NCAA Eases Scholarship Plan : College sports: Delegates modified their controversial standards to permit regular financial aid, not athletic scholarships, for some students.

The NCAA voted today to modify Proposition 42, the controversial measure that would have toughened athletic scholarship standards starting in the fall.

Delegates voted 258-66-1 to allow incoming students who meet only part of the academic requirements to receive regular financial help but not athletic scholarships.

The change will retain the academic incentives, UCLA chancellor Charles Young told the delegates, “without the potential devastating financial side effects” of Proposition 42.

The NCAA also voted today to keep the number of football scholarships a Division I-A team can award annually at 25, despite an appeal from Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne to return it to 30.

That vote retains a cost-cutting measure passed two years ago that dropped the scholarship number. Schools still can’t exceed the 95-player limit.

Osborne said the change would have allowed schools short of players to catch up more quickly and would have promoted a better caliber of competition.

“It’s better for attendance and television,” Osborne said.

That measure failed, 26-80-3.

Proposition 42, whose approval prompted Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson to boycott two games last season, would have denied scholarships to incoming athletes who have a C-average overall in high schools and don’t meet two other academic requirements of Proposition 48--a C-average in 11 core courses and minimum scores on standardized college entrance exams.

So-called “partial qualifiers” can now receive athletic scholarships, although they are not eligible for practice or competition.

About 600 partial qualifiers have received athletic scholarships in the three years since Proposition 48 was adopted.

On Sunday, executive director Dick Schultz said the NCAA should begin reforming big-time college athletics by adopting propositions designed to emphasize the classroom over the playing field.

Delegates to the 84th annual convention faced more than 120 measures, including plans to shorten spring football practice, to cut the basketball season by three games to 25 and curtail preseason tournaments and to make public each school’s graduation rate for athletes.

The “basketball billion”--$1 billion that CBS will pay over the next seven years for television rights to the NCAA Tournament--will allow the organization to overhaul college athletics, Schultz said.

“We have a unique opportunity with this new contract that we cannot afford to waste,” Schultz said. “It is important that we have student-athletes, not athlete-students. . . . Education is our business and must come first.”

In addition, delegates have to decide whether to increase penalties for drug use, including steroids, and institute year-round testing.

NCAA president Al Witte called Schultz’ address to nearly 2,000 delegates on the opening day of the convention “provocative” and said his ideas “mean the ‘90s ought to be very interesting in collegiate athletics.”

“The real problem is we have to make certain that big-time athletics are as compatible with the goals of higher education as we can make accomplish,” Witte said.

That push for emphasis on books rather than blocking began with small steps rather than large leaps at this convention.