NCAA CONVENTION : 1993 Debate Expected to Be Less Tense

Having spent the past few years wrestling with such fractious issues as academic standards and cost reduction, college presidents and athletic administrators should experience a relatively peaceful few days of decision-making at the 1993 NCAA convention.

Key items to be considered during the meeting, which begins today, include a plan for the certification of athletic programs and proposals that would enhance the power of college presidents within the structure of the NCAA.

Those items, developed by the NCAA Presidents Commission, are not expected to spark the kind of fiery debate that commission-sponsored legislation has generated in previous years.

Nonetheless, NCAA leaders believe adoption of the commission’s agenda this week would be a significant, if perhaps quiet, step toward the commission’s goal of reforming college sports.

“Certification is kind of the capstone (of the reform effort),” NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz said.

” . . . You take certification and the things that are (proposed) to strengthen the role of the presidents--those are very important issues. They’re maybe not as weighty as academic requirements. But certification is a major issue in itself, probably as big an issue as we’ve dealt with in the last three years.”

The certification proposal is definitely a complex one, covering 18 pages in the convention handbook.

It would require each NCAA Division I school to perform a self-study of its athletic program once every five years. The university’s self-study would be evaluated by a “peer-review” team appointed by an NCAA committee on athletic certification. The committee then would evaluate the team’s report.

The certification process, similar to the regional academic accreditation required of most schools, would focus on four areas: governance and commitment to rules compliance, academic integrity, fiscal integrity and commitment to gender and minority equity.

Failure by a school to gain certification could affect that school’s NCAA membership.

Although some presidents and athletic administrators have expressed concerns about the time and paper work required by the certification process, the proposal is expected to gain approval.

Two other major proposals sponsored by the Presidents Commission would give that body greater control over the operation of the NCAA and the formulation of the organization’s regulations.

One would create an NCAA Joint Policy Board, a panel that would include the NCAA’s elected officers, the executive director and officers of the Presidents Commission. The board would review a variety of NCAA matters, including the organization’s budget.

The other proposal would require that all proposed NCAA legislation be evaluated by the appropriate NCAA committee before being placed on a convention agenda. That proposal also would allow the Presidents Commission to designate certain pieces of convention legislation that, if approved, could not be amended for at least two years.

Also expected to gain approval is a proposal that would establish an initial eligibility “clearing house.” The legislation would set up a central agency, administered by the American College Testing organization, that would determine the validity of academic credentials presented by athletes for freshman eligibility at the Division I and II levels.

Such an agency is necessary, many athletic administrators believe, to eliminate the conflicting academic evaluations that can arise among schools recruiting the same high school athlete.

If there are to be any contentious moments at this year’s convention, they could come during debate on several proposals designed to alter reductions in coaching staffs and scholarship limits previously adopted at the direction of the Presidents Commission.

One proposal, sponsored by 13 Division I schools, would restore a full-time coach to basketball staffs. The proposal would raise the permissible number of full-time basketball coaches from three to four and eliminate the so-called “restricted earnings” coach, a designation created by the Presidents Commission for the fourth staff position as part of cost-cutting legislation in 1991.

Sponsors of the proposal, including Duke and Kentucky, argue that the “restricted earnings” designation encourages schools to bend the rules by obtaining outside employment for such coaches.

However, the Presidents Commission, refusing to give ground on reform measures enacted previously, has expressed opposition to that proposal and others like it on this week’s agenda. And when the commission opposes a proposal, the issue is usually dead.

NCAA Notes

The convention officially opens today with Dick Schultz’s annual “State of the Association” address. Business sessions begin Thursday and are scheduled to run through Saturday. . . . The NCAA has revised its convention format to designate a single day--Thursday--as “Presidential Agenda Day.” Only legislation deemed to be of particular interest to chief executive officers will be considered during Thursday’s sessions. The change was made to encourage more CEOs to attend.