NCAA Convention : Presidents Sit Back This Time : No Major Proposals Among the 163 That Will Be Considered

The Presidents Commission, the driving force behind the major moves made by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. over the last few years, is taking a little breather during the NCAA convention this week in Nashville, Tenn.

There isn’t expected to be any major moves such as their previous legislation that provided for the “death penalty” that recently hit SMU football, that provided for the current drug testing, that tightened academic eligibility and that initiated cost-related cutbacks in coaching staffs and scholarship numbers.

None of the 163 proposals on the agenda for the 82nd convention, which is scheduled through Thursday, is sponsored by the Presidents Commission and none will have the kind of impact that the death penalties or the 5-1-j academic eligibility rule had.

The Presidents Commission is still active and is, in fact, backing a proposal that would affirm that Division 1A members are not in favor of a football championship game. But the Commission is not spearheading any major legislation.

It is, however, sponsoring the National Forum debates that will take place today as the second group of speakers participate in this 18-month project. The first session was held last June at a special convention in Dallas called to consider cost-cutting legislation. That session dealt with amateurism.

Today’s Forum will concentrate on the economics of collegiate sports, and it promises to spark as much controversy as the actual legislation on the agenda.

The primary speakers this morning will be Mitchell H. Raiborn, professor of accounting at Bradley University; Robert H. Atwell, president of the American Council on Education; Christopher C. Fordham III, chancellor of the University of North Carolina; Thomas J. Fredricks, vice president and director of athletics at the University of Dayton, and Neal H. Pilson president of CBS Sports.

Judith Holland, senior associate athletic director at UCLA, will join Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham, Georgetown basketball Coach John Thompson, North Carolina A&T; Chancellor Edward B. Fort and Itahca College President James Whalen as respondents to those speakers in this afternoon’s session.

In admitting that there are no really hot items on the agenda this week, Wilford Bailey, president of the NCAA, told the media Saturday afternoon, “There are always surprises.”

Bailey said: “The (NCAA) Council, the Presidents Commission and the membership in general feel that a lot of progress has been made in the last three years or so in improving our legislation, and that we need to have time to evaluate the effects of these changes.”

The National Forum is one way in which the NCAA is taking time to evaluate the changes and assess the direction of collegiate sports.

Although there have been some committee meetings taking place in Nashville since Friday, the convention officially opened with a one-hour business meeting Sunday evening at which Richard Schultz, who replaced Walter Byers as executive director Oct. 1, delivered a “State of the Association” address.

Members will not begin voting on legislation until Tuesday.

The vote concerning a national football championship will be simply to “affirm” that Division 1A schools “do not desire to initiate, at this time or in the near future, a Division 1A football championship.”

The current system of postseason bowl games, which brings in about $50 million a year, is expected to win. The proposal is being offered by the NCAA Council and has the backing not only of the Presidents Commission but also of the College Football Assn.

The proposal directs the NCAA Postseason Football Subcommittee to “discontinue its consideration of a possible format for a Division 1A football championship.”

There is a proposal, once again, to increase the amount of money a student-athlete on a scholarship (room, board, books and tuition) is allowed to keep of the $2,100 Pell Grant money the government grants to some students on the basis of need. As it stands, athletic departments are letting those students keep only $900 of that money and are keeping the rest to go toward the cost of keeping those students on full scholarship.

At the last five conventions, proposals to change the amount of Pell Grant money allowed to athletes have been debated.

And there will be some interesting debate over proposals to alter some of the landmark legislation passed at the last couple of conventions.

For example, members from the predominantly black Central Intercollegiate Athletic Assn. want to soften 5-1-j a bit to take the emphasis off test scores. As it stands, a freshman just have a 2.0 grade point average in core courses and either a 700 SAT score or a 15 ACT score. They would change it to be either a 560 SAT score or a 10 ACT score for students who had at least a 2.2 grade-point average.

And members of the Eastern College Athletic Conference have submitted an amendment that would allow the NCAA Council to waive any of the 5-1 eligibility rules in “unique or unusual” circumstances.

There will also be attempts to reconsider some of the cutbacks in practice seasons, recruiting seasons and size of coaching staffs that were made at the convention in Dallas last summer.