The Division III Presidents Council left no doubt about where it stands on several membership-sponsored legislative proposals for the 2006 Convention that it said would reverse recent reforms, unanimously opposing efforts to reinstate "redshirting" and expand nontraditional seasons.

The Council, which met October 27 in Indianapolis, also agreed it aggressively will communicate with presidents and chancellors at Division III institutions to enlist support for its positions on those and other Convention proposals.

Council Chair Phillip Stone, president of Bridgewater College (Virginia), said the governing body's votes are a strong statement it will oppose any efforts to back away from the Future of Division III agenda -- a collection of reforms approved at the 2004 Convention that attract ed the participation of more than 100 presidents and chancellors in that year's voting.

"There is such a strong consensus among Division III presidents and chancellors that the reform package is the direction we want to take," Stone said. "They played a critical role in the adoption of the 2004 reform agenda, and they play a critical role now in helping the division stay its course."

The Council voted to oppose most of the 13 proposals that have been presented for Convention consideration by various member conferences and institutions, but made its strongest statement by agreeing -- after minimal discussion -- to fight the "redshirting" and nontraditional-seasons proposals.

The first of those proposals -- sponsored by the Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference (MASCAC) with Keene State College, Plymouth State College, Rhode Island College and the University of Southern Maine -- would reinstate the "season of eligibility" standard that permitted "redshirting." That standard was replaced at the 2004 Convention with a "season of participation" standard that basically prohibits a student-athlete from practicing with a team after the first contest of the season, based on the philosophy that athletics participation should be a four-year experience.

As if to put an exclamation mark on its stance, the presidents also agreed to support a Midwest Conference proposal that would broaden the current legislation by counting a season of participation for student-athletes who transfer into Division III after redshirting at another institution. The Presidents Council said it will support adoption of the more stringent application despite Division III Management Council concern about holding institutions accountable for decisions made by schools or student-athletes competing in other divisions.

The presidents, however, upheld an August recommendation by the Management Council by opposing the nontraditional-seasons proposal.

That proposal -- also sponsored by the MASCAC and Keene State, Plymouth State, Rhode Island College and Southern Maine -- would permit four additional days of athletically related activity, along with a second and third day of competition, during the nontraditional segment in six sports: baseball, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball and women's volleyball.

The Presidents Council will oppose various other proposals -- some due to its own sponsorship of legislation addressing such topics as minimum sports sponsorship and potential loss of automatic qualification resulting from conference realignment, and others because the presidents believe they run counter to Division III philosophy.

Council members voted to:

* Oppose a proposal by the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin, the Northwest Conference and the University Athletic Association to eliminate from the Division III philosophy statement the emphasis on in-region competition, and to also remove the in-region concept from the selection process for all team championships. The presidents noted ongoing efforts by the Division III Championships Committee to permit more flexibility in counting contests as in-region -- including action to permit designation of games played outside a region during a defined institutional break period as in-region contests -- and strong support for the in-region philosophy indicated in last year's Future of Division III membership survey as reasons for opposing the proposal.

* Oppose a North Coast Athletic Conference proposal seeking an increase in the number of sports that Division III schools must sponsor, preferring their own proposal to increase the minimum from 10 to 12 sports (six for men, six for women), with a delayed effective date and an exemption for schools with undergraduate enrollments of fewer than 1,000.

The NCAC proposal would increase the minimum by one sport for every 100 students beyond an enrollment of 1,100, up to a minimum of 14 sports for institutions with 1,400 or more students.

* Oppose proposals from the Empire 8 to preserve automatic qualification for a conference that temporarily fails to meet the seven-school sponsorship requirement and by the Commonwealth Coast Conference to grant AQ eligibility to newly formed conferences during a two-year period beginning in August 2006.

The presidents are opposing those proposals because they do not accommodate a conference self-study proposal that will be sponsored by the Council at the Convention. The presidents' proposal would require conferences to evaluate shared philosophy and practices through a new Conference Self-Study Guide (CSSG), then allow a two-year period after completion of that study for conference realignment without the loss of existing AQs.

* Oppose a proposal by three conferences -- the Allegheny Mountain College and New Jersey Athletic Conferences and the Empire 8 -- to exclude from the playing season and exempt from maximum-contest limitations one postseason championship event in every sport. The Council believes the proposal would unnecessarily expand the playing season, in conflict with actions in 2004 to reduce its length.

* Oppose a proposal by the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin, the Ohio Athletic Conference and the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to include a "strength-of-season index" among primary selection criteria for Pools B and C, also basing that stance on recent efforts by the Championships Committee to address concerns about selection criteria.

The Council took no position on membership proposals to permit scouting a future opponent during exhibition contests, permit an institution to play its first football contest on the Thursday before Labor Day when the first permissible contest date falls on that holiday weekend, and restore a 17th date of competition in lacrosse during the traditional segment that inadvertently was eliminated by recent adoption of playing- and practice-seasons legislation. It chose to defer to Management Council support for those measures.

Membership cap

The Presidents Council devoted a significant portion of its meeting to discussion of another membership proposal -- a cap on membership sought by the North Coast Athletic Conference.

Council members actually voted to support the cap, saying they share the sponsors' concern about the impact of membership growth on championships access and on resources and programs provided by the Association. However, noting the possibility that the NCAA Executive Committee might appoint a working group to study possible responses to Division III's growth and other issues with Association-wide ramifications -- an action that in fact did occur later in the day (see story on page 1) -- the Presidents Council also said it would support delaying a vote on the cap pending completion of that group's work.

To aid that effort, the Council also agreed to impose a moratorium through January 2007 on accepting applications from institutions interested in exploring Division III membership. The action does not affect 38 institutions currently in the exploratory, provisional or reclassification process -- the same schools that would be exempted if the NCAC's proposed cap is adopted.

"There is a strong consensus among the Presidents Council that we ought to limit the growth of the membership in Division III. The Council is concerned about the division's numbers for all sorts of reasons," Stone said. "The Presidents Council also has a strong desire to urge the delay in legislation to fix the numbers until it can be studied by the Executive Committee, which is why the Council approved a temporary moratorium on new members. The Council endorses the proposal as legislation at a time when it is appropriate to consider it."

Counting schools that already are provisional members or that began the exploratory process before September 1, the Division III governance staff currently estimates that membership in the NCAA's largest division will grow to about 455 institutions from the current 419 active members.

The NCAC proposal would set a maximum size for Division III based on its June 1, 2006, total of active, provisional and reclassifying institutions. That total would include all provisional members and exploratory institutions as of September 1, 2005, and any Divisions I and II institutions initiating reclassification by June 1, 2006.

The Council's actions on proposed legislation sets the stage for the membership's consideration of up to 29 proposals at the January Convention in Indianapolis. The Council designated 20 of those proposals for roll-call votes, though those numbers likely will be decreased by at least one on the Convention floor after a decision by the presidents to withdraw a proposal it had agreed to sponsor in August.

Upon reconsideration, the presidents withdrew their sponsorship of a proposal that would have allowed a student-athlete who previously earned an undergraduate degree to transfer into a Division III institution and be immediately eligible for participation, so long as the student-athlete meets requirements of the one-time transfer exception and has more than two semesters or three quarters remaining on the 10-semester/15-quarter clock. Noting its opposition to the "redshirting" proposal, Council members decided it is inconsistent with Division III philosophy to legislatively endorse athletics participation beyond completion of an undergraduate degree.

The Presidents Council opted instead to support action by the Management Council in July to give the Division III Administrative Review Subcommittee flexibility to consider waivers of graduate transfer legislation for appropriate reasons, on a case-by-case basis.

Council members also revisited a proposal it agreed to sponsor in August that would permit a coach meeting specific criteria to provide private lessons to prospective student-athletes. After discussing concerns about applying the legislation across all sports, the presidents asked that a possible amendment-to-amendment be drafted for consideration at their January meeting that would limit the opportunity to coaches in golf and tennis.

Other highlights

Division III Presidents Council
October 27/Indianapolis

• Agreed to study forming an advisory group of institutional presidents and chancellors representing each Division III conference and also representing independents. The group would meet annually with the Council (possibly beginning in October 2006) to discuss philosophical direction, pending legislation and other issues of importance at the conference and national level.. The idea was one of several for encouraging involvement in Division III activities by institutional presidents and chancellors that were discussed by Council members during a three-hour "envisioning" session October 26.

• Approved a program to give conferences and the Association of Division III Independents more authority and discretion over how Division III strategic initiative grant funds are used. Previously referred to as the conference grant program, the new Division III Strategic Initiatives Grant Program is intended to enhance conference and institutional autonomy while broadening membership responsibility for achieving the division's strategic goals and objectives and supporting the division philosophy. The program would distribute $1.56 million in funds in each of two fiscal years beginning in 2006-07 to conferences and the independents' association (see the October 24 issue of The NCAA News). Each conference and the group of independents will be required to establish an administrative framework that ensures key constituencies will actively participate in program planning and allocation of resources.

• Reviewed a possible resolution for the 2006 Convention authored by the University Athletic Association that would require the compliance and enforcement process related to annual financial aid reporting to be formally approved as legislation by the membership, and in the interim would limit use of data obtained from reporting to informational use. The Council agreed to oppose the resolution if it is sponsored at the Convention, noting that the process is a mechanism for enforcing existing legislation that specifies institutional grants awarded to student-athletes and to students in general must be "closely equivalent." The Council also noted that the Division III Financial Aid Committee is considering legislatively establishing a variance standard for enforcing compliance, but that it must collect at least two years of data from reporting to do so. (The UAA later decided not to sponsor the resolution.)

• Received a report of the work of the Future of Division III-Phase II Oversight Group, which held its final meeting October 26. The group, which earlier initiated proposals for the 2006 Convention to establish a conference self-study and cap championships brackets and also proposed amendments to the Division III philosophy statement, focused during that meeting on compiling "best practices" in the areas of sport and program equity and cultural and campus integration that soon will be shared with the membership. Council Chair Phillip Stone congratulated the group on achieving many of its objectives through means other than legislation. "The group responded to the directives of the membership, engaged members fully in the process and took an approach that invited solutions for improvement in intercollegiate athletics," he said.