The Division III Football Committee recommended that coaches’ challenges be added for the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl.

The proposal must be approved by the Division III Championships Committee before it can be implemented.

The coaches’ challenge system would work like this:

The coach must request a timeout for the purpose of a challenge; therefore, if a team has used all of its timeouts in a half, the coach will be unable to challenge a ruling on the field.

If the challenge is successful (the ruling on the field is reversed), the challenging team will not be charged with a timeout and the coach retains his challenge, which he may use once more during the game. A coach may have a total of two challenges if his initial challenge is successful and the team still has a timeout remaining.

If the challenge is not successful (the ruling on the field stands), the challenging team will lose a timeout and the head coach will not have another challenge.

“Everyone knows that replay is available during the game,” said committee member Joy Solomen, director of athletics at Rowan. “This way coaches have the opportunity to question a play they feel should be taken a look at. This way they will have at least one challenge in a situation that they feel a play should be reviewed.”

Another item on the committee’s agenda called for a tweak in selection criteria for the Division III Football Championship. Since football teams can only play up to 10 regular-season games, selection criteria used by other Division III sports that play more contests are less appropriate for football.

The committee will examine the following criteria in no particular order:

• Head to head competition.
• Win/ loss percentage (overall).
• Results verses ranked opponents.
• Strength-of-schedule (contests versus all opponents).
• Opponents’ Average Winning Percentage.
• Opponents’ Opponents’ Average Winning Percentage.
• Results verses common opponents.
• Evaluation of a team’s win-loss percentage during the last 25 percent of the season is applicable (end-of-season performance).

An online process to evaluate officials also will be implemented in the fall of 2009.