NCAA Convention : Division I-A Votes to Drop All Talk of Football Playoffs

Even after University of Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds said that a one-game national football playoff that would mean between $20 million and $30 million would be split among all Division I-A schools, not just the schools involved, the Division I-A delegates at the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s 82nd annual convention still voted, 98-13, to have Dodds’ postseason football subcommittee discontinue its consideration of a championship format.

The resolution affirmed that the Division I-A members “do not desire to initiate, at this time or in the near future, a Division I-A football championship.”

This would seem to make a football playoff a dead issue. But there are many, Dodds among them, who think the one-sided vote is not a true indicator of interest in a title game.

He thinks the timing is wrong.

“The environment of college athletics right now is not conducive to a playoff,” Dodds said. “We’re going through a phase of concern about over-emphasis. My personal opinion is that we’ll talk about this again in three or four years.”

The same issues do seem to come up year after year at these conventions. Another issue that had been tabled several times over the last few years, a proposal to increase the amount of Pell Grant money a student-athlete is allowed to receive based on need, finally came to a vote. The delegates of Division I voted, 208-101 (with 7 abstentions), to allow a student who has qualified for $2,100 in federal funds to keep $1,400 of that for spending money.

The NCAA rule had limited the athlete to $900 of that money over and above tuition, room and board, and books, with the university keeping the balance in the scholarship fund.

It was a much-debated issue and, when it finally came to a vote, the major colleges voted “yes” and the smaller colleges voted “no.” The Pacific 10 Conference members voted in favor of the increase, as did the Big Ten, the Big Eight, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Southwest Conference.

But even the philosophical and financial arguments over who should get how much of the allotted Pell Grant money was not of as much interest as the issue of a championship for Division I-A football.

Fred Miller, athletic director at San Diego State and one of the 13 who voted to keep the idea alive, has long supported a football playoff. Miller thinks that the bowl games could be incorporated into the playoff format, putting college football in what Miller calls a “win-win situation.”

Also voting on the side of a playoff were Georgia, Georgia Tech, the Western Athletic Conference, Hawaii, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Southwestern Louisiana, Utah, Louisville, Texas El Paso and Tulsa.

Although a poll of coaches and athletic directors by the subcommittee last spring indicated that about 50% liked the idea of a playoff, the vote Tuesday morning did not reflect that. Dodds believes that many people, knowing that the idea of a playoff was going to be defeated here, opted to vote with the majority rather than get on the wrong side of bowl representatives.

Jim Brock, executive director of the Cotton Bowl, said that he didn’t believe that should be a factor. Brock said: “We’re not that petty.”

Dodds said that the bowls are living “right on the edge” with six games on New Year’s Day now and three more bowls hoping to be on the schedule by next year. Dodds said: “The bowl games need to work with each other . . . to coordinate dates and times instead of trying to hurt the other bowls. But they’re as competitive as we are.”

To that, Brock responded: “We’re a little closer now than we used to be. I think we’ll come out of our (bowl representatives) meeting in April with some interesting things. . . . I think one of the things that we have to look at is how many games we have on New Year’s Day.”

Dodds said that with the Fiesta Bowl and the Orange Bowl serving as national championship games the last few years, the public has been satisfied. But, in a year when the top two teams do not meet in a bowl game, there will be some demand for a playoff game.

Also at the Division I-A business meeting Tuesday morning, the delegates made a move that negated, at least for one year, one of the cutbacks made at last year’s convention in San Diego. By a vote of 76-33, the delegates voted to put the limit of football scholarships back at 30 for the next season, arguing that the football coaches had not had time to implement the cutback to 25. The original proposal had asked for that to be permanent, but it was amended to next year only--which will give the backers of the move a chance to lobby for another year and put it back on the agenda.

In presenting the proposal, Bob Snell, faculty representative for Kansas State, pointed out that the cutback from 15 basketball scholarships to 13 was never implemented because the two basketball scholarships cut last January were restored at the special convention in July.

Vince Dooley, football coach and athletic director at the University of Georgia, spoke in favor of another football proposal that passed, a proposal that limits coaches’ visits to the homes and schools of recruits to one calendar day.

“Many coaches felt like the demands of recruiting were taking them away from their players already on campus too much, but on the other side of the coin, many felt that it was important to get out into the homes and schools,” Dooley said.

“Some of the younger coaches felt like the only way they could compete with the more widely recognized coaches was to outwork them. But, you know, you don’t get to be older and still a coach if you can’t work pretty hard yourself. . . .

“But, finally, some 40-plus coaches at our (College Football Assn. coaches’) meeting in Dallas came up with this compromise that allows coaches to go to homes and school but limits it to one day only.”

The NCAA convention is scheduled to continue today and Thursday.