Division II administers the first National Championships Festival May 12-16 in Orlando, Florida.

At its core, the event will include championships in men's and women's golf, men's and women's tennis, women's lacrosse and women's softball over a five-day period. However, those behind the event are hoping for something far greater than the sum of those parts. The ultimate goal is to produce a positive, highly memorable experience for the 625 competing athletes.

"Throughout the day, they'll be at their venues competing," said North Central Conference Intercollegiate Athletic Commissioner Mike Marcil. "But those common times when they are together -- different teams in the same sport and different teams in different sports -- that is really borrowing some of the best parts of the Olympic experience and applying it to Division II."

The challenge of administering this event escapes no one. Managing travel and accommodations for hundreds of student-athletes and their traveling parties will be a major task. The championships will be conducted at five different facilities (men's and women's tennis are the only ones contested at the same place), and while all of the facilities will be reasonably near the headquarters hotels, they still will require a transportation network that demands extensive coordination.

And, since a key purpose of the festival is to enhance attendance, the events must be scheduled so that they don't conflict with one another. All the while, a number of added-value components -- opening and closing ceremonies, for example -- have to be factored in.

The ultimate takeaway is that the Division II championships festival is going to demand much more work, thought and even risk than would have been the case had the championships been conducted in the usual way at five or six different sites.

That likely explains why the NCAA hasn't previously taken on such a project. Besides that, the landscape is littered with conference-level sports festivals that didn't work out as hoped. One national-level college sports festival fell apart several years ago.

But what history does exist may not apply to what Division II is seeking to accomplish, and not all of the history relating to championships festivals is bad.

This year, for example, the South Atlantic Conference will conduct its 10th consecutive spring sports festival. "It's been a great experience for our kids," said Commissioner Doug Echols. "We bring about 700 student-athletes (75 more than this year's NCAA event) together for baseball, softball, men's and women's tennis, and men's and women's golf."

Some factors make the South Atlantic event especially manageable. The region has a multitude of closely arranged facilities that are suitable for championships competition. Also, every team buses in, so the participating schools handle their own transportation, freeing the conference of the responsibility. The NCAA will not have such an advantage in traffic-intensive Orlando.

But the NCAA will have resources that can't be matched on local levels, and Division II is planning to use that advantage for the inaugural festival. The opening and closing ceremonies will have solid production values, and efforts are being made to attract national-level speakers with ties to Division II for both events. NCAA President Myles Brand has committed to participate in the May 15 closing ceremonies. A band, likely one that's nationally known, will provide entertainment at the opening ceremonies. Area schools are being encouraged to take part in an "Adopt-a-Team" program.

In addition, the festival was promoted to fans attending first- and second-round competition of the Division I Men's Basketball Championship March 19 and 21 at Orlando's TD Waterhouse Centre. Also, the NCAA Beyond the Game (presented by CBS Sports) will be in the nearby Altamonte Mall from morning until night from May 8 through May 16 -- an unusually long duration for the popular interactive exhibit to stay in any one locale.

Combine that with the exceptional quality of facilities that Orlando will provide, and the potential exists for the outcome that organizers are seeking, which is a big event with special significance for the participants.

"The one thing you can't compromise is championship-caliber facilities," said Marcil, who chaired the Division II Management Council when the decision was made to proceed with the championships festival. "And all the other issues related to competition have to be in place. But ... from that point on, it's about nothing but adding to the experience the student-athletes would have had at separate locations."

Of course, a balance must be found between adding to the experience and overproducing the event. To that end, substantial free time has been made available for the student-athletes by not creating programming for every spare moment, said Scott Fosler, NCAA manager of promotions and events.

That's a good approach, Echols said, because it can produce the sort of spontaneous, constructive interaction that the collegiate model of athletics is supposed to represent.

"One of our athletics directors likes to tell a story about a couple of years ago when we were down in the Presbyterian College area," Echols said. "We had a lot of different schools and teams staying at one particular motel that had a large grassy area in the center. And those teams got out there and played stickball. They divided up, and so you had the tennis guys from Tusculum, some baseball players from PC, and they would all be on the same team playing against people from other teams. That was a nice thing."

With the benefit of nine years of experience, Echols has learned well about administering a multisport event. He said his greatest lesson may be that athletes' families will attend championships festivals if student-athletes and coaches recruit them.

"We have learned that parents will come to this event, particularly if the coaches and their own sons and daughters will do a good job of communicating it back home," he said. "We've done that different ways. We've done direct mailers to homes, and we've done postcards that the student-athletes can write their parents' address on and invite their parents to come to the festival. And we've found that when the coaches help us promote it and the kids will be excited about it, we'll generate some enthusiasm."

That's certainly the result that Division II is seeking with this event, even though it will not be able to build on year-to-year enthusiasm since the plan is to conduct the festival only once every four years. One possibility for the future is to extend the concept to other seasons -- especially the fall.

"We will wait and see," said Joan McDermott, athletics director at Metropolitan State College of Denver and chair of the Division II Championships Committee. "We'll definitely want to do it again with spring sports, and I know there's a lot of cities interested. Even Denver is interested. I know there are a few different cities that are going to send representatives down (to Orlando) to see how it goes."

Those visitors may be impressed by what they see. The potential economic effect for the Orlando area likely will be measured in millions.

That might seem to point organizers toward a "more is better" mindset, but one critically important part of the plan has been Division II's commitment to make the event work by not overextending. The festival does not include the full complement of spring sports, and the division is committed only to conducting the event once every four years.

"We aren't trying to bite off more than we can chew by trying to do it every year," Marcil said. "We still enjoy the advantages of moving our championships around in different sports to different locations. But I like the idea of periodically coming together in this festival. Maybe, like the Olympics, we could rotate it where every two years you would have it for the spring sports and the other two years you would have one for the fall sports."

But there is more to creating a sports festival for any season than simply wanting it to happen. "As to whether we could convert that over to fall or winter, we'll have to see how it goes," McDermott said. "I'm not even sure the details with the dates could be worked out."

Indeed, calendar issues complicate the festival concept, regardless of the season. Baseball and track are noticeably absent from Division II's inaugural event because their calendars couldn't be adjusted to accommodate the dates. The South Atlantic Conference had a fall sports festival for three years that included football, cross country, soccer and women's volleyball, but it had to abandon the effort because the dates for NCAA fall championships competition were too spread out.

Marcil said that his conference has discussed how it might host a fall event for the NCAA -- if the calendar issues could be resolved.

As for the spring festival, Marcil said, "I hope someday there's a way we can get baseball and track in there. Maybe there's some way for the schools that the NCAA could provide some help for the schools that would have to keep student-athletes after the dorms have closed."

That may be possible, but first things first. The business at hand is to succeed with this inaugural festival. Already, there have been the predictable challenges. For instance, Fosler said that the opening ceremony now is firmly set for the auditorium at Hard Rock Live at Universal Studio, an excellent venue but one that was arrived at after two other choices became unavailable because of construction.

Such headaches shouldn't be apparent when the event unfolds. Athletics administrators working the event are confident in Orlando and its high-quality facilities, and the expectations of success are high.

"These are going to be top-notch events," McDermott said. "And I'm really pleased with the administrators and the people involved in the NCAA who are coming down. It's going to give the student-athletes a really great experience."

And, at this point anyway, a unique one.