NCAA CONVENTION : Delegates Say: Shorten Basketball Season, Give Recruits Grad Rates

The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. adopted measures designed to lessen the demands on athletes’ time Tuesday, after an afternoon of politicking by the organization’s Presidents Commission kept the measures from being shot down for at least a year.

In the second voting session of the NCAA’s annual convention, delegates approved shortening the basketball season by three games, delaying the start of basketball practice and the season, and limiting time and contact allowed for spring football drills. Also approved was a measure that will require public disclosure of schools’ graduation rates.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Presidents Commission, which proposed all of these measures, was able to impose its will on a convention that seemed ready to knock down much of what the commission was proposing.

The graduation-rate issue, the first item considered, was approved with little debate. But the time-reduction proposals appeared to be on the way out--at least for another year--until the commission, through some serious lobbying, hammered them into the rulebook.

The legislative victory allowed the Presidents Commission to reclaim clout it seemed to have lost after cost-reduction proposals it sponsored were pushed aside at a special convention in Dallas in 1987.

“We got done what we wanted to get done,” said UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, a member of the commission. “On several occasions where we appeared defeated, we kept slugging and came out the winner.”

On the other hand, the passage of the time-reduction measures, known collectively as Proposition 30, left many athletic directors wringing their hands.

“(Prop.) 30 is absurd,” Miami Athletic Director Sam Jankovich said. “I’m really disappointed. The only thing it does is take away three games in basketball. That’s not the real issue. As far as I’m concerned, we made a decision without real substance. The No. 1 issue is the number of hours spent on sports, not the number of games or reducing spring practice.”

Under Prop. 30, Division I basketball programs, previously restricted to 28 regular-season games, will, starting in 1992-93, be allowed to play only 25 games. That would include a postseason conference tournament, which counts as one game. Through an amendment, teams will be able to play in one of a variety of exempted games and tournaments, including the preseason NIT, Tip-off game and games in Hawaii and Alaska, every four years without those games counting against the 25.

Also in 1992-93, the start of preseason basketball practice will be moved back to Nov. 1 from Oct. 15 and the start of the basketball season to Dec. 1 from the fourth Friday in November.

Delegates from Division I-A and Division I-AA schools approved a plan in which, effective in the spring of 1991, football spring practice sessions will be reduced from 20 to 15 over 21 consecutive days, with contact allowed in only 10 sessions. The Presidents Commission’s original proposal would have limited spring practice to 10 sessions over 18 days and prohibited all contact.

The convention also adopted a measure that calls for legislation reducing time demands on athletes in other sports, to be formulated by the NCAA Council this year and placed before the delegates in 1991.

The NCAA adopted the graduation-rate disclosure proposal as Congress is considering legislation to force the NCAA to take such action.

Under the rule, the NCAA will be required to disclose data annually on a school-by-school basis, and schools will be required to provide the data to prospects and their parents during recruiting.

The information will include average graduation rate for recruited athletes, given five years to graduate, in each sport for a school’s four most recent graduating classes. The information will be broken down by race in football and men’s and women’s basketball.

A school’s report also must include average high school grade-point average and standardized test scores for entering freshmen, and the percentage of those athletes admitted under provisions that differ from the school’s usual standards.

The Presidents Commission based its specific points in Prop. 30 on a report conducted for the commission by the American Institute for Research, which found that the time demands on athletes participating in football and baseball exceeded the time those athletes spent preparing for and attending class.

An amendment that called for time-reduction study and legislation for all sports in 1991, not just those other than football and basketball, was defeated by the full membership early in Tuesday’s session, indicating that the delegates were prepared to buy Prop. 30 as it was presented by the commission.

But when delegates returned from their lunch break to consider specific cuts for football and basketball proposed by the commission, the mood of the session shifted. Debate over shortening the basketball season resulted in a 170-150 vote by Division I schools in favor of referring the issue to the NCAA Council to consider this year.

“We come down to the practical matter of funding our program,” Brad Hovious, athletic director at Texas El Paso, told the convention. “Most of these (the three games to be eliminated) are home games for us. We’re looking at big dollars sorely needed by a program, and I’m sure others feel the same way.”

Prop. 30--and, by extension, the Presidents Commission--was in trouble. Suddenly under the gun, members of the commission began to work the floor, where they found that, in some cases, votes had gone against the commission mainly because schools’ presidents had either left the convention early or failed to show at all.

“Some of us examined the (voting) roll and found some schools voting to refer when we knew their presidents did not support that,” Young said, “and some of those (schools) agreed to change their votes.”

Said an angry Jankovich, the Miami athletic director, later: “A lot of arm-twisting took place. This was a session of total chaos.”

The presidents’ lobbying brought another vote on the basketball season back to the convention floor, where this time it was approved by a vote of 206-116.

Once that issue was settled, other parts of Prop. 30 fell into line for the presidents.

NCAA Notes

Sen. Bill Bradley, one of the sponsors of the bill before Congress that would require colleges to disclose graduation rates, said he was pleased with the NCAA’s passage of a similar measure yesterday.

“The NCAA Division I and Division II schools were nearly unanimous in their support of requirements to release graduation rates to future student-athletes and families,” Bradley said in a statement. “This is fully consistent with the legislation that we have sponsored. . . . A potential student-athlete and his or her parents are entitled to a direct and valid answer to the question, ‘If I enter your college or university . . . what are the chances that I will graduate within a year of those in my entering class?’ ”

Bradley said he plans to pursue his legislation so NAIA schools, which are not governed by NCAA rules, will also be required to disclose graduation rates . . .

Villanova distance runner Vicki Huber last night was awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup, given annually to the nation’s top collegiate female athlete. Huber, the NCAA indoor and outdoor 3,000 meters champion, received the award at a dinner held in conjunction with the NCAA convention. Among nine other candidates was UCLA softball player Janice Parks.