The Association will be in a transition mode when it gathers January 8-10 in Dallas for the NCAA's 99th annual Convention.

The membership will continue work on academic-reform issues that have been prevalent for the last several Conventions, but it also will be asked to focus on a fresh challenge: fiscal responsibility.

In the 2004 NCAA Membership Report that will be distributed at the Convention, President Myles Brand highlighted how the Association will be challenged to re-establish the distinction between intercollegiate and professional athletics.

"The next initiative that must be undertaken by higher education and college sports is to address behaviors and practices that push intercollegiate athletics away from the university and more toward the sports entertainment business," Brand wrote. "While this is an issue most often and most visibly linked to the 117 institutions that compose Division I-A, the focus is more a factor of scale than anything else. Ensuring that intercollegiate athletics is a value-based component of the higher education experience should be -- and is -- just as important to the other 900 member institutions in all three divisions."

Brand is expected to address fiscal responsibility in his annual State of the Association address, which this year will occur Saturday, January 8, rather than on Sunday, the traditional time for the opening business session.

While the membership's attention will be turning to fiscal responsibility, a number of important discussions and actions will pertain to academic reform, the prominent issue of most of the last decade.

Among other things, Division I delegates will be asked for their thoughts on how sanctions should be applied for institutions that do not comply with the standards set forth in the new academic incentives/disincentives legislation, and Division II will vote on legislation that would establish a new "Academic Success Rate."

Here are the key issues for each of the three divisions:

Division I

Discussions begin in earnest among Division I governance groups charged with implementing the academic-reform structure the Board of Directors adopted last April. Of immediate interest is where to set the "cut points" in the Academic Progress Rate at which teams will be subject to scholarship limits. The so-called "contemporaneous penalties," which preclude institutions from replacing scholarships of student-athletes who leave their institutions and wouldn't have been academically eligible had they returned, will begin being applied next year based on this year's academic data.

A newly established committee, called the Committee on Academic Performance, will recommend to the Board where those cut points should be. The contemporaneous penalties are intended to send a warning to academically under-performing teams to improve before the harsher "historically based" penalties (including scholarship and recruiting restrictions, postseason bans and even restricted membership status) would have to be applied.

For more information about the Division I Convention agenda, see page A1.

Division II

Most of Division II's attention during the January 10 business session will be on Proposal No. 28, a proposal from the membership that would reduce the number of football scholarship equivalencies from 36 to 24. Another interesting membership proposal, No. 27, would require student-athletes transferring from Division I institutions with only one year of eligibility remaining to sit out for a year.

Division II delegates also will have the opportunity to hear and discuss concepts developed by the Division II Championships Eligibility Project Team. That team has developed a number of possible changes to lessen the likelihood that ineligible student-athletes will participate in Division II championships. The project team hopes to have legislation available for consideration at the 2006 Convention.

For more information about the Division II Convention agenda, see page A1.

Division III

After last year's landmark Convention, when most of the "Future of Division III" package was approved, Division III has a relatively light legislative agenda in 2005.

However, the spirit of reform that drove last year's session remains a force this year, as delegates prepare to spend a full morning discussing next steps in the "Future of Division III -- Phase II" initiative.

That discussion will occur Sunday, January 9, during a forum that will feature round-table discussions of three topic areas: management of growth and championships issues; sports sponsorship and program equity issues; and academics and cultural issues.

Delegates will discuss results of a recent membership survey and suggest possible future actions that may be supported by the data. The session marks a major milestone in efforts to respond to the adoption of 2004 Convention Proposal No. 66, a resolution directing a study of membership growth and diversity.

This year's legislative proposals will be considered Monday morning, January 10, during the Division III business session. Among the 12 proposals are a measure sponsored by the Division III Presidents Council to extend automatic qualification for the first time to selected individual-team sports (golf and tennis), as well as a pair of conference-sponsored proposals relating to gymnastics and football that the Council is opposing.

For more information about the Division III Convention agenda, see page A1.

Association-wide

The NCAA Honors Dinner will start at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, January 9. Among the honorees will be astronaut Sally Ride, who will receive the Association's highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Award.

The other Association-wide gathering will be the delegates reception, which will begin at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, January 8.

Individuals from all divisions also will be able to attend a series of educational sessions on Saturday. Eight different topics will be addressed in three sessions beginning at 9 a.m., 10:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The 1:30 session pertains to event security and is the only Association-wide education program scheduled during that period.