NCAA Panel Tells Plan to Use CBS’ $1 Billion

An NCAA committee has proposed a revenue-sharing plan for distributing some of the $1 billion CBS will pay over the next seven years for rights to the basketball tournament.

The formula, which the NCAA said will increase payments to schools from 58% to 250% in the first year, was among 12 recommendations made by a special committee to distribute money from the new television contract with CBS.

The payments would increase 6% to 7% in succeeding years.

Payments to schools in the past have been based on how far they got in the tournament, a system that led to complaints that the traditional basketball powers got richer at the expense of others.

Two sets of criteria would be used under the formula. The first would be the number of sports sponsored by an institution, the number of times it has participated in an NCAA championship the past three years and the number of scholarships it awards.

The second guideline was the number of times the school had been in the basketball tournament the last six years.

Conferences would be urged to allocate part of the money for academic programs at the institutions.

Other recommendations included additional money for Division II and Division III schools, including up to $3 million that would be distributed to Division II schools under the same formula used in Division I.

Hearings will be held on the recommendations June 14 in Arlington, Va., Chicago and San Francisco.

The special committee will meet again June 18 to finalize its recommendations before giving them to a budget subcommittee. That committee will forward them to the Executive Committee in August.

“The preliminary report is based upon suggestions from the membership, and we received a very productive initial response to our call for suggestions,” said Judith M. Sweet, chair of the committee and director of athletics at UC San Diego.

Other preliminary proposals include:

- Providing catastrophic injury insurance for student-athletes in all three divisions.

- Full funding of Division II and Division III championships.

- Increasing the size of traveling parties for Division I championships and increasing the per diem.

- Increasing traveling parties for Division I championships that make a profit.

- Increasing the traveling party for the Division I basketball to 75 and increasing the per diem.

- Putting part of the revenue in a membership trust fund.

- Establishing an emergency fund for Division I.

- Providing graduation incentives or career grants to Division I athletes.

- Providing an inflationary increase in the conference grant program.

- Increasing postgraduate scholarships.