The Division III Football Committee paid special attention to officiating at its February 9 -11 meeting in Indianapolis. In an effort to improve field coverage, the committee recommended that seven officials be used in the playoffs.

The proposal, which would be effective for the 2006 season, will go to the Division III Championships Committee for approval. As part of the measure, committee members also recommended that only conferences using a seven-man crew be considered for championship assignments. Committee members emphasized that conferences would not be required to use seven-man crews during regular-season games, but those that do not use an additional back judge will not be chosen to officiate during the postseason.

The plan has been in the works for about two years, and committee members said it will help prevent missed calls. Committee Chair John Neese, athletics director at Hardin-Simmons University, said football has evolved into more of a passing game than it had been, and adding an official in the middle of the field will make it easier to monitor the action. Also, he said, Divisions I and II already have made the move to seven-man crews during their championship games, and the change would create uniformity across divisions. Many Division III conferences already use seven-man officiating crews.

"The game has evolved so much to where I think it would be good for us to have that seventh official," Neese said. "There are noticeable differences among all three divisions and we want to be independent of the other divisions, but I do think that it's difficult for us not to have a seventh official when the other two divisions do."

Acclimatization model

Another issue facing the committee was the loss of practice opportunities in the summer as a result of the five-day acclimatization model first implemented in the2004 season. The coaching community questioned the committee about a loss of practice time, and members appointed a subcommittee to study the issue. According to the committee, student-athletes lost two practices with the implementation of the new model, which mandates that institutions may not conduct multiple on-field practice sessions on consecutive days after the initial five-day acclimatization period.

If the subcommittee deems it necessary, it will submit information about practice opportunities, walk-through sessions, skill training and other issues to the Division III Playing and Practice Seasons Subcommittee and the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports.

"We're just trying to put together the research that is out there from the medical community and reconcile it with how we can have some practices that we feel we lost several years ago. We certainly want to keep an emphasis on safety," Neese said. "The one thing that we don't want to recommend is pushing the date back farther for people to come into school earlier, because that's an expense to schools and we don't want to go down that road. We're still studying ways to find a good balance between the research we've been given and the workout times. It's something that we're still looking at."

In response to concerns raised about postgame activity, the committee also set forth new requirements for game management.

The new requirements are:

• Games committee representatives from each institution must attend the mandatory Friday night pregame coaches meeting conducted by the NCAA representative.

• The games committee representative from each institution must be in their respective team's bench area with five minutes remaining in the game and stay in that area until the end of the contest.

• Institutions will be required to keep videotaping the field for five minutes after the end of the game. This requirement will allow institutions to have taped proof in the event of a postgame incident.

• The visiting team should go through the postgame interview process with the media first. Traditionally, the losing team had done the interviews first. Changing the order to the visiting team will allow student-athletes more travel time to return to their own institution. Generally, most media present for games are from outlets interested in the home team.

"One of the things that our committee has always tried to be is out front with encouraging sportsmanship," Neese said. "As a committee, we want good sportsmanship to be one of the criteria that we focus on, and we just felt that the guidelines would remind everyone how important good sportsmanship is to us during our championship."

The committee also embraced the move to 32 teams in the 2005 championship bracket, though members also indicated possible future concerns. Pairings could be affected because of the absence of byes in the first round, and geographic proximity may be more of a factor in the first round for geographically isolated teams.

"This is something we're very excited about because we can remember less than six years ago when it was a six-team format and now it's 32," Neese said. "I think football has achieved the maximum it can go for tournament expansion. There's probably no perfect system out there for postseason qualifying, but I think that by expanding to 32 teams we're going to see fewer and fewer teams left out that were possibly deserving of being selected."

Other highlights

Division III Football Committee
February 9-11/Indianapolis

• Met with representatives from Salem, Virginia (the host city for the NCAA Division III Football Championship), to review the management and operation of the Stagg Bowl.

• Met with representatives of the NCAA membership services staff to review legislative issues, particularly the recently passed legislation regarding spring conditioning and the use of a football, and eligibility issues associated with spring conditioning.

• Met with members of the NCAA corporate and broadcast alliances staff to review television and broadcasting issues for the Division III championship. The committee discussed the possibility of a better broadcast window for the Stagg Bowl, including a possible change of date to Thursday, Friday or Sunday.

• Voted to recommend to the Championships Committee that Al Dorenkamp, athletics director at Central College (Iowa), be named as chair of the committee as of September 2005. Dorenkamp would replace Neese, whose term expires in September.

• Will implement a Tuesday media call for every week during the championship, allowing the media access to the coaches and the coaches an opportunity to handle all media questions at once.