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Doesn't look good for 1AA, Ambushed in Indy Part 2

ronbo

Well-known member
http://www.i-aa.com/news/article_3147.shtml?session=KhldZrvGQf7YTBmKOrOX4tEWPI

Ambushed in Indy: Subjugation without representation
Otto Fad, CFAA/I-AA.com
May 17, 2004, 00:01


[Note: this is Part II of a series…Part I: Big Sky ready to lead I-AA flight?]


The apparently increasing likelihood that recent gains will be wiped-out by the Division I Board of Directors begs the question, “How can I-AA Football be victimized by the membership organization to which it belongs?”

I-AA progress in national TV coverage, on-field competitiveness, and membership stability are all likely casualties if Division I’s top rulemaking authority stays its current course and continues to eviscerate stronger I-A standards produced in a comprehensive analysis undertaken by the Division I membership in its two-year NCAA Football Study.

Those standards were designed in large part to stabilize I-AA membership, and their dilution or elimination is likely to spur unprecedented numbers of I-AA programs to consider reclassification to I-A.


LACK OF NCAA SUPPORT


Perhaps the most disturbing disincentive for remaining in I-AA is the recent behavior of NCAA leadership with regard to the association’s premiere football championship classification.

I-AA leaders have fought for years for strong and enforceable I-A standards. The two-plus year Football Study developed a series of simple criteria and won passage, through all the requisite committees, subcommittees, and boards, including the Division I Management Council and the Division I Board of Directors.

Publicly, non-BCS I-A administrators including commissioners Wright Waters of the Sun Belt Conference and Rick Chryst of the Mid-American Conference have stated they would meet whatever I-A criteria the membership developed. Privately, have worked furiously to undo the new standards.

Already, using a dubious argument they have won a two-year flier on upgraded I-A scheduling standards. Instead of five I-A home games, they only need to play four over the next two seasons. By then, the adjustment could be made permanent or weakened, if the NCAA approves twelve-game regular seasons, as many expect.

Most recently, the Board referred the home football game attendance component of the standards to the I-A membership subcommittee. The old standard was 17,000-paid average attendance. The Football Study made the new standard 15,000-actual attendance.

The Division I Board of Directors includes the CEO’s of four schools that would be vulnerable to reclassification, were the standards to be enacted as originally passed:

Ø Carol A. Cartwright, president of Kent State University

Ø Phillip Dubois, president of University of Wyoming

Ø Sydney McPhee, president of Middle Tennessee State University

Ø Scott Cowen, president of Tulane University

Kent State and MTSU finished second-to-last, and third-to-last, respectively in I-A home attendance last year. Wyoming’s announced figures were good for a fourteenth-to-last finish in I-A, but slightly above the 15,000-cut mark.

However, all three should move up slightly this year as the Sun Belt Conference adds Florida Atlantic and Florida International -- two more schools that cannot pass marketing muster as measured by campus and community interest.

The USA Today recently reported that both Cartwright and Dubois spoke out against the attendance standard in the April meeting of the Division I Board of Directors.


STACKED DECK


The Board is Division I’s top policy-making body, but it is undeniably stacked against I-AA.

Although I-AA is the largest subclassification within Division I, it has the fewest representatives on the Board of Directors, with three. Of those three, only one – Dr. Randall Webb of Northwestern (Louisiana) State University -- represents a I-AA playoff league.

All 11 I-A conferences have permanent representation on the Board, and even I-AAA – which is roughly half the size of I-A and I-AA – currently has four members.

David Berst, the NCAA’s Division I Chief of Staff, believes that the Board understands the plight of I-AA institutions and why I-A standards are a concern of I-AA interests.

“[Board members] are aware that this is a I-AA and I-A issue,” said Berst. “The scheduling requirement was altered because the math didn’t work.”

The math part is debatable. It’s an approach utilized by the non-BCS’ers that was shot-down in the Football Issues Committee during the Football Study. But in the Board, the old argument found new ears.

Irrefutably, even in an eleven-game season, every I-A program can play at least five I-A home games. Some elect to schedule six or seven, just as cash-starved programs may elect to play extra road games. But those are market-driven or institutional decisions on both sides. Nobody is forcing non-BCS’ers to schedule lucrative road games in lieu of building support at home.

Also finding a new audience with the Board was the question of attendance standards, period.

“Not the Board,” said Berst, “but some of the individual members of the Board have concerns about the requirement, about trying to understand where these elements came from.”

Were they unaware that the unprecedented, inclusive NCAA Football Study developed the standards through painstaking analyses and careful deliberation?

“Yes,” said Berst. “But I don’t think any legislation is sacred, or immune to re-examination.”

Does that mean that every time the composition of the Board changes that every rule, regulation, and policy could or should be re-evaluated?

Georgia Southern University athletics director Sam Baker finds the re-evaluation of carefully evaluated standards frustrating.

“Attendance has always been part of the criteria… forever,” he said. “But it was one of those rules that everyone just winked about.”

“It was 17,000, but that was paid-attendance, so now it becomes 15,000 actual attendees."”

Greg Sankey, former Southland commissioner and now associate commissioner of the SEC, appeared before the Board to explain the origins of the now-endangered criteria, and why they were developed to benefit both I-A and I-AA. However, his insight may have been fallen on deaf ears.


HOOSIER LEADER?


Based on his public comments, NCAA President Myles Brand is apparently lending a sympathetic ear to the non-BCS Board members. The New Orleans Times-Picayune quoted Brand on the re-evaluation of the attendance standard.

"There is some discomfort with the rule, and it's legitimate," Brand said. "We want to make sure the people in I-A really belong there, but the best way to do that may be in terms of scholarships."

Implicit in the positions of the Board and Dr. Brand is that strong standards must be painless. In other words, strong standards are fine, but only if they are also ineffectual.

Part of the NCAA leadership’s lack of concern for I-AA Football may be attributable to the “bigger fish to fry” mentality associated with a plethora of Division I scandals and a reform agenda championed by Brand, all of which return more press attention than dealing with I-AA Football.

That’s understandable, except perhaps, to the self-restrained and responsible members of Division I’s largest subclassification.

Also, the Brand regime has coincided with and reinforced a rejuvenation of presidential authority as CEO’s attempt to wrest control of intercollegiate athletics from their athletics directors and conference commissioners. That’s relatively easily accomplished everywhere except in I-A football, the only intercollegiate sport not controlled by the NCAA.

Any I-A football agenda must include work not only on the Board of Directors, but also within the BCS.

A leading expert on the politics of intercollegiate athletics is Welch Suggs, the Athletics Editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Suggs is a former college student-athlete and mainstream sportswriter. Asked about the impact of the Presidential Coalition for Athletics Reform (PCAR) on the Division I Board of Directors and the BCS, Suggs commented on a simple commonality in this complex game of political football.

“With regard to the PCAR,” said Suggs, “I think you have to give a lot of credit to Scott Cowen (president of Tulane, who also ran the PCAR, and currently serves on the Division I Board of Directors) et al. for being willing to engage the BCS structure and set the agenda.”

“But a couple of people close to the situation have said that for the most part, college presidents don't like to say 'no' to each other.”

“Unlike the conference commissioners and others, they do not see themselves in direct competition with one another, so they're more likely to look for win-win situations and consensus objectives.”

Because NCAA governance subjugates Division I’s largest subclassification to a point bordering on utter irrelevance, win-win need not include concerns of I-AA Football.

Combined with a lack of representation in the BCS, this frees high-minded reformists to ignore the 120-plus schools burdened with the “I-AA” label.

Suggs also offered some contemporary context that does not bode well for I-AA’s chances.

“…Everybody … agreed that college sports has taken such a bruising over the past year, particularly with the nastiness over the ACC-Big East situation and then the Colorado recruiting scandal, that a kind of moral exhaustion that's crept into presidential conversations about sports.”

Translation: don’t expect the presidents of Penn State or Nebraska to stand up for I-AA if it means additional challenges for the mighty Golden Flashes of Kent State.

This explains how new I-A standards -- an issue that clearly affects all Division I football and that was originally adjudicated by the Division I membership -- have now been referred to a I-A subcommittee for re-evaluation and a recommendation.

The Board will again consider the issue in August. Anybody care to go out a limb and guess how that one will go?


…DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ STANDARDS


"We believed that the Football Study and resulting legislation was going to help," said GSU’s Baker. “All of a sudden, it’s setting alarms off when rules that were passed are being reconsidered and voted-on again.”

“As a group we need to take the issue [of I-A standards] seriously.”

Tony Moss, Director of I-AA Football for The Sports Network, agreed and elaborated.

“The apparent relaxation of what were supposed to be the new NCAA guidelines for I-A is going to have disastrous effects for I-AA. Without any deterrents in place, most notably the 15,000 actual attendance requirement, lower-echelon I-A leagues are free to continue recruiting members directly from I-AA.”

“(Then) there's nothing to stop some misguided I-AA’s from taking the leap in the hopes of becoming the next Marshall or USF,” said Moss.

“The Southland and OVC were crippled by the I-A migration in the 1990’s, and the next wave looks like it could be right around the corner. If Western Kentucky doesn't need a football fan base or a stadium to play in the Sun Belt, then what's keeping them in I-AA or the Gateway?”

“(Then), what's to keep Youngstown State, which could support a I-A move, from joining the MAC when it inevitably targets its next member?”

“Fast-forward to a time when a significant number of I-AA's core programs have migrated to I-A because of the absence of any deterrent,” said Moss. “Then, the schools that are attempting to reduce scholarships in I-AA are going to have a louder voice.”

“With fewer scholarships, the gap widens between I-AA and I-A, and the quality of play and appeal of I-AA go downhill quickly.”



NCAA: NON-BCS COALITION APPEASEMENT ASSOCIATION?


There is no reason to believe that I-AA will enjoy fairer representation anytime soon in legislating its future. In fact, the trend may be moving in the opposite direction.

The NCAA Executive Committee, made up of select members from each Division’s Board of Directors, recently endeavored to create a new group, the Executive Committee Administrative Subcommittee.

The EC minutes from April 2004 stated that the new subcommittee “will address critical issues in the interim between meetings with the understanding that all actions by the subcommittee would be ratified at the next Executive Committee meeting.”

Originally, I-AA and I-AAA were to be left out, but following an advisory report protest, it was agreed, “the subcommittee would be composed of the Executive Committee chair, the chairs of the three division presidential bodies and one Division I-AA or I-AAA member of the Executive Committee.”


LOOPHOLE BOWL


Louisiana-Monroe (nee Northeast Louisiana) recently tested the letter of NCAA law, not to mention the bounds of common sense and self-respect, when it announced a long-term contract with the University of Arkansas to play a series of football games in Little Rock, beginning this fall. The kicker is that the contests will count as home games for ULM, despite being played out-of-state, in the traditional second home of Razorback football.

ULM took advantage of a loophole in NCAA bylaws permitting I-A programs to count a “neutral site” game among its required complement of I-A “home games.” Never mind that the “visiting” team in this series is handling game management and ticket sales, or that the game is included in their season ticket package.

ULM has never before been the home team at War Memorial Stadium, where UA has been required by the state legislature to play a certain number of contests annually. Otherwise, UA has been trying to eliminate their Little Rock dates and play all their home games on campus in Fayetteville.

So the matchup that would save ULM’s I-A status will also help keep Arkansas politicos off UA’s back, while further demonstrating that outside of I-AA there is no sincere interest in strong I-A standards.


“THE KIDDIE TABLE”


Reading between the lines of another recent action by the Board reveals that it is very likely that the Division I rulers have some awareness that I-AA and I-AAA are not adequately represented in policy decisions.

Throwing a bone to I-AA interests, the I-A folks established the Division I-AA/I-AAA Presidential Advisory Group.

The idea is that this non-voting group will discuss issues affecting the non-I-A majority of Division I and, if it pleases the I-A policy makers, be so bold as to possibly offer non-binding recommendations.

The absurdity was not lost on one I-AA/I-AAA PAG member who said that serving on the group “is like sitting at the kiddie table.”

Rather than addressing the injustice of the current NCAA Division I governance structure and its inherent, guaranteed anti-I-AA bias, the NCAA’s apparent solution is to banish programs that annually devote as much as $3-4 million dollars to intercollegiate football off to the side to consort with schools that use the old Division III model for football.


BCS ALLIES?


If you believe that the BCS leagues might find I-AA’s restrained, responsible philosophy appealing and worthy of support, you wouldn’t be alone. Southern Conference commissioner Danny Morrison finds some consolation and reason for hope.

“I think there’s probably a better understanding among the BCS schools of I-AA’s needs,” said Morrison. “What we continue to hear from athletic directors and commissioners in the BCS is that they realize that healthy football at all levels is important to the sport.”

As Morrison suggests, the AD’s and commissioners of the BCS have frequently expressed their support for I-AA Football and for strong I-A standards. However, much to the detriment of I-AA institutions, the presidents from the BCS leagues have not acted in a manner consistent with the philosophies and values expressed by their top athletics officials.

So, while the concept of I-AA Football may have support from many levels of Division I, until Dr. Brand and the presidents from the six BCS leagues decide to consider the big picture of the “game of college football” and the interests of the entire membership of Division I, the programs in the NCAA’s premiere football championship classification will suffer the consequences.

It won’t be easy to stand up to the browbeating, whining, legal and legislative threats of non-BCS interests, but sincere reformists with genuine integrity would be able to do so.

Otherwise, sans adequate I-AA representation in Division I governance, BCS presidents will continue to enjoy the luxury of being able to ignore I-AA Football while attending to Division I’s “squeaky wheel.”

[Part III to follow]
 
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