NASHVILLE (KRT) – At a time when NCAA Division I-A schools are seriously looking at five years of eligibility for football players, the winds of reform blew in the opposite direction Monday in the Division III session of the final day of the NCAA Convention.
The division that doesn’t award athletic scholarships voted 60 percent to 39 percent to eliminate red-shirting.
Starting this fall, all Division III athletes will be on the clock to play four consecutive seasons, barring hardship waivers.
There are 16 Division III schools in Texas, eight that play football in the American Southwest Conference. The only state schools to approve the proposal were Austin College, the University of Dallas and Trinity.
In stating his opposition to the membership, Hardin-Simmons athletic director John Neese estimated his program could lose 10 to 15 athletes per year because of the change.
“The competition out there for students is so great, if there’s something that’s offered somewhere else, you feel like you’re at a disadvantage,” Neese said.
“With Texas being such a big state, a young person can go redshirt somewhere else, whether it be at an NAIA school or a Division II school (in the NCAA). We do have students that can compete at the D-II level.”
Proponents of the proposal noted that 74 percent of the students at Division III schools graduate in four years.
“We thought it was the best thing to do in light of the management council move toward reform,” said Dick Strockbine, athletic director at UD and a member of the division management council that supported the proposal. “The kids are there to get their education and get out.”
Division III representatives also approved an exception to allow eight members to continue playing in Division I on a limited basis, such as Johns Hopkins in lacrosse and Colorado College in hockey.
NCAA president Myles Brand sat in on the session and called the division’s acceptance of reform legislation a “major win.”
Brand was surprised and not entirely thrilled to wake up to a full-page ad on the back of USA Today’s sports section in which Gateway blamed the NCAA for not helping to arrange an LSU-USC football showdown after the Nokia Sugar Bowl.
Gateway had offered $30 million to settle the national championship debate.
Brand on Monday repeated that the Bowl Championship Series is the domain of the college presidents and called the ad a “cynical publicity stunt.”
“Gateway or whoever wrote that ad is misinformed,” he said. “There is nothing there that will move higher education.” Kansas chancellor Robert Hemenway, chairman of the Division I board of directors, said the board didn’t take any action to change recommendations made Sunday by the management council.
He added that presidents and athletic directors are informally discussing the possibility of a permanent move to 12 regular-season football games.
“We want to be very careful about that,” Hemenway said. “We’re not so sure that’s in the best interest of our student-athletes.”
The Executive Committee of the full membership decided Monday night to return discussion of moving back the 3-point line in men’s basketball to the rules committee.
Chairman Carol Cartwright, president of Kent State, said the committee wants the same distance in all three divisions instead of tentative plans to move it from 19 feet, 9 inches to 20 feet, 6 inches only in Division I. The earliest that the line now can be moved is 2005-06.
The convention will return to the Dallas-Fort Worth area next January, coming to the new Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center on Lake Grapevine.
The convention was most recently in Dallas in 1996.
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c 2004, The Dallas Morning News.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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