NCAA Plans Certification as Next Goal : Convention: Schultz sees some type of accreditation program as the final focus of reforms.

Having attained most of the reform goals they had set for this year’s NCAA convention, the leaders of college athletics are ready to focus on next year’s key reform issue--a program of certification or accreditation for college athletic programs.

“I would see certification as being kind of a last piece in the puzzle,” NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz said Friday at the close of the NCAA’s 86th annual convention. “Then I would hope we could kind of sit back, take a deep breath and fine-tune (reform measures adopted by the NCAA), let these things settle in so we can be sure they’re doing what we’d hope they would do.”

The reform movement promoted by the NCAA Presidents Commission certainly did not lose any steam during this year’s convention in Anaheim.

Delegates supported almost all of the commission’s proposals, including legislation that will strengthen the NCAA’s academic standards for freshman eligibility.

Those standards--commonly known as Proposition 48--currently require athletes to post a high school grade-point average of 2.0 in 11 core courses as well as attain certain standardized test minimums to be eligible as college freshmen.

Starting with the 1995-96 academic year, however, the Prop. 48 standards will be more stringent. The required GPA will be 2.5. The number of core courses will be 13. Also in place will be a sliding scale in which athletes could be eligible as freshmen by offsetting GPAs between 2.5 and 2.0 with test scores higher than the established minimums (700 on the SAT or 17 on the ACT).

The debate was, as expected, often emotional, focusing on the belief that elements of the new standards will further reduce educational opportunities for minority athletes. E.M. Jones of Grambling, an English professor and the school’s faculty athletics representative, quoted from “Macbeth” on the convention floor.

The traditionally black schools that opposed the legislation had some powerful allies, including Georgetown, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Georgia Tech. Even so, the measure passed by a nearly 3-1 margin.

With the adoption of the new standards, delegates lined up in support of the Presidents Commission’s reform initiative for the third consecutive year, a move sure to give the commission additional clout and momentum as it focuses on its primary areas for next year: institutional responsibility and presidential authority.

Gregory O’Brien, chancellor of the University of New Orleans and chairman-elect of the commission said legislation will be developed to:

--Define the roles and functions of the commission and other college chief executive officers within the NCAA.

--Define the roles of CEOs in dealing with their own athletic programs.

--Establish a certification or accreditation program for schools’ athletic programs.

Although it is little more than a vague concept now, athletic certification would represent a significant step for the NCAA, O’Brien said.

“The process of certification is one that’s going to provide a fabric in which the integrity of the university, in fulfilling its own determined mission for college sports, is going to receive peer review through adherence to a small set of key principles,” he said.

“That’s going to be a tremendous step forward. You can make a lot of specific regulations. But if you have a process that allows people to look at the role of athletics in their institutions and then verifies that they are being consistent with that role, that’s going to be a key (to reform).”

NCAA Notes

On the convention’s final day, Division II delegates rejected a motion by Tom Iannacone, athletic director at the University of San Diego, to reconsider legislation that would have established Division I-AAA football.

The non-scholarship football classification--proposed as an alternative for Division I basketball schools that must stop playing football at the Division II or III levels by next year--was not adopted Thursday because of opposition from Division II schools. That opposition, stemming from a restriction that would keep Division II schools from moving up to Division I by adopting Division I-AAA football, remained Friday.

San Diego competes at the Division III level in football and at the Division I level in all other sports.

Delegates approved a resolution referring to the “continued abuses” of summer basketball camps for high school players and calling for the NCAA to develop a program to certify such camps by 1993. Certification, according to Executive Director Dick Schultz, would require the camps to meet a set of standards. Camps not in compliance probably would be designated off-limits to college coaches, he said.