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All of you deserve recognition for operating according to our statement of principles. One way for you to grab that recognition is in the back of our report. We culminate in a statement of principles, of which there are 10, and it's really just restatement of our 20 recommendations. We recommend that that statement of principles be reviewed at the institutional level, the conference level and we urge that all of you embrace that statement and go public about it You all could do it as a Division. Grab that recognition which you deserve for operating the way you do. You don't need to toil away in obscurity. Here's a great opportunity for you to stand up and set a greater example for the rest of the NCAA institutions. We will have d1ree separate round tables tomorrow morning which you are invited to sit in on. Thank you. BOB ROSENCRANS: Thank you very much, Ms. Devlin. We appreciate your presentation and its meaning to us in Division ill. Earlier, I mentioned At Van Wie and because of his age, he was unable to get here on time. He did come in a few minutes ago. I would like to have him stand up now and give us an opportunity to show our appreciation. My feelings about the Division III breakout business sessions at the NCAA Convention came to me in the forefront. I had some time to talk with Betty about this at our meeting in February and we decided to invite five of your colleagues who are active athletic directors in various regions in the country to discuss, calmly, recent and known proposed legislation that may effect us in Division ill, positively or negatively. I found that to many people come to the NCAA Convention ill informed and probably don't look at the booklet until they jump on the plane. Like our old faculty meetings, I find the same people beating their own drum time after time and saying the same things. Many people interpret what they read into that differently. Most obnoxious to me is the emotional state that some people are driven into when they get discussing the legislation at that time. Too many people get excited at the last minute. It's either yes or no and there's nothing else at that point that we can do about it. I hope we have a chance to discuss some of these things today with you. John Shell, from Washington University/St Louis, moderated a discussion session yesterday with approximately 20 people who are in this room who are Division III athletic administrators. The outcome of that will be what is discussed today. I was pleased that it was discussed in a calm and friendly atmosphere and I'll promise you that next year, Betty and I will try very hard and with great success, to get a session like that on the program and in your directory for the Monday afternoon session at that time. I feel that's the type of atmosphere where we need to exchange the ideas that many of you have. In so doing, John, I'd like for you to accept the duties to moderate that one as you did yesterday. You did a nice job. We'll have the normal breakout session as we're having right now with, hopefully, some timely subjects and speakers to stimulate your thinking on other matters other than for legislation next year. At this time, I'd like to introduce Dr. Thomas Kinder. Many of you know Tom. Tom's been the AD at Bridgewater College for 13 years. For the last six and one-half years, he's been on the NCAA Council. He's currently serving on the Financial & Eligibility Committees of the NCAA and is quite knowledgeable about Division III athletics. I present, Tom Kinder. TOM KINDER: When we mention the South, there are a lot of things happening in that region that deal with NCAA Rules. Some of the types of things occurring that people are upset about, as you can all guess, is the spring sports. A lot of that NCAA legislation has curtailed some of the spring sports and some of the people would like to have that reviewed again. I'm simply reporting that as a means of information. Problems, as far as Division III is concerned, are too many rules that we have to be associated with require interpretations. Every time you go to a rule book, somewhere along the way you have to find an interpretation for that rule. Our Executive Director, Dick Schultz, has recognized this and has attempted to move in a direction to do something about that, hopefully, in the near future. We will move in a direction where we'll have simplifications of some of the rules that all of us can understand. I don't care how long you study a rule book, there's also language in there that some of us have problems with. We're not attorneys. We have problems many times with interpreting some of that legislation. If we could move to something that all of us would understand, where we would not have to have interpretations all of the time that deal with this legislation, we'd all benefit from it. Our rule book is too large. It's much too complicated. If you look at Division I, almost every institution will have someone in charge of compliance. That is, simply, to keep everyone on track with the rules. In Division III, if we know our rules, then we will follow those rules. To interpret those things, many times, is a problem. As we get into some of the other areas, I have found that many times most of us will follow what is in the rule book. I hope that we will have rules that we won't have to look to the NCAA to determine whether or not you're doing something right. All of us know what is right and what is wrong. If we follow good common sense, I would think there would be very few rule violations in Division III, if we know the rules. In our conference, we had some of these rules we discarded primarily because the NCAA had rules and now these were less suingent, therefore, we did away with some of our rules because all of our people were interested in competing for the NCAA championships. We need to get back to having a conference championship being just as important, if not more, than the NCAA championships. Some of you people who are on the NCAA Council now are looking at some of those problems and looking at regional championships. Those are well worth considering. Thank you very much. BOB ROSENCRANS: Our next speaker is Paul Hogan. Paul is the AD at Westfield State College and has been there for 28 years. He's served on several NCAA basketball committees and is currently the Parliamentarian for NACDA. He was also the commissioner for the Massachusetts State Athletic Conference for several years. Again, here is one of your colleagues who has been around the block a couple of times and who understands the problems as we see them at this time. PAUL BOGAN: With all of the rules and regulations, and reading Light & Shadows, I asked myself, what did I fmd out? I think Ms. Devlin, if I were you, I hope you'll take back to the Knight Commission that I feel they have plagiarized the NCAA Philosophy of Division III. If you read it, it's on page three, you'll find it is the one-plus-three. It is exactly the same thing. They talk about control, the president. That's our philosophy. We did this many years ago. I don't think we have to make a new model. We have the model. We should take heed of what Ms. Devlin said. It's about time we beat our drum for Division III. Let Divisions II and I start following because we have it. We have the model. We have the academic integrity. As far as the certification, if you look on page 360, it will tell you the purpose of the NCAA is to assist its members to develop this approach as the basis for consistent, equitable competition. We already have it. If we look at the new rules and regulations, I'd like to wipe some of them out. I'd like to start from the beginning again with the philosophy. You look at the non-traditional, traditional. We talked about some of the problems yesterday. We have more freedom in non-traditional than we do in the traditional season. If you look at the sports, everyone has different problems. Field hockey can only play 17 games, no scrimmages. Soccer will be allowed to play 20 games Divisions I, II and 111, three scrimmages. Division I has 19 field hockey games. Division II has 18 and Division III has 17. So, I would think that would upset the women in field hockey. I would think they would have stood up and shouted about that, but I haven't heard anything. You're right. After awhile, we sit there, and all it was Division I. One of the presidents from opr institutions got up and left. We lost a vote because all of a sudden something came up and we had to vote. The federation approach is the best way for us. It's time we determined our own destiny. I don't think we have done that. You are the experts. There are experts all around. I was brought to Spain by the Federal Government as an expert in facilities. I went to a school system in Spain. The superintendent took me out onto the field. He told me what he wanted in all his facilities. He wants me to make a determination. I asked him to go back to the school system and leave me out here for about one hour. There was an old fanner on the hill. This is a true story .I went up to the fanner and through my poor Spanish and the interpreter, we found the answers. In lO-minutes, he told me about the rain fall, where to put the field, what direction to put it in because of the rain, and we solved all of the problems. I wrote it up and handed it to the superintendent. He thought I was the smartest guy going. I told him what my definition of an expert is. I carried a briefcase, came a long distance, and you paid a lot of money for nothing because the guy who had all of the answers was right here. They're right in front of us. We do this all of the time. I criticize the Knight Commission for that because there really wasn't a commissione! from Division III or an athletic director from Division III. We're all different. We can't solve this with a rule book. We never will. But, we can solve it with what the Knight Commission is saying, integrity, ethics and we haven't done that. We have it in Division III. We have our problems, but we have the vehicle and we have the model. It's about time that we started blowing our own horn. Stop letting someone else push us around and wag our tails. We have to be the leaders. We've done this. Division I has their own problems. Let them settle their own problems, but let's not take our down by adding this traditional, non-traditional, this or that Some of us have part-time coaches. Some of us have full-time coaches. Some want to play this. Some want to start weeks before the tournament Some want practice days. If we go back to the institutional integrity , which is what our philosophy says, and let the institution determine that, we're going to do one thing that the Knight Commission says. I disagree with them using the word, "ideally". They said, "ideally, institutions will agree to schedule only those colleges and universities that have passed all the aspects of the certification process." Not ideally. If a college president has the guts to stand up, he will say we will not schedule x or y institutions because they do not follow the philosophy of Division III. That's where I'm coming from. I hope you can take that back to that Knight Commission. I hope you will contact these people out here because they are the experts. Thank you. BOB ROSENCRANS: Thank you Paul. That was good. Next is Mr. Jim Malmquist from Gustavus-Adolphus College. Jim has been there for 18 years. His grandfather graduated from Gustavus-Adolphus in 1890 and his father in 1921. He's also had four children graduate from Gustavus-Adolphus, so if he's not an expert on anything else here, he's an expert on Gustavus-Adolphus. He is currently a chairman of the west region Division III Football Committee and in December of this year, will chair the national committee for Division III football. It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Jim Malmquist JIM MALMOUIST: Thank you very much. I appreciate having the chance to be with you here today. I have always been proud happy to be a part of Division III. I feel I'm among friends. Upon hearing from Bob, I sent out a letter to a lot ADs from around the area I represent asking for some input they would like presented at this meeting. I received three out of 40. I'd like to share a couple of ideas that did come out of the three that did come back and the meetings that occurred in our part of the country . In general, we favor federation. I would endorse Paul's statements 100 percent We believe in divisional autonomy. This has been said so many times before in Division III meetings and that is, that our strengths are our weaknesses. We have tremendous diversity within the division and I don't think there is a way to sit down and come up with a whole lot of rules to make all of us happy. I am often concerned about throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are so many things in Division III that are working well that we need to protect. Our football coach made a great issue a couple of years ago about graduation rates. He had a poster made. Gustavus has 100 percent graduation rate. They come there to graduate. You don't pay that kind of money to go to Division III schools and then not graduate. We're about graduation, normal progress and about putting athletics in the right place. We talk a lot about that. We have a tendency to tell each other what we already know. We need to increase the range of people who listen to what we say about Division III. There is some support in our area for Proposal 117. A great deal of difference of opinion is what the numbers and parameters should be, but it is certainly a subject that will be discussed thoroughly prior to an opportunity to vote on that again. There is a feeling that loss of class time, other than weather related spring sport loss of class time, is not an issue. Our kids don't miss a whole lot of school. I wish I knew what to do about having to send teams to national or regional tournaments during finals. Our faculty has been very cooperative in terms of sending along fmals and having them administered at the school where the national event is held. I don't think there is a solution to weather related loss of class time in the spring when we're trying to get our required number of contests in for either national purposes or conference purposes. We played around the edges of the issue on the tremendous loss of interested females in the conferences both as coaches and administrators. We need to find ways to encourage young women to come into the profession and stay in the profession. We need to find funds to start those programs out on our own campuses. We're down to two female head coaches and we have 22 sports, 11 of them for women. That's common across our part of the country and in our conference. We need to find ways to deal with that problem. Other than that, thank you for allowing me to be here. This meeting here today has made the convention worth it for me. I'm looking forward to hearing the other people. BOB ROSENCRANS: Thank you, Jim. Next is Dr. Daniel Bridges, who is the Director of Athletics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Dan spent eight years as a high school AD and head baseball and football coach, six years as a college baseball coach, two years as assistant at UCLA and four years as head coach at Cal Tech. He completed his PhD in Athletic Administration at USC in 1989 and he's finishing his second year as the AD at the California Institute of Technology. I would like to present, Dr. Dan Bridges. DANIEL BRIDGES: Thank you, Bob. Like my colleagues, we do favor federation and institutional autonomy. We do feel that Division III should step forward and assume leadership within the NCAA because we do have what we consider to be the proper model. Our major concerns with the specific pieces of legislation center around three issues, all dealing with Proposals 39 and 117. Those issues deal with split-season format or traditional vs. non-traditional, the length of the fall playing season and the maximum number of contests allowed. Primarily, the western region is made up of one conference, the Southern California Intercollegiate Conference. We make up 80 percent of all the Division III western regional participants, so I can speak on behalf of that conference and I feel that the other two institutions I represent fall pretty much in line with our beliefs. We discussed these issues at the conference level at length and weo have some very specific ideas about what we would like to see at next year's Convention. Even though our conference does not allow traditional and non-traditional sports, in other words, we don't allow our teams to play split seasons, we realize that this is a very legitimate concern from those of you from the weather affected parts of the country, particularly in terms of spring sports. You have a very short spring season. We're not at all opposed to the idea of the traditional, non-traditional sports seasons. We realize that that may be an important part of your program, however, on the West Coast, we don't feel that it's necessary. We prefer to see our students focus one season of sport and be able to play something else in the fall or winter. We are opposed to the current legislation which allows an institution that opts to playa split season to play 10 more baseball contests than those of us who only play in the traditional season. We have that kind of disparity in baseball, softball, soccer and men's and women's volleyball. Another concern is the missed class time and the mandatory days off regulations are more stringent during the traditional season than they are during the non-traditional season. These two factors provide a great deal of incentive for programs who really aren't weather affected to participate in a non-traditional season of sport. We find that to be inconsistent with the basic Division III philosophy. We would like to see legislation adopted that tightens these things up. In other words, we respect your need to run a non-traditional season of sport, but for doing that, you should not be allowed to play 10 extra games and to apply less stringent standards in terms of missed time off and that type of thing. We'd like to see some consistency there if we are going to maintain the traditional/non-traditional season of sport. The problem that creates for us when we have this disparity is that we have institutions in our own regions, in our own conferences, who are saying this isn't fair. You're only allowing us to play 40 games. The Eastern schools are playing 50 games a year. This isn't right. There's a lot of pressure on us in the west. We're trying to maintain and stick to the Division ill philosophy of trying to let our students do a variety of things and confme their participation to a certain segment of the academic year. But, when our coaches continually come to us with the same concerns that the eastern schools are getting to play more ball games than us, this and that and the other thing, it provides incentive for us to at least consider to move away from the Division ill philosophy and more toward a split- season format when we really don't have a legitimate reason to do so. On the issue of maximum number of contests, we prefer to see some rationalization for the cuts. We're not at 81 opposed to cutting back the schedule, but there seems to be no rationalization for the cuts that were made at last January's convention. They were kind of across the board 10 or 20 percent which they took off of each sport. For example, the question came up at our last conference meeting, why restrict cross country to eight competitions when track has 18? Or, why restrict soccer to 20 and allow baseball and softball to play 36? I know there are some inherent differences in our sports, but coaches are starting to ask those questions. Why should we be so restricted on certain sports and not so restricted on others? Length of playing season is the critical issue because that's always the answer I get. Well, you only have so many weeks for cross country and you have more weeks for track. If that's the issue, I suggest that we need to pass some legislation or adjust our legislation so that those seasons are more. My next concern is the length of the fall playing season. It's very short. The new legislation moves its starting date to August 24, which makes it even shorter. Our men's soccer team only play one traditional season of sport. If we restrict them to eight or nine weeks, we're having a little bit of trouble with that. We're giving our baseball 18 or 19 weeks out of the year. It doesn't seem to be fair. Our conference would favor some kind of legislation that would equalize the playing seasons and allow for a more rational determination of number of contests allowable. The Division III Steering Committee intends to present us with three options next January to modify and adjust Proposal 39. Option number one is basically 39, as passed last year and just cleaning it up and tightening it up a little bit, but still maintaining the 21-week playing season, the traditionaJ/non-traditional segments, etc. Option number two will be consistent with Proposal 117, that gives us the starting dates of September 1, November 1 and February 1, with no overlap. We like the idea of this in that it allows student-athletes to play more than one sport. It reduces pressure on overcrowded facilities and saves money. It also calls for the elimination of thc split season concept. The beauty of this option is its simplicity. You have three distinct seasons. There's no overlap, therefore, no problems. The problem we have with it, however, is that it further reduces the length of that fall season. With that September 1 starting date, now, you may only be down to eight weeks of a fall season. Our favorite option is one that we're hearing in bits and pieces from the Steering Committee, but what we've heard so far is very impressive. With option number three, which is a compromise proposal, where the Steering Committee is intending to lengthening the fall season by allowing some overlap with the winter season. It's inevitabl that you'll have some overlap there to give the fall participants a normal season. It allows for traditional and non- traditional seasons totalling 18 or 19 weeks rather than 21 weeks. We would like to see Division III adopt the count back system to determine your season of sports within that 18 or 19-week period. Lastly, that proposal will equalize the total number of contests allowed so that there's no advantage to playing split-season format other than those of you who have weather concerns. It gives you that option to have a regular season where you otherwise couldn't. It would take away the incentive for those of us on the West Coast to play that non-traditional season because there would be no advantage in terms of number of games played and no advantage in terms of less stringent requirements on missed class time during that non-traditional season. Thank you very much BOB ROSENCRANS: Last, only by choice because he wanted it this way is Nonn Sundstrom, who is the director of athletics at Allegheny College and has been for 13 years. He's on the District II NCAA Golf Selection Committee and has WOI a national championship for the golf team. Every year, he participates and competes very well at the national level. Nonn spoke some at the Convention last year and I asked him to come back and talk to us this year. NORM SUNDSTROM: I asked to go last because I thought I wouldn't have to say anything. I thought it would all be said and most of it was. The ftrst thought that comes to my mind is cost control. I stopped to think about how many meetings we've had relative to this practice and playing seasons and I know in our own institution there are eight or nine members of our athletic committee, and we've met four or five times for a total of 40 hours. When we go to our conference, we meet with 18 athletic directors and we go to our sports caucus and meet with 36 people. You start multiplying that by the amount of money these people are earning for that time, you spend a lot of money on a subject that we should have settled a long time ago. Why are we spending all of this time, effort and money traveling around the country to fix something that isn't broken? Why do we in Division III have to do what Division I must do. We realize that the presidents in Division I have made a political statement that they have to reduce because of all the problems they have. Why do the presidents in Division III think we have to do this also? We just heard the Knight Commission Report and everything in there, in my opinion, has to do with Division III and Ivy League. Why should we be trying to fiX this? If I'm not mistaken, athletics in Division m is an integral part of our educational system. The missions that are written in the institutions pertain to athletics as a part of the educational system. The Admissions Departments are admitting all of the students according to their abilities to complete their education. Finance is part of the educational budgets of the institutions. I should say that my background is basically in private institutions and I'm sure in many of the public institutions, that is true also. We're concerned about missing classes and monies spent. I might add that our football team played 14 contests this past year and we were fortunate enough to participate in a national championship game. During that time period, we don't make enough money in football to pay the officials, therefore, we're not concerned about gate receipts. We missed three classes. We missed two Friday classes to go to Iowa and a Thursday class to go to Florida. So, we didn't miss many classes relative to athletic participation. Our conference, the North Coast Athletic Conference, did a student survey and they found that the average student-athlete is spending 19.1 hours per week during his or her season. I don't think this needs to be fixed. Eighty percent of the athletes in the North Coast Athletic Conference feel they manage their time better than the non-athlete. Consequently, I don't think that needs to be fixed either. As Bob mentioned, I'm a golf coach. I've kept stringent time demands on our golfers this past year. We went to the nationals. In the month of February, we averaged two- tenths of an hour per day in practice. In March, we average three-tenths of an hour in practice. I don't think that's too much. Yet, I hear that we're talking about legislation in Division m. We're talking about number of hours per day, number of days per week. I don't think we need any of that myself. I think we should stay where we're at and have institutional autonomy. The publicity that we're getting on athletic programs have an effect on our campuses. Our faculty think that's what's happening in Division III. It's up to us to educate our faculty that this isn't happening in Division Ill. We mention about having exams and contests. We are a member of the North Coast Athletic Conference and I thought our calendar for this spring this year was pretty good. Then, the Conference moved all of the dates forward one week. This hit all of our final exams. When you take the baseball, tennis team, golf and track, etc., you're talking about a lot of student-athletes. We started three months before the conference championships and each of our athletes had to go to the professors and have a contract with that professor to see when they could take their exams. Naturally, the contracts could not be drawn, therefore, the individual will not be able to participate in the championships. So, that's controlled by our faculty. What bothers me the most about cutbacks, particularly the practices, is that you're going to see more student clubs come out of the institutions because students want to participate. You're gong to have unsafe participation opportunities. I call it party participation. You 'll fmd there will be no supervision for these experiences. They are not going to be advantageous to the institution. The North Coast Athletic Conference presidents passed four basic principles that were recommended by a playing and practice seasons committee. One is length of season. A reduction from the current 21 weeks to 18 weeks for all sports, with no exceptions. Two is split seasons. The acceptance of certain split-season sports. If there is a fall portion of a split sport, it must end by October 15. If there is a spring portion of a fall sport, it must not begin before February 1. Third is the season starting dates. Counting back from the first NCAA playoff championship date is better than a starting date for fall sports because of the different institutional calendars. However, February 1, is deemed to be an acceptable starting date for spring sports. Winter sports will start November 1. Finally, is practice opportunities for fall sports only. For the number of practice opportunities, 18 seems to be acceptable prior to the fIrst contest needs to be spelled out as it impacts on costs, meals, housing and out of season. The suggested 18 practice opportunities for all fall sports than football, shall be counted similar to football described in the 1991-92 NCAA Manual, By-Law 17213 on page 201. Football is regulated separately, as you know, by the 1991 Convention. Let us face the real issue and that's money, controlled costs and reductions. The only way to reach the goal of the presidents in this particular area, in my opinion, is that you regulate the number of contests, the dates and the travel and leave our practice opportunities where they are. Thank you. BOB ROSENCRANS: Thank you very much, Norm. Yesterday , in the meeting, terms and words were flying around rather quickly. I think a couple of people used the word institutional integrity when they meant institutional autonomy and visa-versa. I think you're talking about the same thing. I've been in intercollegiate athletics for a long time and at these meetings, I can remember in the past, when, not SO much Division Ill, but I and II were so concerned about somebody having a week or two extra practice. Everything seemed to be built around the sun belt and how they were going to dominate all of the spring sports. We had the east who wanted the indoor track championship to be the championship because they didn't have an outdoor season for more than three, four or five weeks. If I'm not mistaken, in Division III this year, the women from Central Iowa won the softball championship. Three of the top 16 teams in Division III golf were from Ohio. A team from Maine won the baseball championship. Gustavus- Adolphus was in the top three and they're from farther north than Ohio. So, we worry too much about what the other guy is doing instead of what we're doing. If institution A plays 40 softball games and B plays 20 and they are of equal academic reputation, the student might want to go to the one that plays 40 because she wants to play. As had been mentioned yesterday, and again today, maybe we're just not listening enough to the students. If we were on scholarships and we were forcing those players to be at every practice and every game, that's something else. But I would wager that there's not one of you in here who has not had a student-athlete, or more, say that they can't come to this practice because of a seminar or because of a lab on a certain day, or can't go to this contest because of a test that they have, etc. We live with that day in and day out in Division III, but we forget that sometimes. Thank you all for attending. Thanks to the speakers who did a great job. |
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