Calendar

DRUG TESTING

Subcommittee recommends option for lesser penalty

The NCAA subcommittee that decides drug-test appeals could be granted the flexibility to assess less than the one-year penalty currently mandated by legislation for a positive test if a recommendation from the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports is approved.

The committee has recommended that Bylaw 18.4.1.5.1 be amended to permit its drug-test appeals subcommittee to reduce the penalty from one calendar year to half of a season of competition in cases where it is demonstrated the student-athlete was not at "significant fault" in testing positive for a banned substance.

The recommendation will be forwarded to the Association's governance structure for consideration.

Current legislation requires a student-athlete who tests positive to miss at least one year of competition. The subcommittee must choose in deciding appeals either to uphold the one-year penalty or fully negate the positive test and sanction. As a result, the subcommittee sometimes must uphold the full penalty in cases in which a student-athlete was not significantly at fault for use of a banned substance.

The proposed amendment would enable the subcommittee to consider the reduced penalty in such cases. That reduced penalty would apply to the 50 percent of a season of competition that immediately follows the positive test, including championship play scheduled within that period, consistent with the application of sanctions for other NCAA violations.

Staff contact: Mary Wilfert -- mwilfert@ncaa.org.

FOOTBALL

Attendance reaches record of more than 46 million fans

College football attendance soared to an all-time high of more than 46 million fans in 2003.

An exciting regular season, combined with the rule allowing Divisions I-A and I-AA institutions to play as many as 12 regular-season games for the second consecutive year, boosted home attendance by more than 1.5 million fans in 2003.

The 617 NCAA football teams totaled 46,144,539 fans for all divisions, surpassing the former mark of 44,556,215 set in 2002. The per-game average for all games and all divisions was 13,568, the best overall mark since 1984 (13,852).

Michigan won the home attendance title, averaging 110,918 for its seven home games, the third-best average in college football history. Michigan's 2003 per-game standard was surpassed only by the Wolverines' own all-time mark of 111,175 in 1999 and the Michigan average of 110,965 in 1998.

Yale led Division I-AA with 23,578 per game, while North Dakota State was atop Division II at 11,567. Stillman took its first Division III attendance title, averaging 7,250 fans per game

Staff contact: Rick Campbell -- rcampbell@ncaa.org.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Convention marks end of first phase of plan

After almost a year of data collection and distillation, the Association has reached the end of the first phase of constructing an NCAA strategic plan.

Delegates at the 2004 Convention were given a variety of opportunities to react to the plan. That feedback resulted in minor changes to the draft document that was distributed to all Convention delegates.

The revised plan will be forwarded to the NCAA Executive Committee, which is expected to approve the document in April.

In addition, the Executive Committee will be asked to approve a set of strategies for each objective, along with ways to measure success.

Staff contact: Jim Isch -- jisch@ncaa.org.