SAVANNAH, Georgia — The Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet confirmed recommendations for the 2006-08 budget cycle at its meeting February 7-8, but also spent time addressing philosophical questions about the composition of two championships — wrestling and men’s golf — that are looming on the horizon.

Biennial budget requests totaling $1.9 million will be on the table from the cabinet. A maximum of $1.285 million will be allocated for all Division I initiatives in the 2006-07 academic year, and $1.34 million in allocations for 2007-08.

The initiatives that received the most support from the cabinet are:

 Reimbursement for the indoor men’s and women’s track and field championships;

• Seeding the top 16 teams in the baseball tournament;
• Increasing officials’ fees in various sports;
• Hiring outside diving judges for the men’s and women’s swimming and diving championships; and
• Increasing the travel party size in men’s and women’s tennis and men’s soccer.

Cabinet Chair Chris Dawson will present the budget requests to the Division I Budget Committee, which consists of five members of the Division I Board of Directors and four members of the Division I Management Council, during a conference call in March. The Executive Committee finalizes the budget in April.

“One of the core purposes of the Association is to sponsor championships,” Dawson said. “That’s a big part of what the NCAA is about. The cabinet’s responsibility is to make sure those championships are conducted in the most competitively fair way that enhances the student-athlete’s experience. All the recommendations that we will make will do that.”

The budget request for reimbursement to institutions competing in the men’s and women’s indoor track championships is $869,000. That covers the costs of transportation and per diem of participating student-athletes and the appropriate number of nonathletes.

Currently, institutions competing in both the indoor and outdoor championships have to choose the one for which they wish to receive reimbursement. Most choose the outdoor championship, which leaves the indoor event as the only one of the 88 NCAA championships in which participation in the finals is not fully funded.

The projected budget impact of seeding the top 16 team in the baseball championship is $152,000. Budget requests for the other initiatives are $72,480 for increasing officials’ fees in various championships, $22,750 for hiring outside diving judges, $74,000 to increase the travel party in men’s and women’s tennis and $136,000 to increase the travel party in men’s soccer.

Men’s golf championship field

In addition to budget discussions, though, cabinet members addressed bracket/format issues in wrestling and men’s golf. At the core of both issues is the cabinet’s philosophy regarding how a championship bracket should be formatted. In Division I, the philosophy is that all conference champions receive automatic bids into a NCAA championship, and the rest of the field is selected on an at-large basis.

But some sports have experienced extenuating circumstances that have led to additional criteria being used to select a championship field.

In men’s golf, institutions can automatically qualify for the NCAA tournament by winning their conference championship. But some institutions are afforded additional opportunities through regional berths allocated by the Division I Men’s Golf Committee before the season begins. That provides teams with access to the regionals, from which they can advance to the national championship tournament. The men’s golf committee then makes at-large selections to complete the field.

In September, the men’s golf committee recommended tweaking regional alignments and the number of regional berths.

But institutions in some regions still feel they are at a disadvantage because they generally are not invited to certain regular-season competitions at which they can improve their ranking on Golfstat.com, which the committee uses as a tool to select the championship field.

Several cabinet members said they received e-mails from coaches who believe their concerns are being ignored.

“The golf coaches association had a meeting (in January), and the discussion was very contentious,” said cabinet member and Seton Hall University Senior Associate Athletics Director Ginger Fulton. “Most of the coaches were unhappy that they haven’t had the opportunity to create another model or come up with a different system.”

Division I Men’s Golf Committee Chair Mike Hermann said he and every member of his group attended the Golf Coaches Association of America convention January 23.

“We’ve used the GCAA to receive feedback on various topics and have taken their comments into consideration,” said Hermann, who is the athletics director at Niagara University. “We participated in a three-hour session to get feedback from the group. We heard a lot of discussion. We will continue to listen to the coaches as we go through the process. At the end of the day, we need to make the decisions we feel are in the best interests of the golf championship.”

The cabinet voted to table the men’s golf committee’s recommendations for further review at the group’s June meeting.

“There are different models on the table, but the committee needs to listen to the coaches and make sure they work toward a consensus,” said Purdue University Athletics Director Morgan Burke. “The golf committee and the golf coaches need to decide what the right format is.”

Wrestling with a format

Wrestling is approaching a crossroads with its championship as well. Since 1978, the Division I Wrestling Committee has used a form of past performance to determine allocations into the national tournament.

Currently, the 330 championship participants are determined from a pool of nine conference tournaments and two NCAA-sponsored regionals. No qualifying tournament advances more than 65 percent of its total number of participants into the championship bracket. That prevents power conferences from occupying an even more overwhelming number of participants in the national tournament.

At the same time, conferences that aren’t regarded as traditionally strong receive only 11 automatic qualifiers — 10 individual weight class champions plus one wild card from any weight.

The allocations are based on performances from the previous five years. Some believe that perpetuates a cycle of the stronger conferences remaining strong, and the conferences that receive only 11 allocations never having a chance to qualify more wrestlers into the national tournament.

For example, a wrestler from one conference could be upset in the final match in a qualifying tournament and not receive a bid to the national meet, while another from a traditionally stronger conference could finish fourth or fifth in his qualifying tournament and still advance to the finals. That leaves some in the wrestling community wondering whether the best wrestlers are reaching the championships.

The cabinet’s bracket/format subcommittee held a conference call February 7 with wrestling committee Chair William Walker of the U.S. Air Force Academy to discuss the issue.

“Having the formula and predetermining the spots does not guarantee the best wrestlers make it to the tournament,” said Duke University Athletics Director and cabinet member Joe Aleeva. “This is a student well-being issue because there are wrestlers who might be better than the fifth-place wrestler from another conference.”

Some subcommittee members suggested that regional competition would allow the matter to be settled on the mat. But they and others admit that theory has drawbacks.

“If you go to a regional format, unless the NCAA wants to pay a lot of money to send people all over the country like you do in basketball, it’s not feasible,” Walker said. “If you keep regionals geographically situated where institutions in the Southeast wrestle each other, you’re going to have the same problem we have now. The Midwest region would have problems with that because they would say they are a stronger region, and the best wrestlers are going to beat each other and won’t get to the NCAA tournament.”

One cabinet member suggested that each of the 11 qualifying tournaments give only individual weight-class champions automatic access into the NCAA bracket. But that would leave the wrestling committee the task of trying to dole out 220 at-large bids.

The fact that there is no formal way to keep track of which wrestler defeated another or a ratings percentage index only complicates the proposal.

“That would be a tremendous burden for the committee,” Walker said. “You would have six people deciding which 220 student-athletes go. They would have to be very knowledgeable about every wrestler in every weight class around the country.”

Another factor in the equation is the dwindling sponsorship of the sport. Only 87 institutions field teams at the Division I level. The wrestling community is sensitive to the concerns of wrestling programs nationwide and believes a system providing wider access to the national championship is in the best interests of the sport.

While the cabinet did not take any immediate action on the matter, members did appoint a subcommittee to study the issue in more detail and to present alternatives at the cabinet’s June meeting.

Other highlights

Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet

February 7-8/Savannah, Georgia

• Supported allowing sports committees to guarantee hosting opportunities to the top four seeds in all team championships in which predetermined sites are not used. The top four seeds would have the opportunity to host first- and second-round contests if there are multiple teams at the first site. The teams seeded in the top four still must submit a bid to host.
• Agreed that beginning in 2006-07, the mileage limitation for reimbursed ground transportation will increase from 300 to 350 miles in all sports with the exception of men’s and women’s basketball.
• Directed sports committees that produce a ratings percentage index to release the rankings to the public when the information becomes available during the regular season beginning in 2006-07 (as the men’s and women’s basketball committees began doing this year).
• Agreed to request noncontroversial legislation to change the composition criteria for the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee to allow 10 members, six representing Division I-A institutions and the remaining four from I-AA and I-AAA schools. No region can have more than three representatives on the committee, and six of the members will be selected at large.
• Noted the cabinet’s postseason football licensing subcommittee’s support of background checks for postseason football officials and directed NCAA staff to coordinate the administration of the program.